About Me

For some, this looks like political activism or social reform, but I found my niche in user experience design. While on my journey, it felt like I was all over the educational and professional map. I started college in Religious Studies, applying my critical thinking skills to people's motivations and aspirations. Then I added quantitative and qualitative research methodologies by studying how people interact with one another through Sociology. My stint in ministry after undergraduate studies gave me the opportunity to carefully listen to and empathize with poor and affluent youth from both sides of a Pittsburgh suburb. Thereafter, I found myself in sales and customer services positions where I put all kinds of thought into how to provide a better experience, even going so far as to redesign the branch lobby of a national bank. But it was the first week in the master’s level Human-Computer Interaction class that all of these experiences converged as I began reading UX classics like Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things and Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think. The goal of making tech work for all kinds of people with a wide range of abilities and competencies is both lofty and worthy. Looking back, I can see that each stage of my career added a unique skill to my UX toolkit—from ethnography and critique to process and experience design. I’d found my place making the world a better place through intuitive, engaging experiences.