About me
At Disney, where I work full-time, I am designing immersive mobile and web experiences for premier vacation brands including Walt Disney World, Disneyland Resort and Disney Cruise Line. I was previously on the Play Disney Parks app team, where we turn wait time [at a Disney Park] into play time.
My story
Back in 2014, my sister needed a website for her new business. I took on the challenge to do it myself, and I loved every minute of it. I knew this to be true because I would stay up late to get it, knowing that I had a full-time job as a recruiter. I was terrible at recruiting and wanted to get out. I had found my passion in UX Design.
My journey
Recruiter turned Product Designer. I went full force into General Assembly's immersive program — and it was the best decision of my life. I've been designing UX/UI and Product Design for over 6+ years and have had the opportunity to collaborate with some world-class designers, art directors, Product Managers, and technology team. Read more about my story here.
Experience
Lead Product Designer
- Conceive, create, and supervise inspiring, high-quality digital experiences across a variety of Disney Park brands ranging from Walt Disney World, Disneyland Resort, Play Disney Parks app, Disney Signature Brands, shopDisney, and commerce.
- Follow Guest-centric, design process and understanding real Guest motivations, behaviors and goals
- Support, mentor, oversee Jr. to Senior level designers across multiple projects relating to Disney Platform efforts.
- Provide subject matter expert for design team, providing design guidance, documenting and socializing best practices, as well as cross-functionally
Sr. Product Designer
Sr. Interaction Designer
Interaction Designer
UX Director / Lead
- Overseeing all creative efforts at Dogtown Media, a digital agency that specializes in HealthCare services.
- Managing / supporting a team of talented designers and ensuring all projects are at the highest level and delivered on-time.
- Construct internal design system, spearhead design team principles, and governance on all thing creative aspects.
Founder and Chief Experience Officer
- Owner of mico design agency that caters to small-to-medium size businesses with their digital needs across web and mobile app platforms
- Gather and contribute to client requirements by reconciling User, Business, and Technical needs
- Hire, contract, and manage design students for projects that require additional resources that are beyond level of availability and level of expertise
Lead Instructor - Part Time
- Instructed over 100+ postgraduate level professionals about the field of UX and how to become a professional UX designer.
- Teach 2 hours per evening, 2 days a week, for 10 weeks
- Manage and support two Instructional Assistance to ensure student deliveries, quality of feedback and grading in a timely manner
Mentor
- Provide subject matter expert for students assignments to the DesignLab platform
- Commit to 1 hour per week, for 4 weeks per student
- Collaborate, mentor, and guided walk-throughs of design methodologies and design tool agnostics
Instructor & TA
- Provide subject matter expert for students assignments to the DesignLab platform
- Commit to 1 hour per week, for 4 weeks per student
- Collaborate, mentor, and guided walk-throughs of design methodologies and design tool agnostics
Lead UX/UI Designer
- Lead a team of designers to ensure client needs are met and that user centric designs are applied throughout the design process
- Provided subject matter expert for design team, providing design guidance, documenting and socializing best practices, even cross-functionally
- Facilitated a dynamic and collaborative team environment
UX/UI Designer
UX/UI Designer
- Short Contract
UX/UI Designer
- Short Contract
Recruitment Coordinator
- Short Contract
Google Specialist
- In collaboration with MarketStar, at the time, I helped train and educate Best Buy employees on the Chromebook
My skills
Product Design
I collaborate with business needs, user needs, and technology capabilities by collaborating, researching, sketching, wireframing, UI design, and prototyping experiences.
Specialization
Cross collaboration, design strategy, conceptualizing, responsive design, rapid & complex prototyping, user testing, micro-animations, and design hand-off. Mentoring and education is also my passion.
Interaction Design
I love thinking through how we can better bridge the gap between users and products. I strive to create products that enable the user to achieve their objective in the best and most optimal way possible.
Prototyping
On an as need basis, prototyping early and often helps solve a lot of deltas in a project. I also think prototyping saves 5 to 10 meetings with Product and Engineers.
Mentorship & Education
Connective tissue with creative and engineering team, I understand and can code in HTML, CSS, and some JavaScript. I'm very comfortable with CoffeeScript.
Creative Deliverables
Empathizing with Users is one thing, but empathizing with engineers and mean we need to have better creative deliverables, and I strive to make everyone's lives easier.
Tools I Use
Design Beliefs
And what if it doesn't? We find our options and make decisions on what is best for the User Experience, while still hitting on the business requirements. As things start to settle down, we retro-spec to learn what can be done better next time.
Talks
