Tabitha Safari Email & Phone Number

Marina Del Rey, Ca, Us

Seattle, Washington, United States

Work with various tech clients and startups on UX design, systems design, web design, visual identity, and motion design projects with a strong emphasis on accessibility and inclusive design. Build and manage clients’ Figma-based design systems and component libraries. Collaborate with cross-disciplinary teams of designers, developers, researchers, and marketers to design and implement new features, user flows, and websites.

Seattle, Washington, United States

Enhanced interactive engagement within the TASWIRA African Art & Design gallery by leveraging human centered design principles to design, fabricate, and construct two permanent physical installations that serve to enhance comprehension of TASWIRA’s purpose and mission while engaging visitors in unique and tactile ways that encourage in-depth learning, connection, and discovery. Received the MS HCDE Capstone Award for "Most Impactful Project".This 6-month capstone project was completed alongside 3 fellow HCDE students toward the completion of our Master's degrees in Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington.

Seattle, Washington, United States

Sole UX designer responsible for optimizing the desktop and mobile user experience for a sleep wellness ecommerce startup with specific focus on improving website usability, accessibility, visual identity, & CRO.• Conducted heuristic evaluations, competitive analyses, usability testing, and stakeholder interviews with CEO, COO, and CMO to uncover user and business needs. • Conducted Rapid Iterative Testing & Evaluation (RITE) with a total of 10 users by designing and iteratively testing new features, flows, and content on high-fidelity Figma prototypes.• Worked collaboratively with Engineering to align on a shared vision for the user experience, find creative workarounds to technical constraints, and manage trade-offs between visual design and performance. • Leveraged atomic design principles to establish a new design system with reusable components, resulting in expedited development time, reduced tech debt, and improved visual consistency across screens.• Developed a feedback workflow that included presenting high-fidelity Figma prototypes to CEO, COO, engineers, and marketing team to ensure that all relevant stakeholders were able to provide input at key stages of the redesign process and ensure iterative design changes were feasible within time and budget constraints.

Seattle, Washington, United States

Assisted interdisciplinary creative teams with market research, web analytics audits, and visual design for landing pages. Provided recommendations to copywriting and graphic design teams on web accessibility and usability best practices.

Seattle, Washington, United States

Followed an end-to-end user centered design process to optimize the website user experience for one of Seattle’s most popular breweries.• Collaborated with 4 fellow MS HCDE students to deliver a fully redesigned website that anticipated user needs while improving accessibility, site navigability, visual identity, SEO, and CRO.• Conducted user research through stakeholder interviews, user interviews and surveys, heuristic evaluation, competitor analysis, web analytics audits, and moderated usability testing to inform design decisions.• Spearheaded the UX design and content strategy work by translating research findings, user needs, and business requirements into actionable design goals and bringing ideas to life through high-fidelity Figma prototypes. • Aligned information architecture with target users’ mental models through card sorting and tree testing. • Sole contributor to the establishment of a new atomic design system and style guide used across all 28 redesigned screens (including 7 new pages).• Designed and modified mid- and high-fidelity Figma prototypes based on iterative feedback from 2 rounds of usability testing and client review to optimize website performance for core tasks and use cases.

Seattle, Washington, United States

Conducted in-depth usability testing and market research for a newly-launched cheese board delivery and catering service based in Chicago.• Collaborated with 4 fellow MS HCDE students to evaluate the user experience on client’s newly-launched ecommerce website through usability testing and market research, culminating in a 57-page usability report documenting our study goals, research methods, findings, & redesign recommendations.• Designed customer feedback, demographics, and price testing surveys to identify behavioral and psychographic trends, motivations, and interests within target customer base.• Collaboratively conducted remote moderated usability testing sessions with 7 participants to identify usability issues and opportunities for improvement.• Singlehandedly applied user feedback from each usability testing session to create a high-fidelity Figma prototype visualizing redesign recommendations.

Los Angeles, Ca

Led operations for 3 longitudinal studies utilizing motion-tracking and wearable sensor technologies to detect atypical motor function and development in infants and children with developmental disorders. Carried out 500+ research study visits in home and clinical settings, garnering extensive experience in providing compassionate service, support, and care to neurodiverse children and their families. Co-authored 3 research publications.• Collaborated with local and international adaptive sports programs to design outcome measurement tools validating the effectiveness of sports in improving developmental outcomes and quality-of-life for children with disabilities, resulting in the receipt of a $3 million grant awarded by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau to support further research. • Designed and implemented a contactless COVID-19 study visit protocol involving study material drop-offs and pick-ups to and from families’ homes as well as developmental assessments administered via Zoom, making our study the first at UCLA CART to resume full pre-COVID data collection capacity within a month of mandatory shutdowns. • Decreased wearable sensor data processing time by over 75% through making use of built-in features of Motion Studio software and optimizing performance of MATLAB functions.• Organized a two-day international adaptive sports conference hosted at UCLA to promote neurodiversity and inclusion in organized physical activity for children with disabilities in April 2019.• Trained 16 undergraduate students, 2 medical students, and 2 staff members (who would later take over my role) on data acquisition procedures, behavioral assistance strategies, and proper communication techniques to use during assessments depending on context, parent stress level, and participant expressive/receptive language level.

Los Angeles

• Executed and oversaw daily operations for an interdisciplinary lab conducting research at the intersection of visual, proprioceptive, motor, and perceptual learning/processing. • Managed a diverse team of 22-29 undergraduate students and 3 graduate students through 8 research studies utilizing computational, psychophysical, and VR techniques to understand the way in which our brains construct our reality. • Managerial responsibilities included creating weekly lab schedule; leading weekly lab meetings; piloting new and updated iterations of experiments to suggest parameter changes; interviewing, hiring, and training undergraduate research assistants; creating detailed protocols and guidelines for various experiments; attending senior lab meetings with graduate students and PI to provide progress updates.

Los Angeles

Los Angeles, California, United States

Served as lead undergraduate research assistant on two Self-Recognition Experiments that utilized point-light displays to investigate the impact of autistic and schizotypal traits on participants’ ability to recognize themselves from the kinematics of their own body movements. Utilized motion-capture technology and computational modeling to investigate the interplay between motor and visual representations in the higher-order, interpersonally-relevant processes intrinsic to our understanding of the actions, emotions, and intentions of others. • Utilized Microsoft Kinect V2.0 motion-capture system to record participant actions.• Edited, processed, and transformed actions into point light displays via Kinect SDK and MATLAB.• Trained 3 undergraduate RAs and 2 graduate students on all aspects of study operations. • Enhanced point-light stimulus quality and consistency by devising a detailed guideline to standardize action editing and processing methods among RAs. • Presented study findings at the UCLA Annual Psychology Undergraduate Research Conference in 2016 and 2017.

Master Of Science - Ms, Human Centered Design And Engineering

- MS HCDE Award of Excellence Recipient for Leadership & Engagement, Jun 2023 - MS HCDE Impact Award Recipient for TASWIRA Capstone.

Bachelor Of Science - Bs, Cognitive Science, Specialization In Computing