Current Position
I create digital experiences for the interactive agency Zehnder Communications by developing storyboards, wireframes, mockups, and prototypes to effectively communicate interaction and design ideas.
As a member of the Leadership Teams at Zehnder, I am involved in every aspect of the product development process from brainstorming to contributing to high-level strategic decisions by communicating directly with the executive team.
Select Clients
In my career I've had the opportunity to work with some amazing clients. Here are just a few of them:
My Story
I moved into the interactive space 10 years ago to add new layers to the design patterns I learned in my early career as a graphic designer. I have always enjoyed creating print media, but in some ways I felt creatively limited by the medium. The first time I saw a user interacting with some digital content I had created, I knew there was no going back to static design.
My online designs were initially very much a one sided conversation, but to be fair, the early days of the internet were actually closer to the print world from which I was coming than the world of action-oriented applications we know today. Print design taught me usability principles like hierarchy of typography and the visualization of large data sets, but what took me by surprise was how much I enjoyed the planning stages of the digital product design process — like defining user tasks and examining goals for our products.
After studying graphic design for two years and working as a graphic designer for three, I decided to add another layer: interaction.
The first time I saw a user interacting with some digital content I had created, I knew there was no going back to static design.
Learning the psychology of interaction design patterns would not be easy, but it quickly became the path I wanted to take. I left my job as a graphic designer and enrolled in the Web Design & Development Bachelor of Science program at Full Sail University in Orlando, Florida.
Formal Training
Full Sail University has a unique approach to educating their students that truly helped prepare me for my career at a design agency. The structure for their on-campus Web Design & Development program involves attending class 5 days a week with each day consisting of 4 hours of lecture and followed by 4 hours of practical lab.
The rigorous work load resulted in an incredibly close-knit class that constantly pushed each other to succeed through encouragement, critique, and friendly competition.
Most assignments overflowed beyond the lab time and combined with independent studying for quizzes and exams, it was two years of 70+ hour weeks with no breaks for holidays or summer vacation. The rigorous work load resulted in an incredibly close-knit class that constantly pushed each other to succeed through encouragement, critique, and friendly competition.
Classes ranged from User Experience Design to Database Structures to Principles of Mobile Design and many other hyper-focused courses. One of my biggest successes was the web application I conceived and built as a final project entitled TheSocialSchool. The real-time web app enhanced the learning experience for students and teachers alike with powerful tools for both lectures and classroom management.
Early Career (SKUBA)
With a newly earned Bachelor of Science in Web Design and Development I took a dream job at a smaller design shop in New Orleans called Skuba Design Studio that was just starting to transition from traditional media to more web-based projects. Skuba provided me with the opportunity have a larger role within the organization and spearhead a digital evolution that quickly earned the company their first Best in Show from the American Advertising Awards. Shortly thereafter my team at Skuba won a Webby Award for the Follow Your Nola campaign that I helped create from the intial pitch process to launch.
Much like the distribution of mass of an iceberg, proprietary portals and apps made up 80% of our business...
Beyond the award-winning outward facing projects, I had the opportunity to create internal websites and applications for Fortune 500 companies like Verizon, Volkswagen, PwC, TimeWarner, and BNY Mellon. Much like the distribution of mass of an iceberg, proprietary portals and apps made up 80% of our business, with the small remainder being traditional forward-facing B2C websites.
There were many people I had the privilege of working with at Skuba Design Studio, but my great mentor was Owner and Chief Creative Officer, Trace Hayes. Her mentorship taught me how to manage a large creative team, lead client meetings, and create proposals to land large projects.
In the next phase of my career I began to focus more on mobile usability, streamlining business applications, and visualizing large datasets using interfaces like charts, dashboards, and custom reporting tools.
App Focused (RADOLO)
The team at Radolo offered me an opportunity to work exclusively on mobile apps and web applications with a focus on streamlining business processes. At its heart, Radolo was based around several SaaS applications that we built in-house including the project management software Align that is used by thousands of teams around the world. We also provided UX consultation for startups and businesses, designing apps that frequently took outdated business processes and turned them into modern online experiences that not only increased speed and accuracy, but also added new capabilities and features that were not previously possible.
I quickly learned the importance of good UX documentation and how strong initial research resulted in more impactful final products.
Working with these startups appealed to me greatly as we built custom software for many types of businesses ranging from Oil & Gas safety compliance to large-scale Project Management software and even Online Education Tools.
Becoming an expert and learning the inner workings of each industry was critical to understanding user needs. This sometimes required leading multi-day on-site UX discovery sessions with client teams and senior organization members to define User Personas, User Stories, and User Scenario Maps. I quickly learned the importance of good UX documentation and how strong initial research resulted in more impactful final products.
Moving Forward
In my current position as Lead UX Designer at Zehnder Communications, I have created award-winning experiences using the principles I’ve learned throughout my career. Companies we work with are primarily focused in financial services, food & beverage, health care, tourism & hospitality, and education. Integrated marketing campaigns often involve multiple departments to create globally recognized projects. I am incredibly grateful to be working at a company that holds over 500 American Advertising Awards and I look forward to pushing that number even higher in the years to come.