Comprehensive Resumé

Jacob's design expertise, work experience, education, and more!

Industry Knowledge and Design Expertise

User Experience and Web Design

  • Universal design, accessibility, and WCAG standards
  • User experience research (UXR)
  • Defining user needs, problem framing, and hypothesizing
  • Design ideation methodologies
  • Sketching, wireframing, and prototyping designs
  • Defining and conducting user tests
  • Synthesis and interpretation of user testing data
  • User interface (UI) design
  • UI architecture and front-end frameworks
  • Design systems (for the web, Apple’s HIG, and Material Design platforms)
  • Documentation for designers and developers
  • GDPR and ADA Compliance
  • Front-end web development and responsive web design

Visual Design

  • Typography
  • Iconography, and icon design
  • Color theory and psychology
  • Photography and photo editing
  • Print and editorial design

Brand Design and Marketing

  • Brand identity and logo design
  • Merchandise and packaging design

Tools & Hard Skills

Jacob's latest go-to applications and technologies.
CSS
ChatGPT
Figjam
Figma
HTML
Illustrator
InDesign
Miro
Photoshop
SASS
Webflow
WordPress

Experience & Education

Work history, education, awards, and other relevant experience.

User Conference Presenter

Inkling Illuminate User Conference
Oct 2022
Experience Classification
Presenter/Speaker
Las Vegas, NV
  • Delivered a 30-minute presentation titled "Habitat Pattern Customization" at the Illuminate user conference in Las Vegas, NV, hosted by Inkling. Shared insights into lesser-known features of the Inkling product and demonstrated effective ways to utilize them for expediting content design and development processes.

UX Designer

Inkling
Aug 2022 – Present
Experience Classification
Full-time
Remote
  • Advocated for users by empathizing with their needs, pain points, and goals, emphasizing core UX principles for product accessibility and user-centric design. Participated in all aspects of the design process, including user research, problem definition, ideation, prototyping, and testing. Engaged with scrum teams, contributing to backlog grooming, sprint planning, feature demos, and product testing. Regularly collaborated with product managers and engineers to align design efforts with overall user and business goals.
  • Enhanced the UX of printing and exporting content from Inkling, creating hypotheses to validate through user testing. Synthesized research from seven years of feedback to inform design decisions and presented findings at company-wide meetings. Prototyped an updated user interface, documented, and handed it off to engineering for development.
  • Conducted a UX audit for Inkling's Distributed User Admin App (DUAA) product, identifying pain points and redesigning user flows and interfaces for a streamlined experience. 
  • Led a 5-day Design Sprint to address user pain points with the Inkforms product, resulting in the creation of "Workflows."
  • Took ownership of Inkling's product design system for the UX team. Led the revitalization of the design system by addressing poorly crafted assets, underrepresented platforms, and confusing documentation. The newly expanded design system was named the "Inkling Design Ecosystem" as it brought together multiple stand-alone systems for web apps, iOS, iPadOS, and Android devices.
  • Contributed to the Featured Content feature, designing an improved text editing toolbar and error messaging states.
  • Facilitated company rituals including design critiques and UX group discussions. Researched and discussed our shared UX methodologies across the team to enhance design work and practices.

Product Design Course

Dribbble
June 2022
Experience Classification
Certification
Remote
  • Completed a rigorous 12-week Product Design Course from Dribbble. Course material was developed and taught by Jesse Showalter. This comprehensive program delved into industry-standard user experience design practices and covered the entire design process. Topics spanned UX fundamentals, user and market research, user flows, wireframes, visual design, scaling design components and design systems, prototyping, and testing. Weekly group mentoring with seasoned UX professional Ben Balderas who provided industry insights and personalized guidance.
  • Concluded the course with three UX design projects including AeroPet, Vesta, and KanMail.
  • Certificate ID # 1192.

Winning Team “360º Image Widget”

Inkling
March 2022
Experience Classification
Award
Remote
  • Received recognition as part of the winning team for the 360º Image Widget project at Inkling's company hackathon event. This innovative project won four of five categories which include: “Ease of Development” by the VP of Engineering for its potential quick and low-effort development; “Most Demo-able” by the Director of Sales Enablement for its potential for impactful sales demonstrations; “Best Sales Impact” by an Account Executive for its positive impact on sales strategy; “Best Market/PR Buzz” by Product Marketing for its potential to generate noteworthy PR attention.

Web Accessibility

Udacity
Dec 2021
Experience Classification
Certification
Remote
  • A self-paced course focused on creating web content that is inclusive and adheres to modern accessibility standards. The course focused on mastering the intricacies of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Key topics covered aspects such as focus and tab order, semantics, Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA), and accessible style.

Senior Front End Designer

Inkling
Jun 2021 – Aug 2022
Experience Classification
Full-time
Remote
  • Took on a leadership role by onboarding, training, and mentoring new Front End Designers. Collaborated with fellow designers on best practices for writing SASS, CSS, and HTML code, creating optimal content authoring experiences, and leveraging the design process for maximum advantage.
  • Re-established and improved practices for the Front End Designer role, documenting and iterating on the creative process within the context of customer implementations. Developed boilerplate materials to expedite work and identified opportunities for enhanced collaboration between content strategists, implementation managers, and customers.
  • Collaborated with a content strategist and implementation manager to establish a new internal process for releasing the boilerplate code-base Master Template. Utilizing agile development practices, triaged issues, planned sprints, and tested improvements, resulting in regular releases with enhanced features that reduced implementation timelines, bugs, and content authoring issues.
  • Successfully executed implementations for 5 new enterprise-level clients, involving a comprehensive process of customer interviews, content and design review, creating design mockups, and the development of bespoke WYSIWYG content authoring templates using HTML, CSS, SASS, and other proprietary code.

Learn UI/UX Design

Dribbble
Mar 2021
Experience Classification
Workshop
Remote
  • Participated in a comprehensive full-day UI/UX Design workshop hosted by Dribbble in March 2021. The workshop, led by Jesse Showalter, covered a range of topics for effective design practices. The curriculum included Figma fundamentals, typographic scales, grids, and layouts, as well as discussions on interactions, animations, prototyping, screen flows, and components.
  • Beyond the creative process, the workshop delved into the practical aspects of design, encompassing client handoff workflows, design documentation, client presentation methods, and the concept of Minimum Viable Products (MVP). The immersive experience provided valuable insights and practical skills for successful UI/UX design in real-world scenarios.

Sketch from A to Z

Udemy
Nov 2019
Experience Classification
Certification
Remote
  • A self-paced course focused on mobile design and prototyping using the Sketch application. The curriculum covered a spectrum of essential topics, including mastering strong mobile app design, advanced techniques, and shortcuts for efficient design, UI design best practices, and designing for various device viewports.
  • The course provided insights into leveraging tools for achieving pixel-perfect design work, exploring shared styles, symbols, and libraries. It also delved into the practical aspects of exporting and handing off assets to developers, emphasizing the critical link between good UI and good UX.
  • Certificate ID # UC-7WMGW3SE.

Employee Recognition “Stretch” Award

Inkling
Sep 2019
Experience Classification
Award
San Francisco, CA
  • Employee recognition for going the extra mile presented at Inkling’s 10-Year Anniversary.

UX Bootcamp

General Assembly
Aug 2019
Experience Classification
Workshop
San Francisco, CA
  • A one-day bootcamp taught by Jonathan Remulla focusing on a diverse array of topics essential for crafting successful design solutions. The curriculum included in-depth exploration of UX methods and strategies, integrating UX into team workflows, and mastering UX and UI terminology, tips, and resources.
  • Practical skills were honed through hands-on practice with wireframes, prototypes, and usability tests. The workshop fostered a collaborative environment, emphasizing the significance of collaboration and ideation in the UX design process.

What Jacob's Colleagues are Saying

If I were the looking for top talent for a digital media company Jacob McAdam would be the first call I would make. I had the pleasure of working with Jacob for almost two years at PBHS.com, collaborating on several projects for our clients. Working with Jacob is a breath of fresh air because it's so rare to find a young adult who is extremely detailed oriented, responsible, consistent, and takes initiative to go the extra mile on every project. Jacob's ability to manage multiple challenging projects with incredible patience and execution is impressive to say the least. As a lead Web Developer on our team, Jacob is the kind of employee you can trust with multiple projects and expect flawless execution. Jacob completes ninety-five percent of his projects on time or ahead of schedule. Jacob is also one of the bright spots on our team because he is pleasant to work with and never complains about anything. One of his strengths is his ability to collaborative in a mature manner on challenging projects. He gets his point across in a pleasant non-argumentative way. Jacob is an outstanding employee and would immediately add value to any company. His web development, graphic design, project management, and time management skills make him standout in any crowded list of potential hires. In addition, Jacob is team player, a joy to work with and, has great integrity.
Milt Hodges
Milt Hodges
Senior colleague to Jacob at PBHS

Are You Hiring?

If your company is looking to hire a Product Designer then Jacob would be interested in hearing from you!