About me

ABOUT ME

Curiosity, craft, & design culture

Who doesn't love an alliteration? These three C's are key to establishing design thinking and an innovative approach in any organization. It allows you to scale efficiently and pivot without catastrophic risk.

Leadership style

I often use the phrase “hive mind”, meaning that we work together as a cross-discipline team to understand the customer problem and their “jobs to be done”. The team can then root their practice in elegant, scalable design solutions. I extend this mindset beyond Design by building partnerships across Product, Research, Content, Accessibility (A11y), and Engineering so that we are “hive mind” and working to the same goal.

  • Respect and honor the work/life balance, as burn out is real.
  • Be curious, be playful, and never stop exploring.
  • Mentor others on their career journey
  • Own your sh*t and be accountable. Craft and quality matter.
  • The customer is your boss.

Design principles

Design Principles are essentially an organization's “north star”. They are a set of guidelines that form a solid foundation which can establish trust and loyalty with customers and can help teams with decision making. Put the customer at the center of everything you create—from the visual to the verbal. Earn the trust of your audience and understand their needs, wants, goals, and questions before offering what you think is a valuable solution.

  • Lead with customer benefits
  • Make it clear, simple, scannable
  • Move the user forward
  • Write like you speak
  • Don't let the design get in the way
  • Users are adept at seeing a way to recover, so be open and flexible
  • Be there for the user when they're ready to commit

Design guidelines & principles

A content first approach

The words must align with the language of your customers. Messaging must be intentional, clear, and simple. Language is crucial to the digital experiences we build. When content is unclear, unfocused, or too long, it slows customers down and makes it harder for them to be successful. Just as we strive to create designs and functionality to look and act cohesively, written communication must also be intentional and consistent.

Create aesthetic appeal

The visual style must feel authentic to your demographic and market segment. Create an approachable design for customers in which the visual space draws the user in. Provide your users with strong way-finding so they understand the depth and breadth of what the product offers. Fresh and contemporary UI can create moments of delight and memorability by using micro-interactions, animations, and clear calls to action as a way to engage the user through a page or flow.

Experiment & iterate

Defining success metrics in the discovery phase is key to understanding if a solution is hitting the mark. It is critical that the Research, Product, and Design teams are tracking metrics so they can hypothesize, experiment, and iterate on a solution to achieve the desired results. Product, Design, and Operation leadership must support cross discipline teams with the time and creative space for these iterative cycles. Experimentation leads to innovation.

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