I have a strong belief that success relies on the fact that you cannot be solely focused on the business needs, or just user needs alone. If done correctly, they both work to build a healthy relationship with each other. Over the last 12 years, I have used design to build on this belief.
Experience
2016 — 2020
2016 — 2020
Remote
As the only product designer at Image Relay, I had the privilege to touch every aspect of the business and product. This included executing a design process across the whole ecosystem of features. Additional responsibilities included designing the marketing website and collateral, and planning product roadmaps.
NOTABLE PROJECTS:
Launched a redesign of the core offering. We approached this as a beta, focused on progressive access in order to not disrupt customers day-to-day job responsibilities.
Launched a complete redesign of the marketing website. Focused heavily on the user’s journey, and the tone we wanted to convey.
Ran and facilitated multiple design sprints to help explore new ideas. This included key features offerings, Collections, Public Portals, Sharing and general team alignment.
Helped facilitate a design culture that focused on multi-disciplinary input and user centered research.
Designed dozens of features that actually got into the hands of real customers.
Helped the team explore new product management practices. Initiated the exploration of our first product management tool, eventually ending up with Airtable to handle a backlog of opportunities and foster collaboration.
LEARNINGS:
Working closely with development to launch high-volumes of features in an agile environment.
How to align user goals with business needs.
Exploring the cross section product management and product design disciplines.
2015 — 2016
2015 — 2016
Austin, Texas
As a design lead at multiple initiatives within the Analytics department.
NOTABLE PROJECTS:
I led a team to humanize predictive analytics for the manufacturing processes. This included kick starting a team wide workshop to aligned shared goals. Over the next several months we diverged on dozens of ideas, user tested concepts and pitched our ideas to multiple levels of stakeholders.
Led a team of recent hires through IBM's onboarding bootcamp. The goal of the bootcamp is to teach the concepts of designing thinking and how to utilize them to solve complex problems.
I also implemented improvements to IBM's new-hire onboarding which was replicated across multiple teams.
LEARNINGS:
Navigating complex business units and multiple levels of stakeholders.
Learned new ways to think about roadmaps and how to use them to align large multi-disciplinary teams.
Put design thinking (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, learn) into action and built out additional resources I can utilize in future projects.
2013 — 2015
2013 — 2015
NYC, Remote
During my time at Mint, I had the ability to work on a cross-section of every aspect of design, from branding, packaging, web design and user testing and research.
NOTABLE PROJECTS:
Led the brand, packaging and web experience for the first iteration of the company Boomf (a marshmallow gifting company).
Led the launch of the brand and website for a the true crime content blog, The Line Up, an Open Road Media subsidiary.
Worked with a multi-disciplinary team that included a research and fellow designer to launch a complete redesign of the NHS’s GP Patient Survey. Outcomes focused on providing easy digestible and humanized information, for both patients and practitioners, based on heavy and dry survey responses.
KEY RESULTS:
The age of the internet is like the age in dog years. 7 years = 44 years. Almost all key projects that I worked on are still alive today, and still have elements in which I helped launch. (that is almost impossible to say when it comes to the internet).
Feedback from GP Patient Survey: "The information is so clear, I've printed them out as posters and put them up on the practice notice board for our patients "
• GP Practice Manager during user testing
LEARNINGS:
Start with the user, understand the true problems you are trying to solve and everything else will follow.
How to do real user testing with real users and drive solutions based on insights.
How do build holistic solutions beyond just software solutions.
Education
Montclair State University
Bachelor of Arts
Northumbria University