Highlights & Strengths

• 12 years of experience building and designing online web products
• Solid understanding of user interface design and usability principles
• Experience formulating and refining product requirements, user profiles, personas, and task analyses
• Expert knowledge of creating functional specifications for flows, wireframes, and mockups.
• Knowledge of front-end web development including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with experience building interactive prototypes for usability testing and early-phase design concepting
• Expert at all phases of product development and working with cross-functional teams while adhering to strict fast-paced release schedules
• Excellent written, verbal and interpersonal communication skills
• Enjoy collaborative projects and work environments

Career Experience

Gaia Interactive, San Jose, CA

Position: Senior User Experience Designer, Dec. 2007 – Nov. 2010

Created UI specifications, flows, & visual designs for new products and features for multi-million-user teen's social network, casual games, virtual world, and #2 ranked Forum's site on the web (8 Million monthly unique visitors/1 million new posts daily)

• Member of UX Team honored for "Best Website User Experience" by Mashable Awards 2011
• Led UI efforts in well-received (by users) redesign of Gaia's most popular feature, Forums; improved information hierarchy and designed the new Like/Dislike feature, resulting in increased user participation
• Led UI efforts in redesign of "My Gaia" and new "Gaia Notices" features, resulting in increased user engagement (increased daily active and returning users)
• Presented multiple concepts and led UI efforts in Shops redesign, defining a more useable, integrated interface, resulting in an increase in virtual sales (items sold/gold spent).
• Actively participated in brainstorm sessions on design vision for new products and translated these into product concepts, and ultimately clean, detailed wireframes and functional specifications
• Designed interfaces and flows for two new Gaia Facebook games
• Designed interfaces and flows for highly visual and highly interactive Flash-based products and features
• Developed full UI flows, from start to finish, for new game-like products on Gaia, including Gaia Achievements & Gaia Aquarium.
• Created new UIs and improved existing ones for Gaia communication products, including Gaia IM and Gaia Mail
• Created visual designs for supplemental projects, including the Aquarium Forums Signature, the Event Calendar module, Avatar Suggested Items, & the Like/Dislike feature in Forums

AOL LLC, Mountain View, CA

Position: User Experience Designer, Sept. 2005 – Oct. 2007

Designed specifications and flows for multiple new products and features for multi-million-user AOL web applications including AOL Calendar, AOL Alerts, AOL Pictures, & myAOL

• Researched written psychology data and conducted anthropological studies for new AOL products, including the now-patented recommendation system - "Mgnet"
• Actively participated in in-depth IDEO-style brainstorm and collaboration sessions
• Created drawing and storyboard concepts for ideation and presentation of new products that were eventually released to production
• Built interactive prototypes in HTML, CSS, & JavaScript for presentation to executives and stakeholders
• Conducted paper prototype research for early product testing phases of several AOL Products
• Led design reviews and served as UI design voice when presenting UI’s to cross-functional teams, and incorporated feedback
• Created and documented UI and visual standards for products
• Defined and designed functional and visual specifications including wireframes, flows, and mockups for all projects

Position: UI Developer, Jan. 1999 - Sept. 2005

Handled all aspects of client-side development for several multi-million-user AOL web applications

• Collaborated with product managers to refine UI and content changes during transition to UI position
• Made UI flow and specification feedback and suggestions during planning phases of new products and features
• Coded front-end HTML, CSS, & JavaScript for major AOL products and features.
• Coordinated closely with team members cross-divisionally to build products from start to finish according to spec
• Coded templates containing JSP, Velocity Templating Language (VTL), and ASP.net, working closely with software engineers for code integration
• Solely responsible for all front-end AOL Sync product releases, including QAR generation and coordination of team members for production releases
• Solely responsible for weekly editorial releases for Calendar product
• Coordinated with internal partners to integrate production and content requests for maintenance and new product releases, documented release specifications, and generated QARs for my own code changes
• Continuously implemented accurate bug fixes for maintenance releases and new product releases

When Inc. (when.com), Redwood City, CA

Positions: Content Coordinator; Production Assistant, June 1998 – Jan. 1999

Developed HTML content and graphics for new online calendaring product; Researched and documented content and partner information

• Researched competition and typical online usage of calendars for new online calendar product, and documented for management team
• Created mappings and documentation for content feeds provided by content partners
• Developed (HTML) online Help & Tour pages for Calendar product
• Implemented bug fixes, built promotional pages and new features for product maintenance releases
• Documented product maintenance releases

Technical Skills

Design Tools: Photoshop, Ilustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver

Development Technologies: HTML, CSS, JavaScript

Operating Systems: Windows, Macintosh, Unix

Education

Bachelor of Arts: Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts

San Francisco State University

Related Courses Taken

• Methods and Principles of Interface Design
• Advanced Adobe Photoshop
• Intermediate Adobe Illustrator
• Flash I
• Graphic Design
• Computer Graphics
• Designing for Multimedia/Web
• Role of the Project Manager
• DHTML
• JavaScript Programming
• Unix Operating Systems I