Empathy with the user is key to user-centered design. There are many methods to gain insights and identify pain points from users. I like to take a fast, low-cost, gorilla approach to user research. Simple user interviews, unmoderated testing, and website data can yield amazing insights.
Workflow & Tools
Discovery
Ideation
The Interaction design phase of any project is always exciting. It’s when I take all the insights gained from studying users and formulate or flow that will solve the problem. I spend a lot of time sketching and working at the whiteboard during this phase. This is also a time when I like to facilitate group brainstorming activities between a cross-functional group.
Visual Design
As a visual designer, I have always been a fan of clean minimal design. In the past, I relied heavily on Sketch but I’ve recently become a Figma convert and I don’t think I’m going back. Its speed and useful plugins make it my go-to tool these days.
Aesthetically, I have been a fan of flat and almost flat design long before it was cool. I think motion is the secret sauce that brings simple designs to life. I’ve really been into high-fidelity prototyping with Figma. The possibilities are limitless.
Prototyping
I love to incorporated the use of prototyping in my workflow. It’s frustrating when you have to create massive deliverables explaining things I could just show. Flinto and Invision are my prototyping tools of choice but I’m not afraid to jump in and create an HTML prototype if that’s what is necessary.
Front-End Development
I’ve always been a believer that designers should know how to code or have a good understanding of development. I find myself looking ahead to how a design could be built. My knowledge of code has also been useful when working with development to fine-tune the final product.
I took my first coding course in 9th grade when I learned Basic and Visual Basic. Since then I’ve always had a knack for learning code quickly. In college, I took courses geared towards frontend development and it’s been invaluable.
Proficiencies
Figma
Sketch App
Invision
Invision Craft
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe InDesign
Adobe After Effects
Information Architecture
Wireframes
HTML
CSS
Java Script/JQuery
Pixate Prototyping
Rhino 3D
User Research
Logo & Branding
Art Direction/Styleguide