Profile

I am a human-centered designer with the ability to think and act on the surface to the core of a product or service. I focus on problem framing and continual discovery, including research and co-design with users, to creatively solve problems and make solutions real via rapid prototyping. I have over fifteen years of experience designing and building software.

I have been focused on digital transformation of federal hiring for the last three years in my work for The Lab at OPM. I believe a federal government infused with human-centered design will one day consistently make evidenced-based policy decisions informed by qualitative and quantitative research done with citizens.

Skills

Design discovery
Co-creation workshops
Interviews
Content inventory
Service design
Journey maps
Service blueprints
Project plans
UX design
Information architecture
Prototypes & usability tests
Design Systems

Technical

  • HTML5
  • Javascript
  • Sass, CSS
  • Adobe Creative Cloud
  • InVision
  • Sketch
  • Git & GitHub
  • Rails
  • Ruby

Experience

U.S. Digital Service

Washington, DC

Digital Service Expert

June 2019 - Current (11 months)
  • Contributed to the completion of the first pilots of the Subject Matter Expert Qualification Assessments (SME-QA) process with USDS teammates and the Office of Personnel Management.
  • Researched and redesigned the job announcement template used on usajobs.gov for positions using the SME-QA process.
  • Co-designed and built smeqa.usds.gov which guides Human Resource specialists through the SME-QA process.
  • Conducted multiple rounds of design research with subject-matter-experts, hiring managers, and job applicants to build team understanding of the experience of the SME-QA process from the context of both the front and back stage participants.
  • Helped procure a scheduling tool for scheduling applicant interviews.
  • Helped evangelize the SME-QA process within the federal government by speaking twice at the Partnership for Public Service and AIGA.
  • The SME-QA process pilots contributed towards the Developing a Workforce for the 21st Century CAP Goal and culminated in a memo allowing and encouraging all agencies to use the process as well as an additional round of pilots.

The Lab at OPM

Washington, DC

Designer

October 2015 - June 2019 (3 years, 8 months)
  • Lead designer on OPM's USAJOBS project responsible for digital transformation of federal hiring.
  • Created the "American Discovery Trail" initiative, a strategic and operational project plan, to streamline the process by which users of USAJOBS find and apply to jobs.
  • Executed the project plan, leading a team of 2 expert designers in designing, prototyping, and delivering 6 key releases in 2016 that improved the user experience including reducing the exit rate during job applications from 7.3% to 5% in 2016.
  • Pushed for integration with GSA's login.gov to improve authentication, the top user complaint, and designed the user experience which has led to the lowest level of help desk tickets in the history of the USAJOBS site.
  • Analyzed existing design methods including Human Centered Design, Design Thinking, Lean UX, Agile development, and design sprint frameworks in order to revise team models which resulted in a 1 week reduction in the design and development cycle of all releases.
  • Built and maintained the USAJOBS Design System, a fork of the US Web Design System, that governs 3 products managed by the USAJOBS Program Office (usajobs.gov, openopps.usajobs.gov, and agencyportal.usajobs.gov).
  • Led a project that demonstrates the initial capability of an automated hiring advisor for managers, a key milestone of CAP goal 3 (Developing a Workforce for the 21st Century) of the President’s Management Agenda.
  • Performed ethnographic research with over 60 individuals to understand the scope and depth of the problems hiring managers face with the federal hiring process.
  • Conducted co-design sessions with end-users and stakeholders using Human-Centered Design methodology such as building a journey map, paper prototyping, and "How might we..." exercises.
  • Designed and built a fully functional prototype under 90 days in 3 phases, iterating after each round of usability testing with users and feedback from OPM and OMB leadership.
  • Created and presented a 68-page report to senior OPM and OMB leadership detailing the research insights, usability test findings, and user interface improvements made to the hiring advisor prototype.
  • Provided additional design services to Lab customers including creating and leading educational classes on human-centered design.
  • Helped design project discovery workshops at the Portland, OR Veterans Affairs Hospital and co-created a prototype of a patient record application.
  • Helped develop a design education class on Problem Framing which has been delivered several times in The Lab during Design School sessions in 2018.
  • Represented The Lab and USAJOBS at the Interagency meeting on Design and Public Policy held at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in July of 2016.

EightShapes, LLC

Washington, DC

Senior Interaction Designer

November 2011 - July 2015 (3 years, 9 months)
  • Contributed to the creation and management of the design system that allowed Marriott to make their site responsive and to drive reservations on mobile devices.
  • Helped design and code accessible forms for advance search and portions of the reservation path.
  • Helped design and code the documentation for the design system used by all designers and developers at Marriott.
  • Provided support to Marriott development team in understanding new responsive design concepts and tools such as responsive images, breakpoints, and performance budgets for mobile devices.
  • Led a project to make hotel restaurant, spa, and golf sites responsive.
  • Designed and produced a prototype of the membership renewal process for NCARB.
  • Conducted extensive user interviews to determine the qualitative value of the design to NCARB members.
  • Managed the project including responsibility for budget and time tracking.
  • Designed and built many of the responsive components behind Cisco's Unified Computing Servers product category.
  • This work seeded a responsive prototyping toolkit which provided Cisco with many responsive and reusable components that have been used throughout their site.
  • Responsible for stabilizing and enhancing the EightShapes Blocks prototyping framework.
  • Leveraging bleeding-edge ES6 modules to properly segment the development of functionality.

Microsoft

Mountain View, CA

Senior Software Engineer, Business Solutions Engineering/Network & Cloud

November 2008 - May 2011 (2 years, 7 months)
  • Interaction designer for VoIP SIP URI provisioning in the Tellme Platform Central product.
  • Wrote a functional specification defining the interaction for several user roles in provisioning SIP URIs with each telephony service provider.
  • Lead software engineer responsible for implementing the Tellme Platform Central product.
  • Designed, documented, and prototyped the user interface infrastructure using Ruby on Rails.
  • Contributed to the on-time execution of ten releases starting in 2009 and including shipping the general availability release in 2010.
  • Provided technical leadership for the development team including mentoring junior developers, creating code review guidelines, and implementing a continuous integration system for testing our code base.
  • Contributed large portions of the analytics and telephony provisioning features of the product working with the lead UX designer to refine those features.

Tellme Networks

Mountain View, CA 94041

Senior Software Engineer, Platform Engineering

October 2001 - October 2008 (7 years)
  • Interaction designer for internal VoIP traffic management.
  • Responsible for web interface design for all VoIP related systems.
  • Conducted contextual inquiry interviews with users observing their behavior in context of the operations center in order to create use cases scenarios.
  • Co-designed, built, and deployed an internal web application for viewing call traffic on the Tellme Network.
  • Employed small multiples to allow operators to visualize inbound call traffic trends for thousands of toll-free numbers.
  • Co-designed, built, and deployed an internal web application for the provisioning of all phone numbers used on the Tellme Network.
  • Defined the procedure for provisioning new SIP URIs and reduced the steps required in the interface to three.
  • Enhanced application with personalization features, which reduced navigation, guided new users, and improved workflow.
  • Successfully pushed management for more design resources and a refocus on user needs as a way to improve the productivity of operations center personnel.
  • Co-designed and built a system that provided a common framework for managing the software in the Tellme Network.
  • Responsible for leading a specialized team of three in addressing complex and critical engineering endeavors.

Education

George Washington University - Washington, DC
Bachelor of Arts, American Literature

Extended professional experience, references, and code samples available by request.