Strategic UX Consultant 2016 - 2018

While not working directly for corporate America, I've led the UX strategy and design of multiple consumer and enterprise applications as a UX Consultant. I use my expertise in the areas of design management, design innovation, product strategy, use case development and training, requirements definition, interaction design, visual design, user research, and the trade-offs required between all areas to create successful, engaging products.

ProcessMaker

ProcessMaker enables Digital Transformation by allowing companies to create and manage their own business processes. I was asked to help with a complete redesign of their application. I worked closely with the CEO and Product Managers to identify the personas and develop the strategy to focus on the consumer experience for the product.

The designs were validated by the product team and internal Subject Matter Experts. I provided guidance to their Visual Designer to create the final look and feel of the product.

Carnegie Mellon University + ForAllSecure

Carnegie Mellon University CyLab Director founded ForAllSecure with the mission to make the world’s critical software safe. The company has been applying its patented technology from over a decade of CMU research to solving the difficult challenge of making software safer. I was brought on board to work on HackCenter, a training platform designed to teach anyone the actionable skills needed to be effective in cybersecurity.

I worked directly with the CEO and founder, COO, and Lead Engineers to design the UX for HackCenter from concept generation to wireframes, to final visual design and assets. The site was successfully designed and launched within a couple of months to support competitions with over 500 participants. Later, the design was updated to support multiple competitions.

FatWallet

FatWallet was a deal site (shut down in 2017 while part of Ebates/Rakuten) that was primarily based on its highly active user forum. I was brought on board to develop a UX strategy to increase the adoption and retention of all deal seekers, not just the more hard-core forum users. To start, I worked with the Director of Product to develop User Personas and validated them with various users via interviews.

While developing concepts for a future version of the site I worked on a number of short-term initiatives. I created a few successful promotional campaigns to drive users to specific customer sites, hired and onboarded a Senior UX Designer in MN for the team, and redesigned a few highly used elements of their site including the Deal tiles and Store page. We conducted a couple of bucket tests for the Store page to identify the highest performing layout (horizontal) and ultimately saw a 4% increase in conversions, far exceeding our initial goals.