Skills & Experience

User Experience Foundations

My education and work experience provide a solid foundation for my career as a 
User Experience Professional

Macalester College – Undergraduate Studies

Major/Courses and UX Skills Learned:

Economics Major:

  • Analysis of big picture AND details


  • Tracking trends over time



Mathematics Minor/Computer Courses:

  • Knowledge of software architecture and HCI

Psychology Coursework/Tutor:

  • Understanding people


    • Emotions
    • Thinking
    • Motivations

 

Proctor & Gamble Healthcare Division

P&G is a top company in training professionals at interviewing and client interaction

UX Skills Learned:

  • Interviewing stakeholders and users for deeper meaning
  • Experience in listening for clarity and understanding


  • Building stakeholder and client relationships


Loyola University Chicago – Quinlan School of Business

Human Resources Management Coursework


Major/Courses and UX Skills Learned:

User Training Program Design & Training Program Delivery
  • Graduate Assistant Program Scholarship
  • International managerial training design
  • Ongoing user testing and evaluation
  • Focus on user needs and user-centered methods
  • User data analysis and analytics
Organizational Psychology & Organizational Behavior
  • Understanding workplace needs, pain points, and goals

Software Design Consultant to Fortune 500 Firms

My UX Foundation Skills helped launch my successful software design consulting business

Fortune 500 Clients:

  • Montgomery Ward Retail Store Headquarters – Architecture Department
  • Helene Curtis – Product Design & Packaging


  • Argonne National Laboratory – American Institute of Physics

UX Case Studies

Learn about my User Centered Design process, UX Team leadership, and
unique solutions to challenging UX problems

Skills & Experience

Senior UX Interaction Designer
Wheels, Inc. Fleet Management Services

UX Team Leader for the FleetView® Ordering Enterprise Web Application

Wheels, Inc. is a $3 billion B2B Fleet Management Services Company

Sr. User Experience Designer

UX Team Leader for the FleetView® Ordering Enterprise Web App

  • Advocated and expanded use of the Wheels Design System with the UX Team, Engineers, Quality Assurance Teams, and Stakeholders
  • Created sophisticated interactive prototypes

 that improved usability based on user testing and user flows
  • Developed and conducted Miro Online Collaborative Workshops and User Testing Sessions
  • Built bridges with Engineers and QA teams through collaborative problem solving and a range of other initiatives

Team Leadership and Communication to Support my UX Process

  • Presented my UX Designs and Prototypes at Sprint Review and Leadership Reviews
  • Created and led a workshop with Product Owners and Business Analysts on “UX Ideas for More Efficient Team Process”
  • Presented results from user testing and SME workshops to data architects and engineers on development teams (Invited by our Scrum Master)
  • Developed and presented a “Developer Trends” workshop on “The Laws of UX and How to use them to Better Understand Users”

Wheels, Inc. serves Fortune 500 companies with web applications and services for Fleet Managers and Drivers of fleet vehicles. The FleetView® catalog of data intensive web apps supports managing existing fleets and ordering new vehicles.

Skills & Experience

Sr. User Experience Designer for Healthcare & Outcomes Research Projects

Websites, web apps, kiosks, and mobile apps to improve patient health outcomes

My Designs for Successful Health Education Programs helped “Put Patients First” and Supported Hospitals, Medical Schools, and U.S. Government Healthcare Agencies

I have over 20 years of Digital Healthcare Design, Product Development, and User Research experience. My innovative and engaging user experience design for kiosks, websites, and mobile apps helped physicians, nurses, and their patients learn more about chronic illness.

Years

Interactive Programs with my UX Designs

Visits to Hospitals for SME Reviews & User Testing

The “Prescription for Learning” Web App for Healthcare Education

Sr. User Experience Designer for web apps for Doctors and Nurses to help their Patients Learn

Partnering with four hospital-based cancer centers and the National Cancer Institute, I managed the UX Design and User Testing for an innovative, tablet-based learning program for the CancerHelp Institute.

  • Designed and conducted in-depth interviews and usability testing.
  • Created personas, wireframes, and mobile interactive prototypes for testing with both healthcare staff and cancer patients.
  • Lead team exercises with post-it notes, markers, and note cards for ideation, storyboarding, and user journey sessions.
  • Designed User Flow Diagrams and User Journey Maps for Patients and Health Professional. These were presented to cancer center stakeholders. (See examples at right)
  • Managed “Content Distribution Partner” relationship with the National Cancer Institute
  • Conducted SME Reviews at client hospitals nationwide

Key Skills/Experience

  • Sr. User Experience Designer for mobile smartphone and tablet education program
  • Designed connections to Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems for communication links
  • Designed and reported on Google Analytics and Tag Manager for custom cancer center websites

Click on an image to view larger

The Healthcare Team at Essentia Health, where I conducted 4 days of on-site usability testing and stakeholder in-depth interviews and SME Reviews with doctors, nurses, and healthcare administrators. These sessions helped to identify over 17 separate UX/UI areas for improvement for both the user interface and the usability of the website education program.

I presented the UX results of this program with both an Oral and Poster presentation at CPEN, the Cancer Health Education National Conference in 2017 in Cleveland, OH.
View My CPEN Poster Presentation

My UX Team Leadership for the CancerHelp Online® Website Program included site visits to the NCI and subscribing Cancer Centers for user testing, SME Reviews, in-depth interviews, and stakeholder presentations.

CancerHelp Online®
Sr. User Experience Designer of Custom Websites for Cancer Centers

UX Team Leader of website design and development for a mobile friendly patient education website subscription program used by doctors, nurses, and other health professionals to improve patient health outcomes.

My Sr. User Experience Design on this unique program started with initial product design and continued with prototyping and final design through national roll-out. The custom website program included ongoing design and education content updates of patient health information licensed from the National Cancer Institute. The subscription program was successful and involved site visits, user testing, and stakeholder presentations at 8 cancer centers nationwide with a strong user centered design approach.

These site visits for Web Development and UX Design included:

    • Rutgers University Cancer Institute of New Jersey
    • AdventHealth Cancer Institute – Serving Orlando Florida Hospital and 11 other Central Florida hospital locations
    • Essentia Health Cancer Centers serving Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota
    • Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Cancer Program
  • Responsible for all user experience design including, user testing, persona development, site maps, wireframes, and interactive prototypes for the website program
  • Usability Testing onsite at cancer center remote locations resulting in usability and user interface (UI) improvements
  • Designed backend user data collection and managed Google Analytics and analytics reporting

Key Skills/Experience

  • Designed website based interactive prototypes for usability testing and stakeholder presentations
  • Designed website user interface to be mobile friendly for patients in English and Spanish including multi-cultural custom content
  • Presented website UX Design and Research results at national health education conferences

Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine Managing Health Education Software Development

Sr. User Experience Designer and Co-Principal Investigator for two multi-year National Institutes of Health Studies

The study included software development of an interactive, multi-media, bilingual, kiosk based education software program for cancer and diabetes patients. The study was for the NIH and the Agency for Research and Quality (AHRQ).

  • Managed all UX design, UX research, user testing, site maps, wireframes, and interactive prototypes for the software
  • Advocated successfully for the user when user testing revealed major changes were needed with the user interface
  • Managed ongoing SME reviews of the UX with physicians over the 6 year multi-year, multi-site program
  • Designed, engineered, and maintained the education touchscreen desk kiosks for patient use
  • Managed backend user data collection, all user analytics, and data reporting

Key Skills/Experience

  • Planned, executed, and managed UX Research for 2 separate multi-year studies
  • Designed interactive prototypes for user testing with cancer and diabetes patients in English and Spanish
  • Designed custom user data collection and analysis tools and made regular presentations of the data

Ortho Biotech (J&J Pharmaceuticals) Healthcare Education Software

UX Design and Research for Multimedia Software Design and Kiosk Rollout

User Experience Designer and Project Manager for an innovative, interactive software design and nationwide kiosk rollout project for Ortho Biotech.

  • Design, user testing, site maps, wireframes, and prototypes for the software
  • Site visits, SME reviews, and presentations to healthcare professionals at 40 hospitals nationwide

Key Skills/Experience

  • Strong collaboration with Ortho Biotech Marketing Managers (stakeholders), subject matter experts, and software developers
  • Designed custom user data collection and analysis tools
  • Designed interactive prototypes for user testing and stakeholder presentations

Skills & Experience

UX/UI Design Consultant for Architects, Engineers, Designers, & Scientists

My software designs and research helped Fortune 500 professionals accomplish their core mission

Successful User Experience Design for
Fortune 500 Clients

I have over 10 years experience designing interactive, multi-user programs for Fortune 500 firms and the U.S. Department of Energy at Argonne National Laboratory.

Years Consulting

UX/UI Design Clients

Engaged Professionals

Montgomery Ward & Co. Architecture and Construction Department

“Software so easy, even a CEO can use it”

UX Product Design and Research, development, and management of interactive, network-based, multi-user programs for their workgroups to collaborate.

  • UX Design for Executive Decision Support Tool used by their CEO and Board of Directors
  • Designed database backend for photos, and architecture and sales data for all 300 retail stores
  • Planned, executed, and managed software and hardware upgrade for 80 person department

Key Skills/Experience

  • Consulting relationship with architects, managers, and IT
  • Software management and data updates for mission critical app
  • Dashboards for analysis and decision making

Argonne National Laboratory

UX Product Design for Scientists & Office Staff

For Argonne Labs, I designed a new program from scratch for the American Institute of Physics (AIP). This network-based program allowed their workgroups, including scientists and secretaries, to collaborate on their core mission of publishing scientific journals.

Key Skills/Experience

  • UX Product Design and Development of Interactive Workgroup Collaboration Software
  • Ongoing software management and improvements for efficiency and effectiveness
  • Communication with scientists, laboratory managers, information technology, and office staff

Helene Curtis: UX for Product Design Department

Designed easy-to-use, multi-user, network software for project managment and collaboration. Software supported the Helene Curtis product design and print advertising departments.

Key Skills/Experience

  • Agile UX Design, user testing and interactive prototypes
  • User Flow Diagrams and Site Maps
  • Designed sophisticated, interactive module for managers to easily generate monthly, quarterly, and yearly reports

Interactive Protypes

I like to create prototypes early in the design and consulting process.

Key benefits:

  • My prototypes can be paper, wireframe, or pixel perfect
  • Useful for user testing
  • Great for gaining insights about features that don’t work for users
  • Often can be loaded on a tablet or smartphone for remote testing

Wireframes for Web & Tablet Apps

I create wireframes at various points in my UX process. I sometimes make wireframes as an ideation step as an alternative to sketching. It helps to see how a screen looks and to get a rough idea of the UI and user navigation.

The benefits of my wireframe drawings include:

  • Easy to create
  • Their rough look often encourages suggestions for improvements
  • Useful to share with design/development team
  • Easy to make interactive for user testing
  • Helpful to show stakeholders and managers for input

Dashboards for User Data Analysis

With my UX Design for a large multi-site web app and Saas product launch, the user interviews revealed that a way to see highlights of the program would be helpful. The web app was targeted primarily for tablets and my design included a sophisticated cloud database backend. With all the user data being saved to the cloud app, it was straitforward to design dashboard screens. The dashboard’s tables, charts, and graphs gave managers and department heads a useful overview.

Key benefits:

  • Dashboards update automatically from the user data
  • Can be printed by users as a report
  • An easy way to get a view of the big picture of how a program is progressing

My UX Product Design Process

My UX Product Design Process

The following icons show the UX steps and deliverables that I use with my UX projects for mobile apps, web apps, and websites. As a project proceeds, I like to create UX deliverables such as Personas, Empathy Maps, User Flow Diagrams, and User Journey Maps. These help the UX team, stakeholders, and managers to get a better understanding of the design and development project. This can include seeing where pain points and goals/opportunies might exist. I communicate my research findings through reports, webinars, and inperson presentations.

User Interviews

Research

User Testing

Personas

Storyboards

Ideation

Pain Points and Goals

Wireframing

User Flow Diagrams

User Journey Maps

Interactive Prototypes

Final Design

View My UX Design Web App Portfolio including Personas, Wireframes, User Flow Diagram, Journey Map, Prototype Screens, and More…

My Broad Range of Industry Client Experience:

My broad background as a UX Product Designer includes designing digital products for healthcare, enterprise, and B2B organizations in many diverse industries and leading research to advance user experience.

Consumer
Products

Personal Care Products

Academic Journal Publishing

Healthcare
Research
& Education

Retail Store Headquarters Architecture Dept.

U.S. Department of Energy

Pharmaceutical
Division of Johnson & Johnson

Goverment Healthcare Agency

Healthcare
Education

Goverment Healthcare Agency

Healthcare
Research

Goverment Healthcare Agency

Healthcare
Education

Healthcare
Education

Healthcare
Education

Healthcare
Education

Healthcare
Education

Healthcare
Education

Healthcare
Education

Professional Societies and Associations:

I am a member of UX Design and Interaction Design Professional Associations which connect me to other professionals and keep me up-to-date with best practices and industry trends.

Professional Association for
Design
Sustaining Member

Interaction Design Professionals Association
Member

User Experience Professionals Association
Sustaining Member

Nielsen Norman Group
Seminars & Ongoing Education