Hannah Story

Work

Web Designer & Developer
IT Development Program, IS&T, Apple Inc.
Cupertino, California, USA

Education

Bachelor of Arts, Computer Science
Minors in Cognitive Science & Information Science
Cornell University, Class of 2010
Ithaca, New York, USA

About

TL;DR: I have been a web designer/developer for thirteen years, a Mac for twenty-four, a pianist for twenty-two, and a ukulelist for eight.

…

One cloudy Friday in 1988, Hannah Story was born.

I was born and raised on a Mac. One day when I was eleven years old, I told my dad I wanted to make my own website. He set me up with a copy Claris Home Page, and I was off and running. For the next few years, I maintained a personal website that I redesigned from the ground up every two months. I learned the basics of markup, layout, and images on the web, and even started making my own graphics with AppleWorks and, later, Adobe ImageReady.

During my high school years, I created and maintained simple websites for my school clubs and did some local freelance work as well. It was becoming clear that web design was something I felt passionate about, so when college application time rolled around, I decided to choose Computer Science as a major.

The Bachelor of Arts program at Cornell University allowed me the freedom to pursue a technical degree, but still dedicate a significant portion of my studies to the liberal arts – specifically, Cognitive Science and Information Science. I used my liberal arts electives to complement my CS degree with classes that would place the technical skills I was learning into important social and psychological contexts. I learned about human-computer interaction topics, the inner workings of the visual pathway in the brain, the growth of societies in and around the age of the Internet, and much more.

During my junior year of college, I was fortunate to find myself with an interview request from the company that had shaped so much of my youth as a child of the digital age. I accepted an internship position with Apple in the summer of 2009. Afterwards I was delighted to accept an offer for full-time employment in the IT Development Program, a two-year rotation through Apple's IS&T department that has sent me to four distinct teams since June 2010. I've had the opportunity and privilege to work in-depth with some of the most skilled and passionate tech people I've ever met, and to try on many different roles along the way.

My time with the IT Development Program has allowed me to experiment and discover my professional niche. I am now focusing my work on design and front-end development for the web: in other words, everything about the technical, visual, and interactive design of the final experience of the user on the other side of the screen. I fret over variable names as well as pixels. I enjoy working with people who care deeply about what they do, and who have the tenacity and passion to make their work "insanely great."

During my time away from work, I enjoy playing piano and ukulele, taking scenic drives and bike rides around the Bay Area, indulging my love for pixel art through cross-stitch and related enterprises, and spending quality offline time with my friends and family.

Friends

Site design and content by Hannah Story 2010-2012

Social media icons by Visual Swirl