I'm a professional user experience designer and strategist, and all around geek for anything design related.
My passion for design began in high school, when I accidentally signed up for what I thought was a fine art illustration class. Instead, I found myself in front of what was then considered a giant 17-inch monitor, opening Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop for the first time.
I quickly became infatuated with the art I could create by blending material and digital media. I fell in love with typography, and began my scoffing crusade against the use of Papyrus in every restaurant menu.
Intent on pursuing a career in graphic design and photography, I received my BFA in Visual Communications, with a minor in Studio Photography at Cazenovia College in upstate NY.
After graduating, and tenuous amounts of applying to "Entry Level" positions that also somehow required five years of experience, I was offered a Visual Design Consultant position at IBM's consulting branch; IBM Global Business Services. I quickly discovered that aside from my formal training, all the time I had spent designing and running various MMORPG forum sites, and tweaking my Myspace page, actually had significant, real-world applications.
I continued to focus my career on the path of user experience design, and accepted a position at State Farm, helping stand up their first internal UX-centered practice.
As I grew in my career, my interests shifted to UX strategy and research alignment. This led me to ShootProof where I worked across multi-functional teams to deliver best practice UX design and guidance to meet the needs of our SaaS and B2B2C platforms.
After parting ways with ShootProof, I landed at ESRI, and more specifically on the product design team of ArcGIS HUB, a cloud-based content management & sharing product that bridges the gap between GIS professionals and non-industry users. Here, I work on a team dedicated to enriching search functionalities.
My philosophy on user experience is very similar to graphic design: Simplicity. A lot of people can make something seem complex, but making the complex simple requires knowing your user, their needs, and expectations. This is where I thrive, and where I find the most rewarding work.