My UX career was a transition while at Lockheed Martin. I was initially a senior graphic designer there, and over 13 years, mostly in the latter half, I began to get projects where I could stretch my UX legs.
First, it started as websites, then a few mobile apps, a gamification experience, etc. When the iPhone came out, everyone wanted to have an app, and Lockheed was no exception. Most of the time it didn’t make sense for the customer.
I started getting opportunities to take classes and being sent to seminars that LM provided or helped pay for.
One of these was a workshop in New Jersey led by Christina Wodtke of Boxes and Arrows fame. If you ever get a chance to attend something she is involved with, do it.
Additionally, I was sent to a class on iOS development, which I ended up never really using. But it was helpful to see how things are approached in terms of iOS and was fun to get my hands wet with Xcode and see something work. Exciting stuff!
Also, I took LM taught classes on C#, took stuff on HTML, CSS, XML, a mobile design pipeline workshop, and more. These items highlighted at the end are the ones I used day-to-day.
Over the last three years, I've been focusing on user experience at a consumer packaging company, helping to improve both e-Commerce and Employee Experience.
Before that, I was creating, designing, and producing a wide variety of interactive publications, user interfaces for desktop + mobile websites and applications.
Before that, I've been designing and producing print collateral, advertising campaigns, special-event collateral, logos and brand identities, packaging graphics, presentations, and illustrations for both promotional and technical advantage for various clients.
I’ve done work for Walmart U.S. OmniTech, Vanguard, WestRock, Lockheed Martin, Wackenhut, Wuerth USA, Georgia Tech, The Army National Guard, PreMediaOne and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Walt Disney Entertainment, AAA, Food Lion, and more. Currently, I'm working with the CFA Institute on a mix of different UX tasks including increasing Figma adoption maturity, design system contributions, user testing and research, prototype and storyboard development. As well as design specs for a new upcoming Membership Experience.
UX is a complex domain space. Teams and organizations have different ideas on what it means to them. They all are unique in their needs and wants while reporting into different departments within their respective organizational structure.
While I have varying degrees of experience in different aspects of it, here’s a visual map to explain who I am. I can be either an extension of your existing team to fill a skill gap or a full time contributing member.
This can vary greatly project to project. Depending on the context, a project may be in the early, mid, or late stages of a design process
Either way my process usually starts with a learning phase aimed at getting an idea of what the problem space is. Listening to the end-user or stakeholders, I like to find out what the design constraints are. That way, you know what your options are and eliminates having to iterate on too many options.
That defines design—solving a problem within an established set of constraints.
I’m a sketcher and a collaborative person. So I like to get away from technology sometimes in the beginning and think on paper. Then come back to a larger “Pod” and share among a group to flesh out a final solution to a problem.
Lately my process has been augmented by AI. Early springboard ideas may start life as a set of throw away screens created by AI such as Galleo and ChatGPT. I also look at existing real life product via Mobbin. The advantage of using Mobbin is that these designs represent real in the world products that have already gone through a ton of research.
This is just to see what we get for free and potentially spark something that catches fire. Then taking the good ideas and fleshing them the rest of the way out. Testing, getting user feedback, iterating on the idea, and then re-releasing.
If you have a question about any of the projects in my portfolio or to inquire about a project you have going on drop me a line below.