In addition to my range of programming skills, my true passion and talents lie in User Experience design and qualitative user research.
I do everything I can to listen to users in order to figure out what they want and need. I ask follow-up questions and clarify what is meant by asking users to "think out loud" so I can take on their perspective. My experience from Cornell's Design Thinking course and IDEO project is a strong influence on my approach to innovation. Ultimately, it can be small bugs that cause frustration and the simplest features that create a sense of delight.
Accessibility means making something that is equally easy to use and understand for everyone. I have solid experience increasing accessibility and ease of understanding from my web projects for multiple Washington State government agencies. When we make something easier to see, hear, touch, feel, and understand, it's better for everyone, and it might just help bring us all together in the process.
I design to the latest guidelines and standards for accessibility, so you'll never have to worry about font sizes, color contrasts, or alt attributes.
From pencil sketches to dynamic high-fidelity prototypes, from individual UI components to high-level flows, I know how to iterate based on feedback and organize content. I have designed and developed multiple web UI components that simplify complicated searches and save people time by preventing long scrolling lists. When I start on something new, I love the sense of possibility and openness that comes from sketching. Iterating and testing with real people helps me narrow down a huge list of options to the most promising finalists.
I believe in clean and clear designs with an appearance that matches the voice and personality of the product or service. Ease-of-use is a top priority and I do my best to incorporate the concepts of intrinsic understanding. I understand how colors and fonts can guide our emotions while alignment and spacing can guide our focus.
Survey design and distribution, data analysis, user interviews, literature review
I have extensive experience with the latest HTML, CSS, Bootstrap 4, JavaScript, JQuery, and JQuery UI. I believe in clean and elegant code and a simple and clear user interface to match.
// A designer that can codeIn addition to human-centered design and front-end development, I have some experience with native mobile application development for both iOS and Android as well as Java apps and full-stack development on multiple platforms including .NET MVC and LAMP architectures. I have also worked with relational and non-relational databases. Check out my GitHub repositories to learn more.
Object-Oriented principles and techniques, Java, C#, .NET MVC and .NET Core, VB.NET, C/C++, design patterns, mobile and desktop, Java Swing
SQL and MySQL relational databases, AWS SimpleDB, stored procedures and functions
Deep understanding of Apple Human Interface Guidelines, some experience with Objective-C/Swift, Xcode UI layout and SwiftUI, MVC architecture
Android Studio, Android SDK, XML UI layout, access/respond to sensor data, OpenGL_ES, MVC architecture
I am currently seeking employment in the areas of UI+UX design or research. My professional interests include user interface and user experience research and design, human-centered design, IDEO Design Thinking, health care, education, linguistics, robots and humans, perceived performance, and groupware. I love doing user research to find out what people in different roles truly need and feel so we can design, test, and build helpful and easy to use solutions for them. My ultimate goal is to make software easier to use in order to provide greater comprehension of and access to knowledge for everyone.
Master of Professional Studies in Information Science (May 2016)
Specialization - Human-Computer Interaction and UI/UX Design and Research
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science (May 2015)
Minors - Math and Physics
University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA
Download or View my résumé here (PDF):
These are my favorite projects from my career so far, most of which has been in IT in the Washington State Government. To see more, please see my LinkedIn page .
UI+UX Design, Responsive Website and web app, jQuery, Bootstrap 4, information architecture
view project
UI+UX Design, Responsive Website, Bootstrap 5, PHP and dynamic content, information organization, product and brand marketing, vector graphics and image editing
For this project, I designed and built a new informational and marketing website from scratch for a local gourmet Caesar dressing business.
go to website(Project writeup coming soon...)
These are my favorite projects from my graduate work at Cornell University.
An overview of the benefits of Dark Mode, the history of the concept, and how to support it in your website with CSS and Media Queries
Read Article on Medium.comMy search for a simple, quiet, comfortable mouse.
Read my reviewDesign Thinking is the creative mindset and process for human-centered design used at IDEO to create some of the most intuitive and best-designed products on the market including Apple's first computer mouse. Design Thinking is about creativity, openness to crazy ideas, and building things quickly to make progress.
At Cornell University, I had the opportunity to take a grad-level course that teaches Design Thinking to students. After only the first day of class, I knew I would thrive and always be delighted. The creative and fun-but-focused atmosphere matched extremely well with my high-energy enthusiasm. During the course, we learned to start with crazy ideas, defer judgement, create empathy with real users, build prototypes fast to get things done, and to fail early and often to learn lessons early.
At the end of the course, many students in the class, including myself applied for the chance at a fantastic opportunity: to work directly with IDEO to help them redesign OpenIDEO, their free platform for solving the world's challenges. My hard work paid off and I was invited along with a select few other applicants to San Francisco and Palo Alto where we spent a week innovating and creating for the "extreme users" we interviewed and for the world.
Read the full story on OpenIdeo's website .
After our return, we got feedback from IDEO that they loved all of our designs with a few favorites in the mix including my team's design for a "Weekend Immersion" meetup where participants would experience similar conditions and environments to the challenges in order to build empathy with those facing the challenges.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions about my work, research, or education experience. Please know that I am seeking employment in the areas of UI+UX design or research. I am also available for consultation in the greater Olympia, WA area.
