CV/Resumé

Jacob McAdam is a UX Designer in the San Francisco Bay Area.

About Jacob

I’m a UX designer with a background in graphic design and front-end web development. I have experience working directly with customers and engaging them in the design process. I have worked with individuals, local and small businesses, and global enterprise clients—across a variety of industries including medical, hospitality, retail, and more.

I have a decade of web development experience under my belt. I started with small manually-coded websites and evolved to highly customized WordPress themes. Meanwhile, I have academically pursued graphic design and was able to support marketing teams with small design projects like digital marketing collateral or print design.

In recent years I’ve fused visual design and web development together to produce user-friendly digital content. When I learned UX design was parallel to a lot of the processes I was already using (and then some) I became very interested.

Now, after completing an intense 12-week product design course and mentoring with UX professionals in the industry I am ready to pursue a career in UX Design.

I am looking to be part of a robust team that strategically leans into the strengths of each designer. I’m ready to pick up any facet of the UX design process, but in particular I’m most interested in user testing, visual design, and creating design documentation to enable engineering teams.

If you’re looking to hire a UX or Product Designer then I look forward to hearing from you!

Jacob McAdam
UX Designer

Skills & Knowledge

Here’s a quick summary of Jacob’s industry and software knowledge:

User Experience (UX) Skills

  • User research
  • Market research
  • Sketching, wireframing, and prototyping
  • User Interface (UI) design, and visual design
  • Concept testing, usability testing
  • Design documentation

Design Tools

  • Figma, Adobe XD
  • FigJam, Miro
  • Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, & InDesign

Other Design Skills

  • Branding & Logo Design
  • Color & Typography
  • Print and digital media

Web Development Skills

  • Responsive web design
  • HTML, CSS, and SASS
  • WCAG and accessibility
  • WordPress

Web Development Tools

  • Google Analytics
  • Google Search Console
  • PageSpeed Insights
  • Git

Experience & Education

This is a chronological overview of all work experience, education, and achievements.

Inkling

Full Time

Aug 2022 – present

UX Designer

Participate in the design process including research, ideation, wireframing, user-interface (UI) design, testing, and analysis. User experience designer for various product partnership and integration projects. Ownership of the Inkling design system “Inkstone” for the UX team, stakeholders, and product ecosystem. Contribute to the company culture by advocating for design thinking at various levels and with other roles.

Dribbble

Certification

June 2022

Product Design Course

A 12-week course for learning industry standard user experience design practices. The end-to-end process was covered with topics including UX fundamentals, user research, market research, user flows, wireframes, visual design, scaling design components and design systems, prototyping, and testing. Using Figma I created 3 separate design projects including AeroPet, Vesta, and an email client. Once a week I mentored directly with a UX professional in the industry, Ben Balderas. Course material was developed and taught by Jesse Showalter.

Inkling

Award

March 2022

Winning Team, “360º Image Widget”

An award for the winning team at Inkling’s company hackathon event. Our 360º Image Widget project won 4 of 5 categories including: “Ease of Development” by VP of Engineering, “Most Demo-able” by the Director of Sales Enablement, “Best Sales Impact” by Account Executives, and “Best Market/PR Buzz” by Product Marketing.

Udacity

Certification

Dec 2021

Web Accessibility

A self-paced course for learning Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) covering topics including: focus and tab order; semantics, Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA), and accessible style.

Inkling

Full Time

Jun 2021 – Aug 2022

Senior Front End Designer

Successfully completed implementations for 5 new enterprise-level clients and counting. Implementations occurred over a series of weeks to months and had progressive phases including: interviewing the customer to identify existing pain-points, content and design discovery; creating and presenting design mockups; developing a unique WYSIWYG content authoring template; handing off materials and design specifications to the content strategist for designing high-quality content at scale; testing for responsive design, and re-releasing improved versions of templates as issues were encountered.

Work with a content strategist and implementation manager to establish a new internal process for releasing our boilerplate code-base Master Template. Using agile development practices we triage issues and feature requests, plan sprints, and test our improvements to the code-base. On a regular cadence we release a new version of Master Template with enhancements which reduce implementation timelines, bugs, and content authoring issues.

Re-establish and improve practices for the Front End Designer role. This includes: documenting and iterating on the creative process within the context of customer implementations; developing boilerplate materials to speed up work; identify opportunities for better collaboration between content strategists, implementation managers, and our customers.

Onboard, train, and mentor new Front End Designers. Corroborate with fellow designers on best practices for writing SASS, CSS, and HTML code; creating desirable content authoring experiences; and leveraging the design process to our advantage.

Dribbble

Workshop

Mar 2021

Learn UI/UX Design

A full-day workshop covering topics including: Figma fundamentals, typographic scales, grids and layouts; interactions, animations, prototyping, screen flows, components; client handoff workflows, design documentation, client presentation methods, and Minimum Viable Products (MVP). Taught by Jesse Showalter.

Udemy

Certification

Nov 2019

Sketch from A to Z

A self-paced course for learning mobile design and prototyping application Sketch. This covered topics including: strong mobile app design; advanced techniques and shortcuts to design faster; UI design best practices; designing for different device viewports; leveraging tools to ensure pixel perfect design work; shared styles, symbols, and libraries; exporting and handing off assets to developers; how good UI influences good UX. Taught by Joseph Angelo Todaro.

Inkling

Award

Sep 2019

Employee Recognition, “Stretch Award”

An employee recognition award for going the extra mile. Inkling 10-Year Anniversary.

General Assembly

Workshop

Aug 2019

UX Bootcamp

A full-day workshop covering topics including: UX methods and strategies for successful design solutions; UX in team workflows; UX and UI terminology, tips, and resources; wireframes, prototypes, and usability test reports; collaboration and ideation. Taught by Jonathan Remulla.

Inkling

Full Time

Nov 2018 – Jun 2021

Front End Designer

Successfully completed implementations for 10 new enterprise-level clients. Implementations occurred over a series of weeks to months and had progressive phases including: interviewing the customer to identify existing pain-points, content and design discovery; creating and presenting design mockups; developing a unique WYSIWYG content authoring template; handing off materials and design specifications to the content strategist for designing high-quality content at scale; testing for responsive design, and re-releasing improved versions of templates as issues were encountered.

Supported existing customers by reviewing their content and providing design expertise. Supported customer success managers and support team by resolving issues with code and user-generated content. Supported the sales team by building proof of concepts and other assets for sales demos.

Led a team of two to complete a cross-functional OKR. Our objective was to develop a process for collecting client feedback and elevating it to the product team. The initiative included multiple stakeholder interviews, deliberating with teammates on research, iterating on documentation, and a final book detailing best practices.

Collaborated with the People & Operations Team to boost morale and enhance company culture through a series of design projects. This included campaign branding and swag for the company 2019 summer hack-a-thon event, and memento stickers to promote our social clubs.

OptiRev, LLC

Full Time

Jun 2018 – Nov 2018

Lead Designer/Director of Website Development

Designed and developed a new vanity website for Benbow Historic Inn. The website was built with a custom WordPress theme. 30 days after the website launched: pageviews increased 156%, the bounce rate improved 23%, visitor duration increased by 50%, and organic search traffic improved 143%.

Developed a brand identity for author Marcy Carriker Smothers. The design system included a brand mark, color palette, and typography. Marcy’s old blog was migrated to a stand-alone WordPress website that incorporated the new brand identity.

Designed a unique graphic for Santa Rosa School District. Through a process of sketching, digitizing, and iteration a unique design was created. The staff was able to use this design for t-shirts and posters across campus to boost morale.

Designed a new website for The Vine Inn Davis—a hotel undergoing renovations. Wireframes, page flows, and high-fidelity mockups were created in Adobe Xd and later handed off to a teammate for development.

Sustained positive relationships with clients through monthly and quarterly business reviews. Website reports were created to identify strong and weak points from key data.

Managed website implementation projects. Assisted with estimates for SOWs, created project plans, and led check-in meetings. Occasionally jumped in to fill understaffed roles including front-end designer, content editor, web developer, and tester.

San Francisco State University

Degree

May 2018

Bachelor of Science: Visual Communication Design

A four-year degree majoring in visual design. Topics include: design process, visual literacy, graphic design, history of design, rapid visualization, typography, and research and writing for design. Graduated with Honors. Senior Honor Roll: College of Liberal & Creative Arts (Fall 2017). GPA: 3.81

Member of INC^3 (tech and startup culture student organization). Member of AIGA student chapter (graphic design student organization). Co-founder and Treasurer of Occult Club at SFSU (interfaith student organization). Participated in the SF Hacks program and URSCA showcase.

Soiland Company

Contractor

Mar 2018 – present

Visual Designer/Website Specialist

Regularly provide website services including: CMS updates, back-ups, and monitor for SEO-related issues. On-demand training and support for website related issues.

Designed, developed, and launched a series of WordPress websites for all five sister companies. Each website was interconnected with a parent-child theme system and individually branded.

Design Working Group

Internship

Jan 2018 – May 2018

Graphic Designer

Worked on projects involving poster design, wayfinding and signage, and editorial design. Participated in group critiques and collaborative design processes.

Corresponded with clients and helped facilitate project management to meet milestones and deadlines.

San Francisco State University

Award

Nov 2017

1st Place, “GreenThumbs App”

A competition between Graduate Writing and Research students. I presented my project GreenThumbs.

Major League Hackathon

Award

Mar 2017

1st Place, “Social Shape Interspace”

Among 200 competing students our team hacked together Social Shape Interspace and won 1st place for the “Best Hack to Reduce Online Harassment” category, and 1st place for the “Best Beginner” category. The Major League Hackathon event was coordinated by SF Hacks student organization at San Francisco State University.

OptiRev, LLC

Part Time

Aug 2016 – Jun 2018

Company Strategist

Supported the Executive Team in a business acquisition of Destination Intelligence Software Solutions. My involvement included analyzing the proprietary software acquired and enhancing the company’s product positioning and brand design.

Led a redesign initiative of the OptiRev brand. Collaborated with team members to leverage our skills collectively. We produced a new website, logo and brand system, and marketing materials.

Developed and rolled-out new professional services. Services offered a range of benefits to our clients at different pricing tiers. Services included website security, improving accessibility and user experience, SEO, SEM, digital marketing, and graphic design services.

OptiRev, LLC

Full Time

Jan 2016 – Aug 2016

Web Team Manager

Launched nine websites for Stay In The Bay. Each website derived from one central wireframe yet included unique elements such as color, logo, imagery, and content. To maintain design consistency each website was built on WordPress and used a child-theme to distribute unique branding elements. The project launched with four websites initially and expanded to five additional.

Managed a team of three developers. Reviewed employee tasks and hours regularly to ensure a fairly distributed workload. Worked with executive staff to coordinate business development and improve internal processes.

Sustained positive relationships with clients through monthly and quarterly business reviews. Website reports were created to identify strong and weak points from key data.

Managed website implementation projects. Assisted with estimates for SOWs, created project plans, and led check-in meetings. Occasionally jumped in to fill understaffed roles including front-end designer, content editor, web developer, and tester.

OptiRev, LLC

Contractor

Jun 2015 – Dec 2015

Web Developer

Created fully functioning websites for Amsterdam Hostel and Winsor Hotel. Developed WordPress themes using PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Bootstrap and more. Referenced design mockups and design specs provided by a designer. Tested websites to make sure they worked error-free on all devices. Once the websites launched on-going SEO services were provided to keep the websites optimized.

Provided routine optimization of customer websites using tools like Google Analytics and  Google Search Console to improve content, increase user sessions and conversion rates. Optimized website performance and security using WordPress plugins and third-party tools.

Designed and built mobile-friendly email marketing templates using HTML and CSS.

Soiland Company

Contractor

Mar 2015 – Mar 2018

Graphic Artist

Enhanced the consistency of company branding and marketing assets by improving designs for business cards and email signatures.

Santa Rosa Junior College

Certification

May 2013

Web Graphic Designer

A multiple course program for learning website design. Topics include: digital page layout, mobile-responsive design, advanced HTML and CSS, and user-experience concepts.

Santa Rosa Junior College

Certification

Dec 2012

HTML Web Content Developer

A multiple course program for learning web development. Topics include: history of the web; file types, formatting and marking up content; image optimization for web, coding with HTML, CSS; publishing pages and content on the web.

PBHS Inc.

Part Time

Jan 2012 – Jun 2015

SEO Web Developer

Provided on-demand website edits for the customer-base at large. Updates included changes to website content (HTML), styles (CSS), behavior (jQuery), media (image editing), flash media, and enabling responsive design.

Created fully functioning landing pages based on mockups intended for Google AdWords campaigns using Bootstrap, HTML, CSS, and jQuery.

Facilitated the SEO department’s marketing committee to create content for monthly campaign reports. Contributions to the project involved marketing campaign planning and copy writing.

PBHS Inc.

Full Time

Sep 2011 – Dec 2012

Product Support and Trainer

Provided training to oral surgeons, dentists, and other health professionals on the iConsult iPad app. Provided over the phone tech support to customers using our website and patient registration form products.

Created and maintained a documentation website for iConsult.

Artstart

Contractor

Aug 2010 – Sep 2013

Graphic Designer/Web Developer

Designed a set of business cards with updated branding elements. Created a brochure to target prospective clients.

Designed and developed unique website landing pages for annual auction events. Included a jQuery photo gallery and option to buy tickets online via PayPal. Improved overall website accessibility, load time, and performance by replacing outdated flash media with HTML and CSS.

BYU-I Comm Student Media

Internship

Apr 2010 – Jul 2010

Junior Graphic Designer

Worked within an agency modal as a graphic designer. Collaborated in creative processes to generate ideas for marketing campaigns and design assets. Studied the uses and effects of social media on business, news, and user interaction.

Designed newsprint ads for local businesses to be featured in the student newspaper The Scroll. Created marketing materials for clients like booklets and brochures.

Artstart

Contractor

Jul 2009 – Jul 2010

Social Media Coordinator

Registered and optimized all social media channels for Artstart. Created visual assets and posts to promote Artstart work and events.

Artstart

Part Time

Summer 2007, 2008, 2009

Apprentice Artist

Apprenticed as an artist during Artstart’s paid internship summer program for three years in a row. Studied under professional artists and learned about sketching, painting, mural design and installation.

Assisted with 3 murals, 12 installation projects, and restored 10 art benches across the city. Self-produced 5 small artworks for the program’s annual silent auction event.

Boy Scouts of America

Award

Jun 2006

Eagle Scout Award

Achievement of the highest rank in BSA. As part of my Eagle Scout project I planned and directed the construction of benches for Roseland Elementary School. With the help of my community we prototyped a design and then installed a dozen weather-resistant benches to the bungalows on campus.

Recommendations

Jacob's colleagues, clients, and friends have shared their experience working with him. Here's what they've said!

When it comes to web design and development, Jacob is a top notch performer. He understands branding and improving a clients product better than anyone I know. His ability to pay attention to details could possibly be a superpower so I totally recommend him.

— Moe Himed, Colleague to Jacob at OptiRev

Jacob is a problem solver. He is well organized, reliable, efficient, and collaborative with an excellent command of web technologies. My highest recommendation.

— Heidi Dunkelgod, Professor to Jacob at San Francisco State University

Jacob is one of those outstanding students who have figured out how to combine creativity and invention with work ethic and empathy. He is a fabulous team player who can easily be either leader or member. He is so mature, he is able to put his ego aside in order to get the work done very, very well. His ideas are terrific and he has the (somewhat elusive) ability to realize those ideas efficiently and with grace.

He has very high technical skills combined with excellent design skills. And, he is a joy to work with. As far as I’m concerned, he is the unicorn everyone is looking for. He’s a terrific addition to any team, and I hope I have the opportunity to work with him again soon.

— Mari Hulick, Director of the School of Design San Francisco State University

Jacob is very detail oriented and focused. He has an innate ability to manage projects and employees in a kind and thoughtful manner. He communicates thoroughly and respectfully. I highly recommend him in any type of position, especially one in management.

— Sara Ysunza, Colleague to Jacob at OptiRev

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, Senior colleague to Jacob at PBHS

Attentive and helpful! My website works well, thanks to Jacob.

— Jane Brenner, Jacob’s freelance customer

Jacob willingly took on any project I threw at him. He produced quality, creative design work for several clients. He was especially good at translating client ideas to visual communication. I knew I could count on him to meet deadlines. He is fun to be around and makes his bosses look good.

— Derek Wilcox, Manager to Jacob at BYU I-Comm Student Media

Connect with Jacob

The best way to contact Jacob is send an email or message on LinkedIn. Follow Jacob on the networks below so you can see other activity.

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