Ed Mullen is a designer based in Jersey City, NJ; right across the Hudson River from lower Manhattan. He is the husband of the architectural photographer Bilyana Dimitrova and the father of the adorable Eva. Through his design practice, he helps clients on a variety of Internet-related projects. He's the founder of early-stage startup, MixTrail and sits on the Board of the Jersey City Reservoir Preservation Alliance.

Services

In the most simplistic sense, Ed designs websites and other digital experiences.

But more specifically, he helps businesses, organizations, and institutions look at the challenges set before them and understand how best to proceed. His strengths lie in shifting between big picture thinking and up-close detailed implementation.

Ed delivers strategic, big-picture thinking and problem solving, information architecture (IA), user experience design (UX), and visual design (UI). He regularly builds ad hoc teams to deliver the full suite of design and development services to his clients, including front-end and back-end development. Ed also plays well with others, working with internal client teams or their partners.

Projects where the client recognizes an initial need, but doesn't quite know where to start or where to go next. He works with the internal team to make sense of complex needs and develop appropriate solutions.

Each project begins with conversation: exploring needs, looking deeply, asking smart questions, listening closely, and developing an understanding of the client's values. This process of discovery exposes unseen opportunities and leads to solutions that meet complex and sometimes contradictory criteria.

Once a conceptual approach has been established, a detailed plan is developed to account for all the requirements and scenarios of the challenge at hand. Having considered the project from all angles, designs and interfaces can be developed that are beautiful and beneficial, useful and usable.

Dig deeper into the thoughts and ideas that guide Ed's practice at Making Good.

• Ed was asked by the White House and the Department of Health & Human Services to lead the design of HealthCare.gov. Over the summer of 2010, he worked with HHS to conceptualize and design the massive website. Learn more about the project and how Ed came to be involved in the project.
• Ed and Robb Smylie founded MixTrail, a system that allows people to connect great content into easily sharable collections around a topic.
• Ed served as a "dialogue catalyst" for the National Dialogue on Improving Federal Websites along with Steve Krug, Jakob Nielsen, Craig Newmark, and a handful of others. It was an effort through the General Services Administration (GSA) to illicit the recommendations of the public and professionals to inform a new National Web Strategy.
• In 2006 Ed established his own design practice, Edward Mullen Studio, in order to create a structure that allowed him the the freedom to work with clients of all types working in areas closer to Ed's interests. Previously he...
• Co-founded Squeaky Wheel Media in 2001, where he served as Partner and Creative Director until 2006.
• Ed has won numerous awards include the Webby Awards, One Club and more.
• Ed has worked with the White House, Urban Outfitters Inc., MasterCard International, PepsiCo, Tishman, Bedford/St. Martin's Press, NoFear, The Financial Times, Chelsea Property Group, Blue Buffalo, and many others.

Ed Mullen wrote this biography about himself and chose to use the third person. He did so because he is from Livonia, Michigan and like any proper Midwesterner, feels uncomfortable talking about himself in any way that might be considered "promotional". Had he been born in New York City, he would have gladly used the first person and many more adjectives.