Design & Ideas

Over the years, I've done design work on several smaller projects including websites and video game design. Below, you'll find samples.

Website Design

Some of these are old, and yes, clearly I'm just a programmer who can also do design and not an actual artist. For more serious projects, I have graphic designers that I work with. I can adapt and customize free web designs and templates, which I have done on The Reluctant Eater, The Long Honeymoon, and ryanwanger.com.

• Timber Bandits - This is my favorite design. I did all the design, programming and database work on this project myself.
• Nudging the Imagination - This is a site I designed and launched for Steven Krasner, a client of mine who does children's writing workshops (and covers the Red Sox for The Providence Journal.
• Norton Sales Inc. - I redesigned and launched this site for a client of mine in Los Angeles who sells aerospace and industrial supplies.
• ryanwanger.com - This is what my old site looks like. Stunning design, right? The new site has been adapted from Natural Essence by Arcsin. I also converted the template into a custom Wordpress theme, which is used for my blog.

Game Design

Back in 2002 & 2003, I studied Game Design at the Academy of Game Entertainment in Los Angeles. Sadly, the school no longer exists. Aside from being the only person in one of my classes (?!?) and traveling to Disneyland each week for my Video Game Architecture class, I did get a lot of experience coding and designing games. Below are a few examples, most of which can be found on my old site.

• American Gladiators Assault Mod for Unreal Tournament - Unfortunately I was never able to finish this project, but years later I still get occasional emails from curious fans.
• Fast Food Junkie - A short game design I did for a job application that declared: "Design a simple PS2 game and control scheme in which you are supposed to eat a hamburger, fries, and a soda as fast as possible." I surprised even myself with the resulting design.
• Hold 'Em (The Tourist) - If you're going to dream, dream big, right? From the beginning, this was a project that could never be completed by just one person. Nonetheless, I wrote a design treatment and began programming gameplay.

Ideas

So many ideas, so little time. Here are a few that I won't get around to.

Social Budgeting

There are several websites that assist with budgeting and tracking your finances, but they don't go far enough. Yes, I'm spending 20% of my budget on food, but what are other people spending. To really motivate people, you need to give them a basis for comparison and let them make a challenge out of it.

I want a site that can tell me things like:

• I am spending twice as much on DVD's as other people in my city.
• I am spending 50% more on housing than my neighbors who are renting.
• If I moved to Omaha, I would earn less, but would be amongst people who save more.

In my opinion, this would be a huge incentive to people who don't care about managing their finances online. Make it like a game. Challenge one another. Want to improve your time running a mile? How will you know what to aim for if you don't know how fast others are running it?

Furnishare

In big cities and especially college towns, there is a huge online market for used furniture. Craigslist has practically become an online retailer. While there are companies that currently rent furniture, their prices are too high, and their services are aimed at corporate relocations. Imagine a furniture rental company that was aimed at students? They could find cheap and free furniture, and rent it out to students at literally dollars per piece per month.

But, who would rent cheap used furniture? Lots of young people. I used to live in Boston. Almost everyone I knew lived with roommates, often where people would come and go rather frequently. Seems like an ideal situation for Furnishare. Rent common furniture to the household, then when someone moves in, the existing roommates just charge them their share, an extra $20 a month or so for all of the living room, dining room, and kitchen furniture. No hassle when they move out. No arguing over who gets what. No being without a couch when your roommate moves across town.

The craigslist scene is difficult to navigate and Furnishare would solve several problems:

• Neither buyers nor sellers often have the means to transport large items.
• Buying something from across town can be a challenge. You have to go inspect it first, and then if you aren't ready to take it away at that moment, it might be sold to someone else.
• Create a centralized location for all items.
• No wasting time on items that have already been sold, but are still posted.
• Furnishare would be able to check for bedbugs, an increasingly serious problem that most buyers aren't aware of.

You can imagine many different scenarios for pricing and membership. Imagine letting customers swap out for entirely new items after a certain period of time? Or consigning their own items instead of selling or giving them away? I began work on this project, going as far as registering furnishare.net. Incidentally, I might be willing to sell the domain name to an interested party. Contact me if you are interested.

MeterFeeders

Parking downtown in major metropolitan areas is a major hassle. What's the best bank for your buck? Street parking! Too bad good spots are hard to find, plus you have to drop what you are doing and feed the meter every 2 hours. All it would take is one guy and a mobile device to make a killing offering premium parking services.

Park your car, put in two quarters, then call, text or email your MeterFeeder. They take care of the rest and send you a bill (or perhaps you must buy credits beforehand through the website). You get a better parking spot, at or below the cost of garaging your car. If the service became widely used, one person could monitor somewhere in the range of 60 cars concurrently. By an extremely rough estimate, you could charge a premium of at least $1 per car per hour. An attendant with a full load could bring in $60+ and hour, a job which you could easily find people willing to do for $10/hr.

The big challenge for this idea is that technically, when it says "two hour parking", you aren't allowed to put more money in the meter. They expect you to move your car!

If you like any of these ideas and would like to talk about them, please don't hesitate to contact me. I love scheming about "crazy" business ideas.