Professional Journey

Atlanta, Georgia

I live in the city of Atlanta, Georgia. It is here that I have built a career focused on the user experience.

Scientific-Atlanta

Let's go back to 1991. My journey to user-centered design begins: I am assigned to be the program manager in the hardware engineering department for a new device called a universal remote control. Its purpose? Electronic manufacturers hope to eliminate the need for multiple remote controls now that we have many devices in our entertainment space: television, set-top, VCR (remember those?), stereo console. Our traditional remote controls had 12 keys. The universal remote designs ranged from 35-70 keys, some with shifted functions. Users were overwhelmed. I became their advocate. Engineers were designing devices for engineers, not the general public. I felt like an advocate for senior citizens. Eventually, I realized that I was a UX advocate.

Bellsouth

I entered into the world of web design when I joined Bellsouth Dot Com. I designed web sites for ordering, billing, and trouble ticket reporting. My charter was to create self-service consumer experiences that would reduce calls in to the support center. Later, I designed a rules engine to perform the tasks most commonly performed by tier 2 and 3 technical support personnel. This job provided significant learning ground for me. I transitioned my career from hardware devices to software user interfaces. Deliverables included low and high fidelity UI mockups, database design, storyboards, and once again lobbying with engineers on behalf of the users.

DataScan Technologies

From my experience working on an Agile scrum team at a DataScan, I realize now we were practicing fundamentals of design thinking though I was unfamiliar with the term at the time. We had a full stack team, including a UI designer, and all of us would collaborate in the interest of the user. Our company conducted huge focus groups several times a year, bringing in hands-on users from different companies. These sessions were all about observing users and listening to them, and most importantly: listening to them exchange ideas with each other, revealed both pain points and best practices across our apps.

Cisco

Much of my focus at Cisco falls in the category of industrial design. I was often tasked to determine best practices to organize remote teams working in tandem to deploy new services. Unfortunately, the most fascinating user-centered design work I completed for Cisco cannot be shared as it was proprietary work for the IT department.
Cisco Systems relied heavily on documentation to augment the user experience. For the consumer audience, adequate attention was given to develop user-friendly interfaces and develop high quality documentation. For our customers' employee-facing interfaces, Cisco relied heavily on training. As a user advocate, I helped develop strategies to increase usability, and thus reduce the dependency on documentation and training.

Clearleap

Prior to acquisition by IBM, December, 2015, Clearleap supported a multiscreen platform for OTT content owners. My responsibilities included competitive analysis, partner vetting, product requirements, UX design, roadmap, and backlog for the Catalog and Subscriber Management offerings.

Catalog – Marketing Manager product to curate all aspects of the consumer user experience, including promoting content, artwork, and navigation
Subscriber Management – Finance and Customer Service portal for managing user accounts, discount campaigns, user devices, and video streaming

I led UX initiatives to simplify daily tasks for users of the Clearleap Platform and to prevent / reduce scalability issues and technical limitations.

IBM (Big Blue)

IBM Cloud Video provides support for live and on-demand streaming through a robust set of solutions that streamline multi-screen video preparation, delivery, and catalog and subscriber management.
As an Offering Manager in the Media Portfolio sector, I apply Design Thinking principles to strategically grow OTT solutions.

experi-mintz

As a free-lancer, I was hired by a private company to work on a matchmaking app to improve user experience. The unique feature of this particular dating app is that a third-party person acts as your matchmaker. After a match is determined, I wanted the app to provide a way for the matched pair to reserve a curated date.
The design effort required conducting business owner and user interviews, user observation for two user types ("matchmakers" and "daters"), and focus groups; creating personas, mood boards, design tiles, card sorting, flow diagrams, and various prototypes (paper, low-fidelity, and hi-fidelity).