I am a design leader, strategist, researcher, instructor, mentor, and bridge builder with over 25 years of experience in UX and product design.
I lead, manage, and mentor teams, build processes and practices, collaborate with executives, and contribute individually as a researcher, service designer, and product strategist.
Work examples
Work examples below are from my time as an Executive Design Director at Designit. For confidentiality reasons I am not able to show complete deliverables, but I am happy to share what I can over videoconference for these or other work projects.
Research and design for mobile app targeting new employees at CBRE-managed properties
User research and design for services targeting in-home caregivers
Service and process design plus concepts for a collaborative recruiting management application
Concepts for consumer app to increase customer engagement and identify new business models and functionality.
Design and development for a user interface used by scientists to measure the concentration of dangerous gases in a semiconductor fab.
Sector: Commercial real estate
Project duration: 9 weeks
Role: Design Director
Responsibilities:
Team and client management
Project plan creation
Concept and creative direction
User research advisor
The process for employees transitioning to a property that will be managed by CBRE can be inefficient and confusing, and strains the CBRE transition team.
I led a design team to create a mobile app and supporting process that eases the transition for newly badged employees before, during and after transition.
We began by interviewing CBRE stakeholders and executives to determine what success would look like. Our collaboration included facilitating an interactive session to identify and prioritize opportunities.
Smoothing out the employee onboarding experience
“A new hire will receive approximately 37 email touch points from 22 different sources through the onboarding process.”
“New employees are getting too little information, then a deluge of information close to the hire date, which is overwhelming.”
Desk and user research uncovered problems and opportunities that helped us shape a vision which streamlines communication and keeps users engaged rather than overwhelmed.
Next we created concepts and then an information architecture and UX workflow model. Our team included a talented visual designer who created two style directions.
Our UX approach focused on simplicity and visibility, two key needs that emerged from user research. Target users were new employees who had either just been hired, or who had previously worked for the company who owns the campus but had been re-badged as CBRE employees. These people were going through a combination of excitement and anxiety, so we wanted the onboarding tool to put them at ease and hold their hands every step of the way up to the all important Day 1 of employment.
We allowed users to perform pre-Day 1 tasks in whatever they wanted, while keeping dependencies intact. A countdown provided visibility as well as conveying a sense of positive excitement. Simple questionnaires, including an all-important “I don’t know” choice where appropriate, helped employees make progress while also informing CBRE managers about where people may be getting stuck or need clarification.
We handed off our design workflows, a visual design system, and specification notes to CBRE’s internal development team, with whom we had collaborated throughout to ensure viability, for implementation. CBRE created a roadmap for deployment, and shared the design with heads of other global regions.
Sector: Executive consulting + recruiting
Project duration: 7 weeks
Role: Design Director
Responsibilities:
Team management
Project plan creation
Conducted user research
Led creation of journey map and
research analysis
Directed concept creation
Designing a North Star for global executives
Egon Zehnder, a premier executive recruiting firm, had a collection of mismatched manual and digital tools that they wanted to move into a unified digital environment.
They had a vision in mind, but their global leadership team didn’t always see eye-to-eye.
I directed a team of designers in discovery and design phases, and led research with Egon executives and consultants from around the globe to identify pain points and opportunities. This included facilitating several sessions with leadership to define and prioritize requirements and unify their vision.
Next our team designed UX concepts for the next-generation digital environment to make the vision concrete and align our client’s team.
The end result was a vision for Egon’s digital environment. It included a personalized dashboard that provides an overview of a consultant’s projects, tasks assigned to them, major milestones and access to people, information and tools.
Visibility into project health empowers each user to prioritize their time and ask for help when needed.
We also designed collaboration tools that allows consultant teams to better work together and reduce redundant work
Sector: Life sciences
Project duration: 2 years
Role: Design Director
Responsibilities:
Team management
Requirements definition
Conducted user research
Design concept creation
Design direction
Simplifying safety through science
Picarro serves the life sciences industry through equipment that measures the amounts of elements in the air we breathe. My team and I worked with Picarro to design and develop their flagship product for the semiconductor industry. Picarro equipment, using laser spectroscopy, takes sequenced samples of air from various parts of a semiconductor fab and detects emissions, which at certain levels can damage expensive equipment or be unsafe to breathe.
My team designed Picarro’s next-generation desktop application that allows adminstrators to program detection thresholds and associated alarms, and for scientists to be able to analyze collected data. Our overseas team worked with Picarro to develop and launch the front-end, and integrate with the back-end.
We also worked with Picarro to design a vision for an in-vehicle dashboard product, including setup, driving mode, and analysis mode. This product uses similar technology but gathers air samples while driving around a campus, such as an oil and gas refinery.
In Monitoring mode, scientists can look at real-time and historical data to look for trends, and compare multiple gases at once.
We designed a visual programming tool for creating sequenced “recipes” that specify the order and frequency in which the equipment took air samples from dozens of available ports. Each port can be assigned to testing for a particular gas.
Sector: Healthcare
Project duration: 14 weeks
Role: Project Owner + Design Director
Responsibilities:
User research and analysis
Instructor
Trainer
Report author
Providing care for caregivers
The SEIU 775 Benefits Group wants to improve the lives and working conditions of home caregivers everywhere.
I led a research study for SEIU 775 which included mentoring their in-house service designer. I delivered a training class to SEIU’s product team, then helped create a user research plan and interview guide. I mentored their researcher and conducted in-home site visits with her, which allowed me to train her interviewing skills as well as participate directly in research analysis.
The outcome was a detailed user research report that provided insights into the goals, needs, and frustrations of caregivers, which SEIU used as a foundation for identifying new services and benefits for their constituents.
With the help of a visual designer, I communicated the research findings as a collection of insights, and visualizations that showed a typical day in the life for various personas. One key finding was a “typical” day rarely follows plans due to one of a number of potential unforeseen circumstances.
In-person ethnographic research with caregivers and the people they care for provided invaluable context into the challenges caregivers face, particular around balancing mandated work-hour limitations with spontaneous patient needs.
We mapped out a typical planned workday and contrasted it with what an “actual” day often became, as unplanned events were the norm, not the exception for this user population.
This was one of the most meaningful projects of my working career. It was a privilege to be able to meet with and serve this selfless group of caregivers who do so much for others with very little pay or recognition in return.
Identifying new engagement paradigms and revenue models for the AT&T consumer app
AT&T wants to move digital customers from a non-engaged, transactional relationship to an experience. I conducted research that led to the following hypotheses, then created concepts for engagement.
Historical data and information is interesting, but if AT&T and AI can help customers take action, that will be compelling
The stakes are high for people who work from home and rely on connectivity to do their job effectively
The global health and wellness market reached $5.6 trillion in 2022. AT&T could engage customers by helping them achieve connectivity-related wellness goals.
The outcome was four directions for AT&T to explore further to assess business viability and revenue models.
I tied the explorations back to my research hypotheses, looking for contexts that would inspire more consistent usage outside of simply checking for AT&T hotspots or paying bills.
Most of my work has been as part of a collaborative team, but for this project I was the sole resource from start to finish.
About Me
I’ve been told my superpower is my calming ability to collaborate with anyone, and defuse conflict in order to achieve resolution.
My leadership approach is that I serve the people who report to me. It’s my job to remove obstacles and create a safe workspace for them.
I have steadily migrated northward throughout my life. I grew up in Los Angeles, lived for 15 years in the San Francisco Bay Area, and then moved to Portland, Oregon in 2005.
I am a proud parent of an English Springer Spaniel named Winston, a brown dog-of-many-breeds named Gibson, a black cat named Hercules, and three humans.
I love to travel and many years ago lived briefly in rural South Africa, where I taught English, science and history to fifth graders. My youngest daughter was born in Ethiopia.