Lead UX Designer at CCG Ideas (Nov 2023 - present)

• Lead the UX strategy, design, and research for a complex B2B mobile application to provide an efficient and modernized tool for ordering, quoting, reporting, inventory counting, and additional user needs.

• Collaborate and work cross-functionally with product, engineering, stakeholders, and users to gather user and business requirements from legacy software in order to frame problems, develop use cases, and articulate clear UX solutions aligned with strategic goals for a new mobile app.

• Create prototypes, wires, designs, and flows in Figma to improve communication with engineering and users.

• Maintain a user-centric approach to solutions by continuously involving users from a customer advisory board in order to address pain points, meet business needs, mitigate risk, and continuously improve the experience.

• Work in AHA with product managers and owners to define goals, requirements, and user needs.

Senior User Experience Architect at The Office of Experience (2015-2023)

• Led the user experience strategy, interface, and research for a complex ecommerce website to over $1B in sales.

• Created the user experience for a new mobile application that digitally transformed the client’s business, allowing them to better cater to a previously underutilized audience and leading to the expansion of additional digital offerings and audiences.

• Provided consulting to companies and clients on their overall strategic and business objectives to meet KPIs, business goals, and user needs through user experience, product design, research, and innovation.

• Created, led, and presented wireframes, prototypes, flows, and other visual concepts to effectively communicate the intended solution, design system, and business requirements to multiple disciplines, including development, designers, product owners, and stakeholders.

• Advocated, conducted, and synthesized qualitative and quantitative to better understand user behaviors and product performance to solve intricate business problems and inform the strategy, features, personas, journey maps, prioritization, and design for products, applications, websites, and services.

• Utilized a flexible workstyle for complex problem solving in fast paced environments to best deliver the work and collaborate with the team, including the use of tools like Figma and JIRA.

UX/UI Designer at DESIGNATION in 2015

• Responsible for creating innovative and interactive concepts to solve user centered problems through personas, task flows, user journey maps, annotated wireframes, and prototypes for mobile and web platforms.

• Conducted user research for iterative feedback on UI designs and experience flows of websites.

Quality Assurance at DEEP SILVER VOLITION in 2014

• Identified critical flaws in the software performance that hinders the end user’s experience.

• Documented defects in a bug database and effectively communicated how to reproduce issues to developers in a company of more than 200 employees.

• Detected and reported art imperfections such as alpha sorting, stretched textures, draw distance, and clipping for 3D digital environments.

Digital Signage Content Manager at ATLAS (Applied Technologies for the Learning of Arts and Science) in 2013

• Developed creative digital sign layouts and learned to implement new live data features and interactivity

• Scheduled meetings with clients and discussed desired content and goals for their signs

• Documented tasks on how to use Four Winds Interactive so that new employees have a reference on how to work the program

Freelance Mobile App Designer at National Kwikmetal Service in 2012

• Designed and coded the company’s first mobile app to calculate stainless steel coil dimensions

• Self taught MobiOne app development software and programmed custom needs with JavaScript

• Conducted user tests to iterate on the app flow and design on both Android and iPhone

Education

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

2009-2014

B.A. in International Studies

Area Focus: Technology

Language Focus: Japanese

Minor in Informatics

Konan University (甲南大学), Kobe, Japan

2012-2013

Year in Japan Program

Capabilities

Wireframes, prototypes, information architecture, experience flows, concept models, design systems, user research synthesis, research reports, research plans, journey maps, use cases, personas, UX audits, feature recommendations, service maps, user stories, annotations, business requirements

Tools

Figma, JIRA, agile methodology, ProtoPie, Sketch, Axure RP, Userlytics, usertesting.com, Validately, Hotjar, Google Apps/Suite, Microsoft suite, InVision, Adobe Suite, waterfall methodology, JavaScript, jQuery, HTML, CSS, Google Analytics

Skills

User experience, product design, problem solving, user research, qualitative research, quantitative research, service design, interaction design, user interface design, client management, digital transformation, agile methodology, B2B ecommerce, B2C ecommerce, forced ranking, usability, quality assurance, mobile design, web design, game design, Japanese language

Research Methods

User testing, usability testing, user interviews, SME interviews, stakeholder interviews, competitor audits, UX audits, surveys, card sorting, affinity diagramming, analytics, qualitative & quantitative research methods