Lean UX, rapid prototyping, and contextual research. Crafted next generation experiences blending shopping and media.

Changing the way the world shops through lean UX, rapid prototyping, and contextual research.

At Farmers I led interaction design on some of the highest impact platforms across the company, including online insurance quoting, claims, the mobile app, and the homepage. During these 3 years I:• Gained substantial experience in A/B testing and usability testing which I applied to creating hypotheses and testing assumptions about customer needs and wants.• Built significant skills in rapid prototyping to test hypotheses, craft animations, communicate with developers, present to leadership, and discover new possibilities through the making process.• Demonstrated extremely strong improvements in key business metrics through the results of a number of A/B tests.

Huge Inc. / Huge Labs / Togather.comI applied the interaction design fundamentals I learned working in the Huge Inc. UX School to gathering authors and readers together at Togather!Togather is a startup incubating at Huge Inc. It is a free service that allows authors to fansource their book tours.Togather launched in private beta in mid-August. I helped design new features and communities to prepare Togather for its next big step - the public release!

Summer 2012The Huge Inc. UX SchoolThis was an intense summer of hands-on interaction design training and work at Huge Inc. At the heart of Huge is a passionate pursuit of delivering best in class user experiences.I had the amazing opportunity to learn the fundamentals of interaction design from top-notch design professionals in Huge’s UX School. Throughout the school I also formally applied my new skills to the design of a real product; complete with a project brief, client meetings, and a final presentation.The days were filled with lessons, design exercises, and the design of our product. After being presented with our project brief, our four person team then proceeded to address the project as an agency would – only we had to do so under a compressed timeframe. The project began with an analysis of the competitive landscape and target-user research interviews. Next, we prioritized our product’s features and conducted stakeholder interviews. Then the real fun began; we sketched preliminary concepts and provided Huge with our vision for the product. Over time we refined this vision through frequent critiques of our work and usability testing. We continued refining the design of our product up until the last week, when we delivered a final presentation of our work.Although we met daily with designers at Huge in order to have our work critiqued, Huge trusted us with the design and strategy of the product. It was an amazing learning experience, and it armed me with the tools and experience I needed to work on my next Huge Inc. project; Togather.com.

Summer 2011User Experience and Usability Research at BestBuy.comBest Buy Headquarters: Richfield, MNI spent 12 exciting weeks on a BestBuy.com consumer research team. My unit was responsible for evaluating the user experience – how an individual feels about their interaction with a product or service – of BestBuy.com and other Best Buy websites, such as MyRZ.com.The primary research technique we used to evaluate the user experience (UX) of Best Buy websites is usability testing. Usability testing involves the first-hand observation of customer behavior, emotion, and decision-making. Through this first-hand observation of customer interaction with BestBuy.com we developed actionable insights subsequently utilized by AB testing teams, web designers, and developers. My role within the team was two-fold. My primary responsibility was support of consumer research projects. This involved managing logistical matters, screener editing, escorting study participants, preparing participants for interactive interviews, and behavioral note taking. My secondary responsibility was leading the iterative design of my team’s new SharePoint file system. I was responsible for deciding how to best organize thousands of files stored in multiple disc locations. Through carefully designing several aspects of information architecture, such as site columns, metadata tags, and file naming conventions, I created a system that will allow the team to leverage years-worth of consumer research that was previously unusable.While at Best Buy I also took every opportunity possible to learn about two areas I found to be immensely interesting: business strategy and interaction design. While on the corporate campus I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the business’ innovative new strategies, and after hours I spent a great deal of time learning from the best – Cameron Reynolds-Flatt and David Kodinsky – about the business value of human-centered interaction/experience design.