We’re all shaped by the work we do.
Every problem we solve, prepares us for the next one. While some work doesn’t always age like fine wine, it builds a history of our experiences: what we learned, who we worked with, and how each journey lead us to what followed.
Adobe Systems
At Adobe Systems, as Experience Design (XD) Manager for Acrobat, I oversaw the biggest visual and interaction update to Acrobat prior to Creative Cloud: the release of Acrobat X (10).
Acrobat had never been accused of being underpowered — indeed, many of Acrobat's complex features were never discovered or used by users, given the application's poor information architecture, and unusual naming conventions. My team of visual designers, interaction designers, researchers, UX engineers, and UX writers took on the challenge of figuring how to reveal the depth of Acrobat's feature set, and also how to help users learn that these rarely-used features even existed.
Dell Computer
As User Experience Manager at Dell, I was one of two initial external hires tasked with building out an in-house dell.com UX team from scratch. I created and implemented a scalable web project management process and traffic framework for a new team of project managers, and also developed a metric scorecarding system to track usability improvement trends across site iterations. And just to keep busy, I managed the design process for Community Dell (which included Dell's Ideastorm and the Webby Award-winning Studio Dell), designed a built a portfolio and asset management site for Dell's in-house photo studio, and oversaw the redesign of the Dell Executive Briefing Center's (EBC) digital assets.
Microsoft
As a Product Designer on Microsoft’s Exchange Server User Experience team, I touched nearly every aspect of the ubiquitous enterprise application. From working with Program Management to plan and prioritize features, to developing and evangelizing personas in tandem with usability engineers, to building functional Flash prototypes for 1:1 usability studies.
Along with designing and testing new and backlogged features to release with Exchange 2007, I was also tasked with finding new ways to create a more engaging experience for administrators... who, by the way, do actually like an application that's well-designed and easy to use. I primarily oversaw Exchange's OOBE (Out of Box Experience), and spent lots of time focusing on the install + setup + config process.
I was awarded a U.S. Patent for the multi-item, parallel process UI my teammate and I built for Exchange's installer application, and also oversaw design for Exchange's Unified Messaging platform, where a user could dial in to a central number, listen to voice messages, email, and calendar appointments, and perform tasks via voice and touch interface.
