About
My farm beginnings in Kansas lend a unique aesthetic to my designs. The simplicity of rural life, the changing of the weather, and the cycles of planting and harvesting have all influenced my approach to solving design projects. There is a process and connection with producing all things. I studied the professional side of craft-making in England during college for a year and spent time in Africa, working with an HIV/AIDS project. These cultures, combined with my lived and professional experiences, have helped to determine the way I communicate & build my work.
I have always been driven and creative. I ran a small business, Early Jewelry for 7 years operating the all aspects from product design to its production, sales, marketing, and website design. Building my own e-commerce site in 2005 lead me to the field of website and UX/UI design which has become my passion. I have a strong and confident creative voice, project trends, and work amazing in a team environment. As a UX designer, my goal is to create products that are useful, usable, and enjoyable for users. What I love most about user experience design is the ability to solve complex problems and create products that make people's lives easier. I enjoy the challenge of designing interfaces alongside a team that are both functional and aesthetically pleasing.
I am a mother of two children and in my free time volunteer my time for various Lawrence, KS civic and youth organizations. I am on the board of the League of Women Voters of Lawrence-Douglas Co as the Web Manager. I volunteer my creative time for fundraising events for Success by Six. Other places I volunteer are the Ballard Center and Woodlawn Elementary School.
I believe that great design can have a positive impact on people's experiences, and I am grateful to be a part of this evolving field.
Work Experience
Interaction Designer | Walsworth Yearbooks
In the Walsworth Yearbooks division I design the application, Yearbook360, that yearbook advisers and students access to plan and design their yearbook in. I also spearheaded the redesign for the e-commerce site utilized by schools to sell yearbooks, yearbooksforever.com. The new e-commerce site will launch summer of 2024 for parents and guardians to purchase yearbooks, yearbook accessories, and where they can design student advertisements for the yearbooks. Working with Google’s Material Design System for developers building in React. I created a design which allows for users to search for their school to purchase from, land in their school store e-commerce page and recognize they are in the correct store to purchase from by adding simple color, hierarchy of text, and school logo as identifiers.
Creative Director | SWIFT Education Center
At SWIFT Education Center a research grant under LSI at the University of Kansas I was the Creative Director. I rebranded the center’s look and feel, onboarded employees on standards to meet for presentations, provided assets, set up Google Workspace for the team, developed training materials, and designed an online application for participants to apply for Micro Credentials.
UX/UI Designer | America's Job Link Alliance–Technical Support
As a contract UX/UI Designer I was brought into America’s Job Link Alliance-Technical Support (AJLA-TS) for America’s Job Link Alliance (AJLA) which is a consortium of publicly funded workforce agencies. I was the first designer to set the visual interface design and content restructure during the huge process of changing code base for the system. I audited the state of the application and interviewed workforce employees and users in various state workforce centers to use as a basis for the redesign. After performing these steps I worked alongside the team to restructure, reiterate, and present designs to stakeholders for final sign off. I was also tasked to conceptualize and design a state workforce mobile app, which successfully launched within a short 5 month timeline.
Creative Director | Hilary’s
Lead creative direction for a frozen food business for advertising, marketing, packaging, and social media.
Education
UX Design Institute
Professional Diploma in UX Design
University of Kansas
Bachelor of Fine Arts, Sculpture
Training
University of Kansas, Mentoring Circles for Disability Inclusion
Nielsen Norman Group, UX Roadmap
Nielsen Norman Group, Design Systems and Pattern Libraries
Lane County Community College
Courses in HTML/CSS, Photography, Website Design and Photoshop
Skills & Technology
Sketch
Adobe XD
Zeplin
Adobe Creative Cloud Suite
Design
Administrative & Team Communication
Microsoft Office Suite
Google Suite
Confluence
Jira
Redmine
Asana
Basecamp
Smartsheet
Slack