About me

I'm a fully-skilled UX and Visual UI Designer, experienced at creating responsive websites, mobile apps, eCommerce templates, email campaigns, CMS systems, and Admin Platforms.

If it sounds like a lot, it is. I've been doing this a while. ;)

A collaborative, transparent, approach to work

I love collaboration and creative co-creation, not only within the creative team, but also with stakeholders, technology partners, content experts, and even end users. I believe in transparency, enjoy mentoring junior folks, and love improving process wherever I can.

Some of the most enjoyable projects of my career, in fact, have involved collaborating directly with end users. I've created designs, wireframes and even visual journey maps with them, as well as with non-designer stakeholders.

It's a very special kind of magic, visualizing other people's thoughts. Now that we have tools like Miro/Mural and Figma/Sketch, it's easier than ever.

I design for the Now -- but plan for the Future

My experience has included work on products over the full product lifecycle. I've watched some products transition from initial problem discovery all the way through to go-to-market launch. I've guided legacy enterprise systems through iterative improvements, to keep their systems competitive.

No matter whether I'm working on a new feature, or a whole new product, I make sure to design not only for the Now, but also keep an eye on the Future. This way, I can ensure that the design can accommodate growth and change. This not only helps me design with a larger Design Pattern Library in mind, it also keeps my UIs clean and usable.

User focus, with a business mindset

My work always has a user focus, with the goal to ultimately improve journeys and outcomes. The more we understand what our primary users are trying to do, and the tasks they use to complete these goals, the better we can measure their (and our) success at achieving these goals.

In product design, though, the end user is only one part of the overlapping Venn diagram. Critical, also, is to understand how the user's needs overlap with business goals and technology feasibility. Building something users don't need is just as much of a problem as building something the business isn't able to sell.  

Understanding the business is a part of a Product Designer's job too, so I always think not only vertical within the product team but also lateral into the business organization. This ensures that my product's goals map to the larger strategy, the full customer experience, and all the cross-departmental service map touchpoints.

Agency-quality design skills

Before I moved into UX, I spent many years as a visual designer and art director, working either full-time for global interactive agencies, or providing them support as a freelancer.

Deeply understanding visual design means that I'm comfortable with creating or using Design Systems, and have even created entirely new branches off of core libraries, based upon user testing.

It also means that I really enjoy mentoring junior folks. I've even created design critique frameworks for past teams, to ensure discussions about design are productive, psychologically safe, and enjoyable. Critique should never be painful! (If it is, then it isn't really critique!)

Design, wireframe, and prototyping tools

I've used many design tools over my career, most recently Figma and Sketch. Past software has included Photoshop, Adobe XD, Adobe Muse, Fireworks, Illustrator, and InDesign. I've even used Miro to co-design wireframes with End Users.  

Prototyping has more options than ever these days. When it comes down to it, the tool you use depends on what your research study requires. Don't build a car if a sketch of one will do.

For low-fidelity, there's always pencil sketching of flows, which is feasible remotely using your computer's video camera. I tend to work digitally, so I've often used iPad with Procreate to sketch quick wireframes and illustate flows.

For hi-fidelity, most Dev teams and UX teams these days are happy with what Figma and Sketch can provide. I've also used Invision to provide Dev Teams with their specs, along with Zeplin. It really depends upon what the company's software license includes these days. We Product Designers need to be adaptable.

For ultra-hi-fidelity prototyping, some UX folks reach for Balsamiq or Axure, but I tend to reach for Webflow, which is more powerful. With Webflow, you can create HTML/CSS, add in Mouseflow code, and get amazing heatmap and mouse-recording insights from user testing.

Broad UX skillset, including facilitation & strategy

No matter whether you're a Lead, Senior, or Principal UX Product Designer, you need to know how to facilitate workshops, create strategic roadmaps, and create processes to improve UX Ops. I'm comfortable doing all three, and have done, on a weekly basis, for past projects.
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Visualizing user journeys, and other types of maps, is another skill UX folks have added to the box. I find it wildly helpful to create visual documents like these, even if they're just Hypothesis Maps (or Assumption Maps). That way everyone can see the same thing, and we have something to research -- and measure -- against.  

Along with the skills above, I can also do the standard UX activities, as well, including performing heuristic reviews, doing competitive analysis, creating surveys, sitemaps and wireframes, and creating reports summarizing secondary research.

UX + Agile (Jira, etc.) = Success

It's astonishing (and sad) how many Delivery Managers and Scrum Masters are shocked by a UX person who wants to integrate with Agile processes. I've seen it a number of times, in many companies. When I tell them that I add all my UX work to the backlog they become dizzy. When I tell them I write my own tickets as User Stories, they swoon. And when I say I want to add UX into Working Agreements... Well. Usually I need to grab a chair.

UX folks are part of the Product team. Our work must be tracked. I can't begin to list all the reasons why it's ridiculously important to track both UX design AND research alongside the product team. I could go on and on and on about this topic. If you're curious, just ask. I'll share my thoughts.

Working with Development (around the world)

I recently saw a job posting for the curious title of "Design Technologist". When I looked it up, I discovered it included development handoff, collaboration, technical requirements translation, and Design QA. I was confused, because wasn't that just a part of my job? 

After re-reading the posting, I discovered it was a role in an agency. That explained everything.  In an agency, people need to be neat, billable verticals. But in my world, that's not how it works.

In my world, I'm the one documenting functionality of my designs in my UX tickets, consulting with the Tech Lead on the related Dev ticket creation, ensuring Design QA is planned, and completing the Design QA prior to launch myself. I've worked with Development Teams around the world to complete these tasks (Belarus, India, Vietnam, Germany), and it always improves product quality.

I speak Developer

I'm a Geek. What can I say?  The benefit to my employers means that this Product Designer can speak programmer, and can understand ridiculously technical conversations about front-end coding, database queries, code repositories, tagging and ingestion, APIs, search engine algorithms, version control, CMSs, LMSs, and frameworks.

I've always wanted to know how things are built. Past classes in frontend and backend coding have been wildly insightful to my responsive web product design approach. So of course, when I started hearing about AR, VR, and XR, I took a class in UnrealEngine for game development, just to see how the 3D production pipeline works. I didn't even have a 3D project going on at the time. I'm not even a gamer. I just did it for fun. You know.  As one does. ;)

Multi-national projects are a pleasure

Before I worked in UX, and before I worked in Visual Design, my focus was International Business, with an emphasis on German business.  I studied languages in college and grad school, and can still speak German, something that's come in useful when listening to Germany-based user research.

I've worked on a number of multi-national products, in multiple languages. I've been through not just the translation process, but the localization process as well -- an often-forgotten part of product design!

Also, knowing German, and being able to read in Spanish (and a little French, Portuguese and Dutch) has been incredibly helpful when designing multi-language interfaces. It's also helped me stress-test my design patterns for the requirements of foreign languages.

Mentoring and helping is part of who I am

I love helping folks. No, really. I'm that person who offers to be a design mentor, who tries to improve and streamline design and UX ops processes, and who gives training sessions on specialty subjects whenever possible. Sharing what I know -- and through it, learning from others -- is one of the most rewarding parts of this career.

I enjoy volunteering as well. I've donated my design and consulting services often in the past, for many organizations. I also enjoy running workshops, especially to marginalized groups. I recently gave a presentation on UX careers during a event designed to encourage gender representation in technology. And prior to that, I designed and built a non-profit Webflow film website, which not only hosted the short film created to help prevent male suicide, but also provided crisis and interfaction topic information.

Current status: Forever Learning

I love learning. This is fortunate, because a career in technology, especially if you want to be an Individual Contributor, means learning and learning and learning and- Well. You get it. Recent things that I've been learning about have included:  Accessibility (IAAP WAS Certified via Deque University), UnrealEngine for AR/VR creation (Vancouver Film School) and of course UX Workshops (NielsenNorman Group).

You can probably tell I love writing as well. To try and refine my skills further, I'm taking courses on both non-fiction and fiction writing, to improve structure, theme, and storytelling approach. Quite often during product design, I'm the one offering UX Writing suggestions, to make our content more human-sounding, and brand-appropriate.

To learn more...

Feel free to reach out to me, to have a conversation. I love meeting new folks.
For more information about my work, a sampling of my creative work is under portfolio, and a listing of projects with emphasis on process is under case studies.