After years of visual design experience and random bits of UX experience, I decided to dive into a UX certification program at General Assembly. During the program, I did everything from A to Z. This included user interviews, a competitive analysis, personas, happy path user flows, low res wireframes and rapid prototyping, usability testing, card sorting, feature refinement, more usability testing and prototyping, higher res wireframes, and eventually a full sitemap and several complete visual designs.
I’ve redesigned retail product pages based on heavy research into best practices, available site data, usability surveys and interviews, and a thorough competitive analysis. Additionally, I’ve prototyped the designs across device types and collaborated across teams with multiple stakeholders to come up with the best possible design. Prior to my experience in the retail industry, I’ve worked on analytics dashboards within the technology industry and financial industry.
I am a UX and UI designer inside and out. I take pride in the details and joy in the collaborative agile process.
Created for Capco during a reorganization project at a financial services client location.
MicroStrategy has complex software that is traditionally used as desktop applications. This was a web version I created based on wireframes. Menu icons were my own design.
Complex ideas often need to be simplified and distilled into easy-to-read graphics. I was tasked with this often while working in the business intelligence industry and financial industry. Whether a company was attempting to reorganize itself away from a messy hierarchy or explain how their tools worked, infographics have played a big role. I enjoy this type of work and have provided a few samples for preview.
Usher was a mobile app that MicroStrategy tasked us to create. Our design team came together and brainstormed logos. I'd come up with a version of the penguin, another designer refined it, and then I used mesh gradients in Illustrator to give it a 3D quality. Prior to this project, I'd never used mesh gradients. It was fun to learn on the fly.
Trela is a mobile application that serves as a white label for clients to use with custom reskin and feature adjustment options. I designed this app from its infant stage to maturity while MicroStrategy was pitching it to large names like FC Barcelona and Rihanna. I helped land the first deal with Guess by designing mocks on the fly during a week of meetings. Tilly's followed suite along with AC Moore.
This project was a learn-as-you-go scenario for me. Initially, it was called Alert and eventually became Trela. It went through many phases, but I learned how to design mobile apps with this project and was solely responsible for every aspect in its early stages before we brought on UX specialists and more designers. I remained the lead designer on this through most of its existance.
Trela was a white label application that I designed. Over time it went through a handful of phase updates to match trends.
Tilly's was a client MicroStrategy acquired and I proposed a few custom skinning options of Trela for their use.
Iconography is a unique area that I've had the pleasure to explore. At times I would make them more artistic with a layered quality. At other times they would be so small, that getting high res pixel dense icons without fuzzy ghosting became a challenge. Whatever the icon task, one thing remained vital, all icons had to be design consistently into icon families. Iconography is definitely a fun task when the opportunity arises to work on them.
I've worked in-house as a print marketing designer in industries like business intelligence software and commercial real estate. While the projects varied in purpose and format, they nearly all involved quite a bit of content management, print vendor relations, intradepartmental coordination, specification creation, and flexibility. Coming up with theme graphics for world conferences touched on the more creative side of this arena.
Sometimes it is just good to get away from the computer and play with pencils, paint, charcoal, crayons, or whatever is around. Here are a few examples of works I've done with little or no computer aid.
I've created a countless number of logos for over 10 years. This batch contains some of the ones I enjoyed working on the most. They cover food services, technology, sports gear and charity.
Designing themes around home products is especially fun when access to future trends through WGSN is available. While working at Chesapeake Bay Candle, I conducted research, put together presentation boards, came up with inline product shelf layouts, and designed packaging. This was one of the more creative positions where flow of visual ideas was only part of the creative process. I worked with very talented olfactory specialists who dabbled in fragrance matching, other designers, and skilled creative writers.
