Professional Summary
Collaborative UX professional focused on optimizing usability and human-computer interactions for diverse applications. Accomplished in meeting project specifications and innovative new strategies to surpass target objectives. My experience includes research, strategy, design, information architecture, interaction design, and analysis. I have conducted and delivered user experience work starting from ambiguous ideation to full-fledged concepts and development.
Education
Degree: Bachelor of Science
Major: Interactive and Social Media (UX Design) with a Development Concentration
Minor: Information Technology
Career Experience
User Experience Researcher
Remote
May 2023 - Current
Lead research activities and tasks for Photons clients covering discovery and explorative phases for web, iOS, and android.
Plan and conduct moderated / unmoderated user interviews and usability tests and synthesize the resulting data.
Create journey maps, personas, research reports and other research artifacts.
Share research findings and recommendations with clients.
Sr. User Experience Researcher (Contractor via MindLance)
Remote
August 2022 - April 2023
Lead the development and execution of research projects for Schwab Move Money and Storefront products, from ideation to execution to final delivery.
Research led to a 2-point increase in the Semantic Differential score of ease of use for the tool used for money transactions, leading to a 30% increase in adoption from financial advisors.
Create clear and compelling research reports that communicate findings and recommendations to stakeholders.
User Experience Researcher
Remote
June 2021 - July 2022
Create, implement, and maintain UX research protocols for the company to follow, which includes outlining the research process, roles and responsibilities, and best practices for conducting research for web and iOS.
Plan and conduct various forms of research, including user and stakeholder interviews, usability tests, competitive and SWOT analysis, contextual inquiries, observations, and surveys, to gather data and insights that inform product design and development.
User Experience Researcher & Producer (Contractor via Pyramid Consulting)
Remote
October 2018 - May 2021
Lead a team of designers and researchers that conducted a year-long analysis, improvement, and implementation research effort on the provider and patient video visit software during the Covid-19 pandemic.
This led to patients and doctors being able to connect seamlessly across iOS, web, Android, and Desktop applications during the pandemic.
Managed remote and in-person contextual inquiries and interviews on the agent-facing, patient appointment scheduling software to determine opportunities for improvement. Enhancements decreased patient wait times by 5 minutes and decreased call duration by 4 minutes.
Conducted in-person contextual inquiries with users at pharmacy locations across the United States to understand the pain points and unmet needs of pharmacists and pharmacy techs using the pharmacy software.
Created detailed, revised process flow chart recommendations, and produced mid-fidelity wireframes and high-fidelity prototypes to test with users to ensure design concepts aligned with user needs and preferences.
Year-long research and implementation resulted in reduction of steps and screens, lower patient wait times at the pharmacy, reduction in the number of clicks by 5 – 12 clicks depending on the pharmacist and tech workflow, and a 7 second decrease in the time it took to enter an order into the system.
User Experience Designer & IT Business Analyst (Contractor via TekSystems)
Schaumburg, IL
January 2017 - September 2017
OptumRx is a subsidiary company of United Health Group (UHG) and functions as the pharmacy branch of the healthcare company. In 2016, Catamaran was acquired by UHG and merged with Optum to form OptumRx. In the latter half of 2016 and most of 2017, OptumRx sought to combine the pharmacy member portal websites for Optum and Catamaran into one single site. As a contract employee, I had the following duties:
Manage contextual inquiry, user and stake holder interviews, data analysis and synthesis, and solutioning for the pharmacy member portal.
Gather business requirements from the product owner and work with ux designers, developers, and quality assurance members of the two teams to generate Gerkin formatted acceptance criteria.
Review written acceptance criteria with the two teams until they were fit to be passed on the developers for development and to the quality assurance members to test the functionality of the site against.
Participate in meetings following the Agile methodology (scrums, sprint planning, etc.).
Sr. User Experience Designer, Business Analyst and Product Owner
Evanston, IL
March, 2015 - January, 2017
Breakthrough Technologies started as a startup approximately seventeen years ago, and is just now moving out of the start up mentality and adding new business and employees. The company specializes in educational and non-profit software, websites, mobile apps, and web applications. Breakthrough also creates software for other industries, such as healthcare and music. The company works on an Agile framework and implements all products through iterative sprints filled with internal and client based collaboration.
Managed a team of Visual Designers to formulate a design, branding, and interactivity on a website that aligned with usability standards and addressed user pain points, wants, and needs.
Orchestrated internal collaboration meetings with the design team to integrate optimal user experience design and strategy practices.
Created user stories that captured enhancements in user experience and communicated business value and requirements to developers and quality assurance team members.
Conducted design thinking sessions where I met with stakeholders and clients and worked with them to generate ideation topics and help guide design and research direction from those initial ambiguous topics.
User Experience Designer and Business Analyst (Contractor via TekSystems)
Chicago, IL
August 2014 - February, 2015
Productive Edge is a company that started about eight years ago and is in a post-start up phase as they add new business and practices to the core of the company. Their major client was Humana and they focused on web design, mobile apps, and content management system based sites. Productive Edge is a fast paced, Agile environment where all products are delivered in two week iterative sprints.
Led the redesign project of an ecommerce website wherein I took the user research and created wireframes with design elements that best reflected the functionality and experience that spoke to the client demographic.
Led iPad application project wherein I made design decisions based on the user demographic and best usability practices within the iOS system.
Worked on a website redesign project wherein I took the user research and create wireframes with design elements that best reflected the functionality and experience that spoke to the client demographic.
Collaborated with client stakeholders to gather business and functional requirements on current and future systems and processes.
Participate in Agile development activities to ensure quality, clarity, and transparency throughout delivery.
Participate in iteration planning meetings to determine sprint capacity, estimation, and velocity.
Wrote epics and user stories to detail software design for on and offshore development teams.