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I am a User Experience Designer trained in all things UX, although I focus on interface design, interaction design, and information architecture. Projects that I create are user-centered and built upon research with a solid foundation of design principles.
About
Before pursuing design as a career, I was a ballet dancer with companies in Omaha, San Diego, and Pittsburgh. Through ballet, I learned at a young age that hard work and nearly endless hours go into making something look beautiful and effortless, so it is important to tackle any challenge with an intelligent strategy. Today, I apply this philosophy to my digital designs to create products that are usable, functional, and beautifully effortless.
When I’m not working on a design project, you might find me tinkering with HTML and CSS, stand up paddleboarding, meandering through a museum, or trying a new vegetarian recipe.
Tools
Primary
Secondary
Process
I employ a thorough, yet efficient, process that ensures a thoughtful and usable solution to any project I work on. This process allows me to take a project from ideating, researching, and strategizing to designing, testing, validating and delivering. It is important to note that this is a flexible process. Some areas may be require more focus than others, depending on the project, and I am always an advocate for iteration.
BackgroundResearch
InterviewsContextual Inquiry
Competitive AnalysisHeuristic Analysis
Synthesis & Strategy
Project ScopeFeature Prioritization
Information ArchitectureContent Strategy
Design& Build
Rapid SketchesWireframes
MockupsPrototypes
Validation& Delivery
Usability TestsIteration
AnnotationsTest Reports
ProcessBackground Research
Each project begins with a discovery phase. This phase, depending on the stage the product is in, contains a number of
steps. Typically, background research consists of getting to know as much about a product and the space it is in as possible.
Interviews with stakeholders and existing or target users are conducted. It is also important to research how similar products
and companies are implementing their own solutions.
ProcessInterviews | Contextual Inquiry | Competitive Analysis | Heuristic Analysis
Surveys are sent out to collect initial data and recruit people to interview.
Competitors and comparable products are analysed to find new opportunities and to understand what people already know how to use.
Trail SearchResults
TrailProfile
PhotoFeed
UserProfile
TrailReviews
Trails
AllTrails
MyMapHike
Yonder
Survey takeaways and interviewing a user
Competitor feature and layout analyses
ProcessSynthesis & Strategy
With the initial research completed, it is time to digest all of the information. Thoroughly synthesizing and organizing the amount of data that comes out of the research phase can be daunting, but it is incredibly
important to fully understand the information. This allows for more intelligent decisions to be made about the scope of the project and strategy
moving forward.
ProcessProject Scope | Feature Prioritization | Information Architecture | Content Strategy
Personas are created to help keep the focus on the research instead of assumptions when making design decisions. Based on the personas, features are prioritized to help them best meet their goals.
ProcessDesign & Build
In the design & build stage it is time to bring the research to life by thinking through how the product will actually look and
function. Ideally, this is a highly collaborative stage so that many ideas can be fleshed out as quickly as possible. Core, prioritized features and flows are worked through first at
various levels of fidelity which are then turned into prototypes.
ProcessRapid Sketches | Wireframes | Mockups | Prototypes
Collaborative design studios are conducted to produce rapid sketches or whiteboard sessions of core pages. Paper prototypes are then sometimes built to test general element arrangement and flows. Afterwards, higher fidelity wireframes are built to create clickable prototypes for testing.
Both the visual and copy fidelity of this page increased throughout the design process.
ProcessValidate & Deliver
Getting designs in front of real people is the best way to validate decisions. Findings from usability tests reveal so much that is then able to be iterated upon. These findings
are delivered with annotations and test reports.
ProcessUsability Tests | Iterations | Annotations | Test Reports
Test plans help to keep each test’s data as unbiased as possible by facilitating tasks for testers in the same format each time. Notes can quickly be taken during each stage of the test. Annotations are used to synthesize test findings and deliver them in a clear manner. Annotations are also used to describe features, elements, and interactions in an interface.
Case StudyTexts.com
View Clickable Prototype
OverviewTexts.com Case Study
2.5 weeks 3 designers
Timeline Team
Managed the projectPrepared survey and interview questionsPrepared test plan for existing siteDeveloped and tested new sitemapBuilt medium fidelity wireframes Built a clickable prototypePrepared test plan for my team’s designConducted usability testing
My ResponsibilitiesResearch ReportInterview findingsUsability takeawaysCompetitive analysisSuggested features
DesignSitemapUser FlowsWireframesClickable Prototype
Deliverables
Texts.com facilitates textbook buying and selling between students on campus and between students and online vendors. Textbook prices have increased a whopping 812% in the past 30 years and 80% of the market is controlled by just four publishers. They are determined to keep prices high, so Texts.com offers a cheaper
alternative to college students.
The Opportunity
ResearchTexts.com Case Study
Our UX team was brought on board after Texts.com was fully functional, but had not gone through any research or usability
processes, so the first task was to understand the existing product. We conducted interviews with stakeholders and also watched college students interact with Texts.com. This allowed us to define the scope
and strategy for how our team would approach this project.
The Challenge
Initial Research Takeaways
Increase sign-ups and click-throughs to affiliate buyers
Improve Texts.com’s learnability and recall
Discover new features that could be implemented
Stakeholders
Buy books and cheaply as possible
Sell books as conveniently to themselves as possible
Didn’t understand the dual marketplace that Texts.com provides
College Students
StrategyTexts.com Case Study
Research findings, partnered with takeaways from competitive analysis, led our team to focus on restructuring Texts.com’s information architecture.
Texts.com’s previous sitemap. Almost every action was accessible from every page which may sound convenient in theory, but actually confused users. They would get lost or frustrated within a flow and want to leave the site.
My team’s sitemap as of the end of this project. By splitting up the website’s main features (buying and selling) right from the primary navigation, users began to work through the site at a much quicker and more successful rate.
Part of this process was to visualize Texts.com’s current sitemap and userflows. The final proposals were informed by findings from testing the current site and analyses of competitive and comparitive services.
Strategy Cont’d.Texts.com Case Study
Texts.com’s existing user flow for buying a book from another student. This flow was convoluted and even forced the user to search for the same book at two different points.
Proposed flow for buying a book from another student. This flow enables a user (who isn’t signed in, at first) to go from searching for a book from the homepage to contacting a student who is selling the book in four (4) less steps than before.
Design & IterateTexts.com Case Study
Once the group was comfortable with the new user flows and information architecture at a conceptual level, it was time to begin the wireframing process which would help reveal any holes and enable us to test whether our proposed structure would help students complete their goals on Texts.com.
One of the more central pages on Texts.com is the product page for the textbooks, so my team made sure to focus heavily on this page.
Before: Students did not realize that they could login to see if any students were selling at their school (red). They also didn’t know that they could interact with the chevron icons (green) to reveal more information about a particular listing. Perhaps the biggest issue in this version was that student’s didn’t know what to expect when selecting “open” (blue).
After: The split modules were made into one module that students no longer glanced over (red). The “more info” buttons made it clear to students that more information was available (green). Finally, more appropriate terminology replaced the vague “open” buttons (blue) that helped students understand what they were interacting with when clicking there.
ReflectionTexts.com Case Study
This was an amazing opportunity to get to work with a real client. Texts.com developers immediately began implementing my team’s findings and I have even joined the Texts.com team on a freelance basis to continue working on their products.
If I had the opportunity to start this project all over again, I would involve the Text.com team in our process more (and more often). As a designer, it is incredibly beneficial to have a product’s developers working alongside you.
I also learned that giving context to users is equivalent to giving power to them. Your team may design the most intuitive flows and interfaces, but if there is an absence of context your users are going to struggle.
My team with the CEO and developers of Texts.com
