Blake Williford, Phd Email & Phone Number

United States

Freelance UX design, UI design, UX research, graphic design, illustration, and branding services with 10+ years of experience working on projects for more than 50 clients ranging from startups to more established corporations. Generally assisting with all stages of the user experience design process from concepting and strategy to research, data-driven.

Arlington, Virginia, US

+ Taught a 6-month UX / UI design bootcamp of 40+ students. This bootcamp had classes 3 times a week and covered the entire design process from UX research to UX design, UI / visual design, and even front-end development and prototyping with code. The coding portion was my own curriculum developed from scratch.+ I've additionally lectured at: University of.

Stanford, US

+ Led UX / UI design for this educational technology startup focused on providing mentorship and passion project experiences for high school students+ Facilitated a rebranding and visual refresh of website, web app, and native app leading to a more consistent and cohesive brand identity and design system+ Conducted interviews and usability testing with.

Bradenton, Florida, US

+ Led UX / UI design for this educational technology startup (virtual classroom tool).+ Rebranded company and collaborated with mid-level UX designer to produce a more consistent and cohesive style design system.+ Designed and built company's front-facing brochure site (https://www.chalkast.org) (HTML/CSS/JS)+ Conducted semi-structured interviews and.

College Station, TX, US

+ During and after completing my PhD I led design and research on three innovative educational applications that leverage sketching and AI.+ Led the design and development of “Sketchtivity”, an educational platform for teaching the fundamentals of design sketching. I have won awards for my game design and research related to this project and published at.

Atlanta, GA, US

+ I led visual design, UX design, front-end development, and data visualization for this startup.+ Helped company raise more than $450,000 in venture capital with numerous interations of VC pitch decks and helped company win "Best Startup" at Healthdatapalooza 2016.+ Designed and prototyped innovative visualizations for a predictive analytics dashboard.

San Jose, CA, US

+ Worked with Holger Winnemoeller in Creative Intelligence Lab of Adobe Research to design and develop a novel creativity-support tool for novices. The tool leverages touch interactions and modularization of Photoshop commands to make digital image manipulation easier for novices.+ Filed for US Patent as co-inventor.

Redmond, Washington, US

+ Worked with both Microsoft Research and an applied research / product group AI and Ink to conceptualize, design, and develop a novel sketch-based educational application and conducted a user study with 20 participants.+ Filed for 2 US patents as lead inventor.+ Published findings at Creativity and Cognition 2019 in San Diego, CA.

London, England, GB

+ Collaborated on several client projects for the Atlanta studio of this service design firm. Work involved UX research, interviews, journey mapping, persona creation, sketching, wireframing, prototyping and visual design. + Conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 USAA employees and customers, and synthesized research to design a mortgage buying.

Atlanta, Georgia, US

Assisting sophomore undergrad Industrial Design students in their main studio course. Responsibilities include helping them with research, ideation, giving them constructive feedback, and grading. Used my knowledge and experience to ensure they get in to good habits, break bad habits, and are dedicated to process.

Atlanta, Georgia, US

Designed a sketching ability paper test to measure sketching abilityAdministered spatial reasoning tests, surveys, and my own sketching ability test to 170+ Mechanical Engineering freshmen in an effort to gain baseline data for the NSF grant PerSketchTivity. Work was part of the iDREEM lab under Dr. Julie Linsey and was closely related to my master's thesis.

New York, NY, US

Hybrid UX Designer role in which I designed and prototyped a new profile system concept for StubHub users called “My Hub”. Worked closely with a Project Manager intern to conceptualize a site-wide personalization framework, with the goal of making StubHub a more personally catered experience for event discovery and planning. Assisted UX team on several.

Philadelphia, PA, US

Assisted UX team in the design of two responsive websites for national brands during a 3-month contract position with information architecture, wireframes, task-flows, and sitemaps.

Atlanta, Georgia, US

+ Led the design services of this growing digital agency as their first in-house designer. + Rebranded the company and its entire physical and digital presence, leading to a more clear, concise, and cohesive brand identity. + Directed a wide variety of design projects for over 30 local and national clients involving responsive web design, mobile site/app.

+ Supported design team and worked on a variety of commerical LED lighting products. I learned a tremendous amount about manufacturing processes, real-world design constraints, and the competitive lighting industry. I also developed concepts for a family of products for InVUE, reimagining their high-end outdoor lighting brand.

Sandy Springs, Georgia, US

+ I helped develop the “Go-bare” product, a clear adhesive skin that protects phones and other mobile devices from scratches. I designed custom and very precise templates (within 1mm) for the various phones coming out on the market at the time - including iPhone 4, HTC Evo 4G, HTC Intruder, Samsung Galaxy, Samsung Wave, and LG Ally

M.S., Human-Computer Interaction

Doctor Of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Computer Science (Human-Computer Interaction)

B.S., Industrial Design

High School, 6Th Subject - Computer Science