I build and lead successful design teams, work with business leaders to develop product concepts, and design simple and innovative solutions to complex design problems.
At Jagger, my role is to tackle cross-portfolio product design, develop key team processes, and to mentor junior designers. To date, my key contributions have been to: 1) redesign the Information Architecture and navigation across the entire product portfolio to simplify the taxonomy and provide a solution-based approach; and 2) Introduce team processes around research, design sprints, story mapping, and design critique.
At Sage, my role as a Principal was to partner with key stakeholders to develop strategic product concepts, tackle complex design problems, nurture design processes within the team, and mentor junior designers. Some of my significant accomplishments included redesigning the Bank Reconciliation feature for Sage Financials, designing key new features for Cloud Payroll, and developing the concept for the next generation of reporting in Sage Accounting.
At AVG, I built and managed a design team for the SMB Security business distributed across the US, Canada, and the Czech Republic. At Sun, I led distributed teams designing innovative solutions for systems management/monitoring and for providing a set of integrated services that promoted collaboration around open source projects. At BellSouth, I justified to management the first full-time UX position, the investment of $300k+ to develop the Bridge Design Workshop with Bell Communications Research, and $100k+ to fund laboratory based usability testing. These investments fundamentally changed how BellSouth approached design.
Although I have been in several management positions, I have continued to tackle UX architecture and interaction design challenges. I have led research activities to explore new product concepts, assess product usability, and better understand the customer's overall experience with our product.
My passion is delivering designs that not only solve customer problems, but continually simplify and enhance the customer’s overall experience. My research examines each customer touch-point, not just the UX.
I've worked with Product Marketing and Senior Management to explore new product concepts. At AVG, my team performed research to assess customer interest in new SMB security offerings and designed and developed prototypes to demonstrate the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). As these prototypes evolved into products, my team worked with Engineering to define a hierarchy of user stories, then deliver design as an integrated member of the Agile team.
As a consultant at Usability Management, I worked directly with clients such as Sun Microsystems, AC Nielsen, Nations Bank, Motorola, Rand McNally, and Earthlink to perform qualitative and quantitative product research, define organizational practices, and facilitate User Centered Design workshops using the Bridge Design Methodology.
My personal focus is centered around analyzing user tasks and workflows, information architecture, interaction design, and user research.
Throughout my 25+ year UX career, I have refined a design process at both the individual and organizational levels. Years of walking-the-walk, working with different teams, and observing how and when mistakes are made have helped mold these processes. At BellSouth, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, AVG, and Sage, I've worked with teams to implement my methods. These methods are key towards a workable UX Strategy.
I was a early pioneer in facilitating participatory, User Centered Design workshops, and intimately involved with the development of the Bridge Design Workshop, very similar to what is now known as "Design Thinking". At BellSouth, I started a program to incorporate laboratory, qualitative usability testing into enterprise application design.
My design experience is centered around Small Business, Security Management, Finance and Accounting, Supply Chain, Systems Management and Monitoring, and enterprise Telecommunications.
Although I've received awards throughout my career, I'm most proud of my recognition and participation in the Sun Engineering Enrichment and Development (SEED) program for employees consistently receiving a Superior performance rating. I was a SEED Mentor in 2004 and a SEED Participant in 2007. I was awarded the BellSouth President's Silver Award. This award was presented to a small group of managers and analysts who were the catalyst around implementing solutions that moved BellSouth's development organization from CMM Level 1 to Level 2. My personal contribution was with implementation of Requirements Management.