Research > Design > Build

Understanding people, their needs, and their lives to build great products and user experiences (UX).

Hi there !

I’ve been mentoring UX teams and leading product development projects for 20 years based on understanding people.

I thrive on variety, helping others, and developing close relationships.  I believe in ‘we’ over ‘me’ – we are all in this together. My colleagues describe me as responsible, fun, always learning, and above all helpful. ISFP. Relationship Builder.

Portfolio

I’ve led projects through research, design, and development; for hardware and software; and at corporations and consultancies.

Indirect Sales Portal (CenturyLink)

Partners couldn't get data on their own customers due to a broken Letter of Agency process. I met with partners to understand their workflow, with Legal to create a new process, and with Development to automate it in an existing web portal.

Support costs dropped while sales and end customer satisfaction increased for the 2500 partner, $1B sales channel.

Cardiac Transmitter (Abbott)

The customer needed a hardware update to keep up with their competition. The project had no budget or time for research or for a significant redesign.

To show what research could do, I gathered thousands of comments from PacerMaker Club, an online forum for pacemaker, ICD, and CRD recipients. I then led an affinity mapping exercise with engineers, designers, and management, and prepared a client workshop. The resulting themes became the industrial design language and redirected the customer’s project direction.

Surgical Workstation (Medtronic)

Due to acquisitions, Medtronic had seven different workflows for importing files. I had three months to learn the brain surgery workflow in seven products, and design, test, and document a solution.

The unified data entry design was added to a dozen Medtronic products, reducing medical errors and product complexity. I was offered a year extension to my contract.

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Space Capsule (Lockheed)

With a design deadline approaching and astronauts arriving for testing, leadership was still unsure if the capsule was large enough for astronauts to preform tasks surrounded by their equipment.

We quickly built a working mockup of the capsule - after hours - preventing a very costly redesign later in the program.

Wearable Audio Jacket (Philips Design)

Philips wanted to expand their brand beyond low-margin electronics. They created a working ‘audio jacket’ prototype, but needed help testing it with customers.

My research demonstrated the jacket’s feasibility and desirability, while pointing out issues of price, theft, and bulk. The result was the first wearable electronics product on the market – the Levi’s ICD+ Jacket – and a partnership with Nike to create the first Nike Heart Rate Monitor.

Companies

I know how to get things done in corporations, consultancies, and startups.

Resume

Yes, I was a rocket scientist (and a firefighter)!

Over time, I’ve moved forward in the product development process – from engineering to design to research.