Gary Cooke Email & Phone Number

Cleveland, Tn, Us

Led the end-to-end design process for a suite of financial and educational products, collaborating with cross-functional teams to ensure consistency and alignment with user needs. Applied a user-centered approach to design, conducting usability testing and user research to inform actionable product improvements. Built scalable design systems that streamlined development and enhanced usability.Redesigned Component Libraries: Led the overhaul of component libraries, design patterns, and workflows, resulting in more intuitive user experiences for diverse user types.Developed Advanced Intelligence Tools: Designed cutting-edge interfaces and data visualizations that provide the US Army, DOD, and Government Agencies with clear, actionable insights for efficient data tracking and understanding.Conducted Usability Testing: Implemented extensive usability testing methodologies, effectively bridging empathy gaps between service members and administrators to enhance overall user satisfaction.

Managed the research and design strategy for Driveway’s omni-channel car-buying platform, ensuring that user experience improvements directly impacted business outcomes. Led a cross-functional team, driving collaborative efforts to streamline product development. Focused on building a scalable design system that supported the growth of the platform.Managed Design Projects: Directed and managed the design of over 80 complex, interactive user interfaces and research projects.Developed Collaborative Processes: Established a cohesive design process that effectively integrated product, engineering, and design teams.Supervised Design Team: Oversaw a team of 8 designers and researchers, fostering a collaborative and innovative work environment.

Wilmington, North Carolina, United States

Led the design team responsible for digital transformation across LINQ’s ERP and accounting systems for educational institutions. Applied a data-driven approach to UX design, conducting extensive user research to ensure products met the unique needs of financial administrators. Built and maintained a scalable design system that unified multiple platforms.Strengthened Strategic Partnerships: Enhanced business relationships from strategic partnerships to symbiotic alliances through consistent delivery of excellence, transparency, and trust.Provided Design Oversight: Delivered user-centered design direction for a range of products, including Point of Sale Systems, eCommerce platforms, ERP solutions, Accounting software, Digital Billboards, and Warehouse Applications.Drove Revenue Growth: Conducted customer analysis to identify new revenue opportunities, successfully expanding LINQ's presence in both local and state-level education markets.

At Jaguar Games, I served as a contracted Marketing Designer & Researcher, responsible for improving player experiences by closely analyzing user feedback, conducting extensive research, and collaborating with the team to refine game mechanics and overall player engagement. My role focused on gathering insights from our diverse player base to drive game improvements, design solutions, and address key player concerns through well-researched, user-centric design strategies.Conducted extensive user interviews, surveys, and research to build detailed user personas, enabling the team to identify and address the hidden needs of the target audience.Led focus groups with players to gather insights on critical topics such as game balance, quality of life improvements, bug reports, patches, international concerns, and overall player satisfaction.Developed storyboards, problem/POV statements, and usability tests to refine user experiences and ensure alignment with audience expectations.Designed landing pages and conducted usability testing to validate design concepts and improve overall player engagement and satisfaction with the game.

Directed the design and development of the Villas of Distinction, Villa Rental, and Jamaica Villas platforms. Led discovery sessions and established design principles that streamlined the booking process, enabling the creation of repeatable design patterns and leveraging data analytics to significantly reduce costs, risks, and time associated with design solutions.Agile/Scrum Leadership: Directed design efforts in an agile/scrum environment across multiple simultaneous desktop and mobile products, creating high-fidelity mockups, UI components, and assets while defining new design patterns and user experiences.Collaborative Problem Solving: Engaged with product owners, managers, and development leads to address complex user and business objectives, facilitating the development of concept models, heuristic reviews, sitemaps, personas, process flows, sketches, and wireframes.

Cleveland,Tn

Served as the lead designer for the digital marketing team, successfully rebuilding the loan management system for the call center, resulting in a 30% increase in efficiency for assisting customers over the phone. User-Centric Interface Design: Leveraged knowledge of the latest web standards and best practices to design and develop user interfaces for clients’ digital products, enhancing usability and engagement.CMS Expertise: Utilized extensive experience with content management systems (CMS) to direct projects and strategize best practices for design and development processes, ensuring smooth execution and high-quality outcomes.

Rock Island, Tennessee

I served as the Lead Digital Designer, overseeing all aspects of web design, UX, social media, branding, and front-end development. My role involved collaborating with clients in both B2B and B2C markets to deliver impactful, user-centered digital solutions. I worked to enhance brand visibility, improve user engagement, and increase web traffic through well-researched design strategies and front-end development practices. Through data-driven insights and hands-on execution, I helped clients achieve measurable results across their digital platforms.Led research to better understand users in our clients' B2B & B2C models.Created strategies that increased traffic to client websites by an average of 7%.

Notable Clients: Facedown Records, The Warehouse Music Venue, Smoothie King, Candies Creek AcademyI have combined my User Experience and Marketing background with UX research methods to guide digital product teams on approaching and solving complex problems. I have successfully built user experience initiatives from the ground up, integrating research into the company cultures, development process, and design principles while learning how to develop and communicate with technical and business teams.- Helped local businesses with design & marketing strategy- Marketed tours throughout the southeast for bands on the road, leading to sell-out shows and drive exposure- Did short term design contract work to help keep projects moving, meet aggressive timelines, or fill gaps the in house marketing team had.- Create posters and other content related to graphic design needs.- Translated discussions into mobile app designs and layouts.- Troubleshoot page performance issues, SEO performance code incompatibilities, and web imagery problems.- Completed in-depth product design tests with the help of different software, models, and design systems.

Greater Atlanta Area

Notable Clients: LG HausysConceptualized, designed, and produced all elements for client websites. Design projects included improvements to the search UI and search algorithm, integrating more than 50,000 products into a client platform, and converting websites to responsive designs.- Gathered specifications and other vital details to meet the requirements of site development.- Completely updated and redesigned user experience for construction, retail, and service company websites.- Conducted analysis to address WordPress website issues leading to optimization and repair of site.- Enhanced and evolved existing web properties based on best practices and user-centered design.- Oversaw the work of the Jr. Designer

Lexington, Ky

Notable Clients: True Essentials, Xoom Energy, Dish Network, Envy OrganicsAs the Sr. Graphic Designer, I led design research, design strategy, interaction design, and visual design for both online and offline assets.- Carefully proofread labels and sales materials before printing.- Developed, implemented, and managed the marketing and design of the web, social media, print, and pay-per-click items.- Kept team on task to complete orders according to deadlines.- Designed new on-brand visual elements to effectively convey concepts and messaging.- Gave design feedback and guided the work of two Jr. Designers on the team.

Micro-Degree, Unity Game Development

A mini degree class set up to master the basics of how to code and use the Unity engine, before delving into several in-depth learning.

Micro-Degree, Godot Game Development

A course designed to start prototyping games quickly and easily, using the community-driven engine features of Godot like GDScript.

Micro-Degree, Mobile App Development

This course show how to build professional apps using Android Studio and Xcode. Teaching mobile development frameworks and languages.

Micro-Degree, Html5 Game Development

A course taking HTML5 and teaching advanced coding methods to create impressive games with Phaser 3, a JavaScript library built for game.

Bachelor'S Degree, Graphic Design