Resume

Stride Learning - Remote 

• Coordinate across multiple research & cross-functional teams to ensure alignment with larger program goals. 

• Design and conduct UX research to discover user needs and opportunities for UX improvement & additional business opportunities. 

• Direct, train and collaborate with Product & UX designers on research goals and protocols.

• Synthesize and consolidate findings across multiple studies and projects to show opportunities for improvement in the UX of our services. 

• Promote insights & track performance that shaped designs and improve UX.

• Design & manage AHA workflow for research intake, scheduling, monitoring, prioritization and resource planning

• Create budgets, goals & SOWs. Hire permanent & contract researchers.

• Develop onboarding documentation, training and shadowing.

• Assess gaps in our capabilities and create strategies to compensate.

• Introduce new research methods 

• Directed training of machine learning algorithm for feedback comments.

• Assess and integrate new research platforms, ie. Qualtrics, XM Directory, Smart Waiver, UserZoom, Rewards Genius, Prolific, etc.

• Design & moderate remote usability research and focus groups for five different user types.

• Design & build samples for online surveys, card sorts, automated remote usability research/tests.

• Ensure research samples are representative of our target users and we're not oversampling. Direct the creation of a student & parent panel. 

• Design, direct its creation & manage UXResearch repository.

• Present at division level and team level results and work with designers in the creation of solutions.

Stride Learning - Remote 

• Lead user research efforts across multiple scrum teams. 

• Use remote usability testing, surveys, online card sorting, lead focus groups and 1:1 research interviews. 

• Teach guerrilla testing techniques and integration of findings into the agile backlog and story development process.

• Integrated regular usability testing into an Agile development process across 8 scrum teams.

• Create wire frames, sitemaps, journey maps, story boards, interaction models, functional specs, workflows, and use cases -- documenting the user experience for business and development audiences.

• Work with multiple teams and product owners to influence user-requirements, design and simplify IA and the UX of the K12.com teacher and student experience.

• Run brainstorming meetings, critiques and process development meetings to improve team's designs & consistency.

Marriott International - Bethesda, MD

• Managed and grew interaction design team from 7-18 people. The site earned revenues of $6.5 billion in 2010

• Responsible for hiring, budgeting, resourcing talent for teams off & on site.

• Directed the teams responsible for the creation & communication of interaction design standards for Marriott.com. The process moved from a paper based process to a wiki-based process.

• Taught team to incorporate usage data, user research & business models when proposing & evaluating designs.

• Formalized the technical design positions & brought more training in for the CMS and a greater appreciation of our development partners & tasks.

• During tenure, teams launched the redesign of the look/feel of Marriott.com, the navigation, homepage, SEO landing pages, reservations path, confirmation path, virtual concierge, Vacations by Marriott, CRM e-mails, Blackberry, iPhone apps, Facebook pages and online marketing campaigns & the Autograph brand launch

AOL Commerce Channels - Dulles, VA

• Lead redesigns for Careers, Personals, Autos, Shopping, Real Estate, News and the Personal Finance channels. These channels garner over $300 million in revenues.

• Designed UI that brought local information to users in context to their experience.

• Introduced qualitative and quantitative methods for evaluating the potential performance of a design.

• Used CTR analysis of online experiences and ad campaigns to improve the user and business performance.

AOL - Dulles, VA

• Retrieved information about at-home computing hardware, software and access speeds to guide design and business decisions.

• Used focus groups, usability tests, primary field research, competitive analysis and secondary research to design processes.

• Evaluated outside technologies and companies for integration into the Marketplace experience.

• Redesigned the AOL Welcome Screen for versions 7 & 8 of the service. These designs supported more daily page views, 34 million, and media revenue, than any other media or search property on the internet.

ZDNet - New York, NY

• Oversaw daily operations of a five-million-pvs a month site. 

• Oversaw production of three redesigns.

• Worked with an off-site development team to improve database-generated content and searches.

• Created and integrated content originating from eight Ziff-Davis magazines.

• Developed new programming techniques for editorial packages.

• Developed Palm Pilot user area and wrote online columns about hand-held computing.

Interactive Week - Garden City, NY

• Designed and coded a redesign of the site.

• Managed daily posting of news stories from reporters across the U.S.

• Worked with ad staff to create content proposals for advertisers.

• Integrated production and search functions with a server-management team.

• Evaluated web-development organizations for major projects.

• Designed and developed RealAudio and Director prototypes.