Through my 20 years in the field, I’ve learned…
Design is a collaborative process that promotes the right conversations to iterate toward the right solution.
I am a player-coach design leader that thrives in highly technical spaces including Search, Data, AI/ML, Text Analytics/Natural Languange procesing (NLP), and Data Visualization.
With nearly 20 years of experience designing and leading innovative products, including AI-driven text analytics, natural language processing (NLP), and data visualization, I have honed a unique ability to transform ambiguity into accessible, user-centric experiences. As a design leader, I champion impactful solutions that align user needs with strategic business goals. By collaborating with Product, Engineering, and Data Science teams, I cultivate a culture of partnership and innovation, delivering outcomes that enhance user experiences and drive measurable impact.
My career spans complex, cross-functional environments—from Big Tech and the US Government to Silicon Valley startups and Healthcare—where I’ve tackled challenging use cases with real-world impact. As an advocate for innovation, I hold 20+ patents, have led patent portfolios, and authored multiple published papers.
Above all, I am passionate about leading and collaborating with teams united by ambitious goals, inspiring them to solve meaningful problems with creativity, rigor, and excellence.
Selected Projects
Dec 2024: COMING SOON
Visual Patent Search
Dec 2024: COMING SOON
Iris, Visualizing Retail Performance
Dec 2024: COMING SOON
Visualizing a Search Index
Thoughts on building AND maintaining a
high-performing design team
Spend the time to hire well… very well
Hiring a UX designer or researcher is about their ability influence and challenge and organization to move forward.
When hiring, I evaluate consider the following to understand their potential within an organization:
Skills. I look to balance skills across the entire team ensuring there is a good mix of experts across the key disciplines: user research and evaluation, ux design: information architecture, wireframing, visual design/ design systems.
Application domains. Proven application across the arenas that are most important to the company: whether it be mobile, web, or data visualization, search, or large language models.
Collaboration and Negotiation. Ability to collaborate and negotiate for the user experience across key partners including Product Management, Software Engineering, Data Sciences, and Executives.
Homework. A lightweight homework assignment that tests the key skills, ideally in a new domain.
Example of a homework assignment, inspired by dear-data, leveraging data to produce an original visualization.
Define a career path based on impact
While one’s core skills and talents within their discipline is important, their ability to collaborate with others, take ownership, and general emotional intelligence greatly influence one’s potential impact. The radar plots highlight my thoughts around how one can evaluate the level of designers by evaluating their impact, emphasized by the area within the radar plot.
Note that any skills (content design, information architecture, interaction design, motion design/animation, user research, visualization design, visual design) can be plotted against the primary X & Y axes. The softer skills (as articulated by 12 competencies of Emotional Intelligence are plotted against the more minor axes).
Junior UX Designer
Business Impact: MED
The Junior UX Designer is new in her field, but already exhibits clear talent in her core area of expertise and show competency in her secondary expertise. She working to improve her soft skills in this team-based environment to grow her impact overtime.
Core Skills May Include:
Information Architecture
Interaction Design
Motion Design / Animation Prototyping
User Research
Visualization Design
Visual Design
UX Designer
Business Impact: MED
The UX Designer exhibits strength in her field of expertise, resulting in a notable contribution to the business. Her core area of design/research is strong, and she is growing (T-ing out) in other areas of design as well. She is team and achievement oriented, which grow her impact.
Core Skills May Include:
Information Architecture
Interaction Design
Motion Design / Animation Prototyping
User Research
Visualization Design
Visual Design
Senior UX Designer
Business Impact: MED-HIGH
The Senior UX Designer is an expert in her field and has a sizable and growing impact across the business. She is recognized for her design and/or user research skills within the company. As an individual contributor, she shows promise and is developing skills in leadership, inspiration, and mentoring domains.
Core Skills May Include:
Information Architecture
Interaction Design
Motion Design / Animation Prototyping
User Research
Visualization Design
Visual Design
Principal UX Designer
Business Impact: HIGH
The principal UX Designer is an expert and has a broad net of impact across the business. Because of her unique mix of UX design skills, appetite for complexity, and her high emotional IQ, she is able to successfully navigate and influence the direction of ambiguously defined and difficult situations with a high degree of awareness, positivity, and clear impact.
Core Skills May Include:
Information Architecture
Interaction Design
Motion Design / Animation Prototyping
User Research
Visualization Design
Visual Design
Evangelize across, Scale within
Consistency of processes and practice allow an organization to scale the talents of their design organization. Particularly ensuring the onboarding of toolsets of the trade (Figma, DoveTail, Miro/Mural, and a knowledge management system) templates for user research (interview guides, customized heuristic evaluations), and a strong Design System.
Depending on organizational UX maturity, different levels of evangelization within an organization will be required. For lower maturity organizations, it is ideal to have a few strong examples within the company under one’s belt. Then education across the larger organization is key to growing the impact and opportunities presented to a Design team. More mature organizations require deeper prioritization and negotiation across the peer functions.
Extracurricular design…
A concert-themed wedding invitation.
Warning Signs of the Future
Tableau: Evaluating equity of school closures
2012: Generating content based on persona
✴︎
2017: Extracting insightful nodes from graphs
✴︎
2017: Summarized network graph for semantic similarity graphs of large corpora
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2012: Assisting users to interact appropriately to conform to the norm of the social networking group
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2017: Positioning labels on graphical visualizations of graphs
2012: Generating content based on persona ✴︎ 2017: Extracting insightful nodes from graphs ✴︎ 2017: Summarized network graph for semantic similarity graphs of large corpora * 2012: Assisting users to interact appropriately to conform to the norm of the social networking group * 2017: Positioning labels on graphical visualizations of graphs
My AI-related Patents that became reality
Skills
Leadership
Strategy
Organizational Acumen
Culture
UX Strategy
Creative Direction
Visioning
Resource Allocation
UX Design
Sketching
Storyboarding
Information Architecture
Wireframing
Prototyping
UI specs & red-lines
User Research
End user interviews
Contextual Inquiry
Personas
Use cases
Survey design
Card sorting studies
Usability testing & evaluation
Tools
Figma, Formerly: Sketch, Invision, Axure, Adobe CC Suite, Atlassian: JIRA, Confluence, etc, Miro. Mural, Tobii eye track, Optimal Sort
