Resumé
Objective
Designer with over 9 years experience and a proven track record in Interaction Design, Information Architecture, Art Direction, and production of web sites and web applications. With detailed knowledge of design and coding practices I consistently bring design concepts to life with prototypes and quickly iterate complex interactions. Highly respected for ability to unite disciplines within organizations and place focus on user needs through a user-centered approach to design.
I am seeking a role that leverages my ability to positively affect product design by directly communicating with developers and helping translate design concepts into tangible products. My direct involvement with developers should also be balanced with opportunities to promote design standards within the organization and throughout the industry.
Work Experience
August 2004 to Present
Yahoo!
November 2007 to Present
Yahoo! Developer Network - Principal Designer
- Architect of information and interaction design for redesigned Yahoo! Developer Network site.
- Used object modeling and task flow analysis to inform site structure and navigation
- Worked closely with developers to design interaction and interface of Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI) components such as Rich Text Editor, Data Table, Slider, and Calendar.
- Authored article "Challenges of Interface Design for Mobile Devices"
- Provided Art Direction for YUI visual skin reference implementation
- Evangelized effective design and development techniques at conferences and internal events.
August 2006 to November 2007
Yahoo! Platform User Experience - Senior Interaction Designer
- Presented seminars on design best-practices to Yahoo! designers, engineers, researchers, and product managers
- Architected user experience for Yahoo! user registration overhaul — yielding a 107% increase in daily account creations
- Instilled user-centered design as a core foundation of Yahoo! Membership products and united the Design, Product Management, Engineering, and Security teams toward prioritizing user needs as a strategic business decision.
August 2004 to August 2006
Yahoo! Personals - Interaction Designer
- Lead Interaction Designer for Yahoo! Personals profile and communication sections.
- Spearheaded dating profile redesign project from conception by collaborating with various design, product, and marketing disciplines.
- Created mental model diagrams to communicate user expectations as a basis of design efforts
- Instrumental in designing and advocating user-focused enhancements that increased site traffic by over 30%.
- Audited site and created a comprehensive site map and page template taxonomy to aid designers and web developers.
- Designed rich interactions to improve usability of search results and profile creation.
February 2003 to August 2004
BMC Software / Marimba, Inc.
Senior User Experiece Designer
- Designed a patch management tool that allows a network administrator to remotely evaluate and install patches onto machines on a network.
- Conducted contextual interviews and ad-hoc usability testing with customers to help refine existing designs and create a well defined set of user personas.
- Helped shape the design process at Marimba by mentoring team members in good design practices via 1-to-1 and department-wide training sessions.
October 2002 to March 2006
Xade Design
Principal
- Principal of my design consulting firm: Xade Design.
- Designed web sites and identity collateral for several small and medium-sized businesses, and web applications for corporations.
- Yaga, Inc. - Designed the interaction and interface for a micro-payment web application used by Time Magazine and Visa.
- Marimba, Inc. - Designed the interaction for enterprise-level change management administration and reporting tools.
- Ansible - Designed Palm OS mobile application interfaces for proof of concept prototypes.
June 1999 to December 2002
Sabre / GetThere
Senior Web Designer
- Designed the interaction model and interface for GetThere's flagship corporate product based on contextual interviews of current users, persona creation and analysis, usability testing, and an iterative design process.
- Improved user flows and information architecture led to a 10-fold increase in product usability over the previous generation.
- Worked closely with key customers to design and build corporate and leisure travel portals for American Express and Northwest Airlines' Air Outlet Center.
- Advised in the design of a turn-key leisure travel portal currently in use by American Express Travel and British Airways.
- Combined my skills in HTML, JavaScript and the company's proprietary scripting language with design principles and a mastery of Adobe Photoshop to improve product usability and time-to-market.
Patent Applications
May 2, 2007 (Applied)
Smart Fields
Sole applicant of a patent for a method to normalize and interpret user input in a range of contexts. This invention bridges the cognitive gap that exists in software which requires a user to provide information in a specific format. When implemented, the method described in this patent allows a system to understand data input based on data context.
November 17, 2006 (Applied)
Initial Impression Analysis Tool for an Online Dating Service
First-named inventor of a patent that provides users of online dating services with the ability to customize a set of attributes they deem most important. This invention allows for speedy initial evaluation of a potential date and can be easily abstracted to contexts outside of online dating.
March 5, 2002 (Applied)
Interactive calendar interface for defining and displaying date ranges
I am one of two co-applicants of a patent for an interface and interaction model for selecting and displaying date ranges. The applied use of this invention relates to selecting travel dates from a calendar and displaying trip lengths within the same calendar. This allows a user of the calendar to see date information as a block of time instead of separate dates.
Speaking Engagements
Tokyo, Japan
Softbank / Yahoo! Japan
December 2007
Seminar Presenter
Presented talks on design team management and collaboration between Design and other disciplines.
Tokyo, Japan
Design IT! 2007
December 2007
Keynote Speaker
Delivered keynote address for the conference's Design track.
Atlanta, Georgia
Georgia Tech
October 2007
Guest Lecturer
Delivered a lecture to HCI students to facilitate their transition from academia to private industry.
Miami, Florida
Telemundo / Yahoo! Latin America
June 2007
Seminar Presenter
Presented talks on design reviews and using design and code patterns.
Las Vegas, NV
IA Summit 2007
March 2007
Speaker
Co-presented a session on how to conduct design reviews and how to deal with feedback.
Yahoo! internal conferences
Delivered several presentations on internal design standards, design reviews, case studies, collaboration between disciplines.
Mountain View, California
Marimba Design Summit
June 2004
Organizer and Speaker
Planned and organized day-long summit to instill design thinking in an engineering-heavy organization.
Education
University of California at Berkeley
BA Architecture - Class of 1999
Etcetera
Spoken Languages
English (Fluent)
Brazilian Portuguese (Fluent)
French (Conversational)
Greek (Elementary)
Brazilian Portuguese (Fluent)
French (Conversational)
Greek (Elementary)
Computer Languages
HTML, DHTML, XHTML, JavaScript, CSS, DOM, XML, JSP
Design/Development Software
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe InDesign
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Flash
BBEdit
Microsoft Visio
OmniGraffle
OmniOutliner
Adobe InDesign
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Flash
BBEdit
Microsoft Visio
OmniGraffle
OmniOutliner
Portfolio
References
Available upon request