Miskeetos are a busy bunch.

Miskeeto consultants have designed and developed everything from corporate learning managements systems to micro-sites for major airlines, and from tiny web applications for startups to major product offerings from market-leading software companies. But there’s more to us than that. Here are some facts that reveal our experiences, skill sets, talents, character, and personalities.

• Robert has written three books on web application design. The first, Designing the Obvious, is about guiding principles of web application design, and has been an Amazon bestseller. The second,Designing the Moment, is a collection of stories that reveal low-level principles that can be used to solve specific design problems in a variety of contexts. The third, Web Anatomy, was coauthored by revered design researcher Jared Spool, introduces the concept of “interaction design frameworks.”
• Kris has written cover stories for both .net and AjaxWorld magazines.
• Kris went to college for graphic design. He turned out to be one of the best developers we know. (And, yes, a great visual designer!)
• When marketing legend Seth Godin decided to make improvements to the interaction design and visual design of Squidoo.com, he came to Miskeeto. We were very honored, and working with Seth and his team made for one of the best projects we’ve ever had. (Not all of our designs have been implemented yet, but they are in the works.)
• Robert once did a design training session for Automattic, the folks who make WordPress, in the living room of a beach house.
• During the session, Robert designed a new version of the WordPress.com homepage. One week after the new version launched, the site’s conversion rate had gone up 25%. It has never gone back down.
• Stephanie once told renowned CSS master Eric Meyer something even he didn’t know could be done with CSS. They later worked as co-instructors for a training workshop, and Eric invited her to speak at An Event Apart.
• Kris and Robert met while working at a small eLearning company in Phoenix, AZ, where they worked together on the design and development of eLearning courses, micro-sites, and an array of web applications for a slew of major companies, including United Airlines, America West Airlines, IKEA, and others.
• Stephanie coauthored the book Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS3 (New Riders) with soon-to-be-husband Greg Rewis, lead of the software evangelist team for Adobe.
• In Robert’s Flash development days, he once worked on a learning management system that facilitated live courses using Jabber (a chat server) and Flash. It featured real-time polling, a chat tool, and built-on-the-fly pop quizzes.
• In her extremely limited free time, Stephanie frequently plays beach volleyball. We can’t bring ourselves to tell her that Phoenix has no beaches.
• Prior to discovering her passion for web standards design, Stephanie was a nurse.
• Robert’s first book was not Designing the Obvious. It was Flash Out of the Box (O’Reilly). The book was about Flash basics and it focused on using the medium to create good user experiences.
• Before writing his first book, Robert wrote two chapters for Flash MX 2004 Magic (New Riders), and was the book’s tech editor.
• Kris frequently writes articles on design for Peachpit, and on development for Informit.
• Robert is a lifelong drummer and currently plays in a rock band in Phoenix. He’s also part of a taiko group (traditional Japanese festival drums).
• Stephanie wrote the CSS for the starter templates offered in Adobe Dreamweaver CS3. They are heavily commented so that users can understand how they work. Yes, it was a big job.
• Robert once did a 2-day design training session for Mutual of Omaha. While there, he redesigned one of the most complicated web forms he’s ever seen. The client was very happy.
• Robert was the first interaction designer ever hired by GoDaddy.com. He started and managed the User Experience team, and spent a year getting it wedged into GoDaddy’s engineering-centric development process. The team continues to work on the company’s product offerings, control panels, and other services.
• For the record, Robert did not work on the GoDaddy.com web site. He thinks it’s awful, too.
• While at GoDaddy, Robert once designed three new applications at the same time, over a period of four weeks. Each application far exceeded the company’s adoption rate expectations, and required no customer support. Hosting Metropolis, for example, facilitated the user-driven installation of 20,000 applications onto GoDaddy hosting account servers in the first month, and generated zero customer support calls.
• Stephanie was credited by Pink magazine as having “transformed the web”. Now we’re wondering how to get other publications to say something that great about the rest of us.
• Stephanie and Robert met in person for the first time during the Macromedia MAX conference in New Orleans, LA, in 2004, before either of them had ever written a book or spoken at a conference. In 2008, they returned to New Orleans, this time to speak at An Event Apart, one of the most respected conferences in the web industry. They had drivers waiting for them at the airport, stayed in a 4-star hotel, and were paid well for their 1-hour sessions. To celebrate their shared milestone, they visited Bourbon Street. More than once.
• Robert has spoken at An Event Apart, Adobe MAX, Flashforward, Future of Web Design, WordCamp, South By Southwest (Interactive), Voices That Matter, Web Directions UX, Web Directions Government, and many other events. He consistently earns high ratings, and has spoken at several of these events multiple times. A list of Miskeeto’s upcoming speaking engagements can be found here.
• In addition to countless blog posts and reviews, Robert’s book Designing the Obvious has earned positive mentions from Seth Godin, BoxesAndArrows, and Jared Spool.
• Seth Godin once wrote a single-sentence blog post recommending Designing the Obvious. That one sentence landed the book on the Amazon bestseller list.
• Stephanie has spoken at An Event Apart, Adobe MAX, Web Directions North, HOW, and many other events.
• In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Kris and his wife Lisa flew to New Orleans to adopt two puppies whose parents were displaced by the storm. Their names are Max and Belle, and both are now happy and healthy.
• As part of a research project, Robert once watched and analyzed over 200 hours of usability tests in less than two months.
• Kris wrote the book Ajax for Web Application Developers (SAMS). Then he wrote The ActionScript 3.0 Migration Guide (New Riders). Yes, he’s that good.
• When he’s not working, Robert’s favorite reading material includes books on cognitive, behavioral, and social psychology, activity theory, persuasion, and, of course, web design. He’s a bit of a nerd.
• The first book Robert ever read on web usability was Don’t Make Me Think (Steve Krug, New Riders). Several years later, Designing the Obvious appeared on the same Amazon bestseller page as Don’t Make Me Think. A few months later, Steve Krug himself attended one of Robert’s sessions at the Voices That Matter web design conference.
• Robert worked at an SAP consulting firm in his younger days, where he designed everything from the web site to magazine ads, from multimedia marketing pieces to trade show booths.
• Robert is on the Advisory Board for ThinkVitamin.com, one of the most popular resources for web designers on the web.
• All three Miskeetos have written books with the same editor—the amazing Wendy Sharp.
• Robert has written over 55 articles on web design for various industry resources, including Adobe.com, Peachpit.com, InformIT, ThinkVitamin, and others.
• Stephanie was one of the original partners at Community MX and has contributed dozens of articles and blog posts to the site.
• Stephanie (@stefull) and Robert (@rhjr) are both avid Twitter users.
• Robert frequently writes about web and interaction design topics on his blog.
• In 2003, Robert founded the Flash users group in Phoenix, AZ. When Adobe announced the release of Studio MX 2004 through coordinated user group meetings, Robert’s group earned the largest attendance in the United States. He managed the group for two years, and it still exists today.
• Robert once hand-coded an entire eCommerce site, consisting of about 500 pages. He also designed the site, handled all customer support, search engine optimization, marketing, and everything else that needed to be done. Ah, the joy of startups.
• All three Miskeetos have dogs named Max.
• Though they operate as a remote team with no central office, all three Miskeetos live in Phoenix, AZ. We know it’s a dry heat. We don’t care. It’s damn hot.