Black Pepper, Inc.

About Us

Founded in 2007, Black Pepper, Inc. is a Boston-based information architecture studio offering complete user experience and interaction design services to clients in New England and across the U.S. We provide corporate and marketing site redesign services to local business like Endeca Technologies, Inc. and PerkinElmer; complex Web application design solutions for industry-leading companies including Health Dialog and Cengage Gale; and everything in between. We offer complementary information architecture services to short-handed, award-winning design teams including Corey McPherson Nash, Acsys Interactive, and Hill Holiday. And we supplement passionate studios and agencies like Argus who are without in-house information architecture resources.

In addition, Black Pepper offers end-to-end solutions to our clients through strategic partnerships. Our graphic design partner, Brookline Street Design, creates beautiful, brand-targeted visual designs and our technology partner, pod Consulting, turns those designs into useable and functional Web sites and applications. In exchange, our full suite of discovery, strategy, and usability services complement our partners offerings.

Sarah E. Morton, Principal/Founder

Sarah E. Morton has over ten years of user-centered design experience and a background in information architecture and interactive strategy. While representing users’ needs on multidisciplinary project teams while keeping strategic, business, and technical objectives in focus, Sarah has gathered business and user requirements, defined site strategies, and designed useful and usable Web sites and applications for clients in healthcare, higher education, publishing, financial services, and other industries.

Prior to founding Black Pepper, Sarah worked at interactive agencies around Boston and beyond including SpireMedia, BigBad, Arnold Worldwide, and Sapient. Sarah led information architecture teams and developed award-winning user experience strategies for College of the Holy Cross, Rhodes College, Morehouse College, and Connecticut College. Sarah has worked with diverse project teams to complete usability tests, competitive analysis, and site redesigns for Cengage Gale (formerly Thomson Gale), Massachusetts Medical Society, Budget Truck Rental, and MapQuest.

Beginning her career at Sapient, Sarah completed end-to-end redesign projects for CapitalOne, Staples, Fila, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Sarah was also heavily involved in the process definition project at Sapient where she authored two chapters of Sapient’s discovery and design documentation. And Sarah has guest lectured on information architecture and Web site production at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Sarah has a BA/MA in psychology from Boston University and is currently enrolled in the ALM in English Literature program at the Harvard University Extension School.