User Experience & Product Design

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.