I’m a full-cycle Product Design Lead.

What I love to do: Create products that solve the right problems and are a pleasure to use. How?

Engage people with a variety of perspectives in the process. Keenly observe, listen, and capture what I learn in forms that help me internalize it. Nail the problem space so that great solutions start to reveal themselves as if by magic. (It’s not magic.)

Next, immerse myself in interaction design, my not-so-secret happy place. Rapidly draw and prototype ideas, incorporating good ideas from any source. Craft excellent user stories and use cases. Expect the unexpected, straying off the happy path and designing for edge cases. Communicate with engineers throughout implementation. Don’t forget to celebrate a hard won product release! Okay, what’s next?

Trivia

Places I’ve lived

Evanston, Illinois; Providence, Rhode Island; Bologna, Italy; San Francisco, California; and Portland, Oregon.

Formative summer jobs

Teenage surveyor: I was on a team of high school students hired to interview senior citizens about their histories and current experiences living in my hometown.

Maid in the mountains: As a college student, I worked for a lodge in the middle of Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming. I had only lived in suburbs and cities and wanted to experience the wilderness.

Exhibit design intern at a children's museum: I researched and wrote a proposal for an interactive exhibit on the artist Marc Chagall.

Memorable places I’ve visited

I’ve had the good fortune of travel to some amazing places for school, work, and vacation. My most vivid travel memories include: In Sicily, the small town of Roccapalumba; in Amsterdam, the Eastern Docklands; in London, Regent's Canal by daytime and Limehouse Basin by night; in Tunis, the haunting ruins of Carthage; and on the outskirts of Kyoto, Ōkōchi Sansō villa.

A round-trip journey

Once upon a time, I thought I was done with web things, and wanted to break out of two dimensions. So I went to landscape architecture school, thinking I wanted to be a UX designer of public spaces. But when it came time to choose a Master’s Project related to the human experience of place, I just couldn’t resist . . . designing a product. That’s how I came full circle back to product design with a fresh 3-dimensional perspective on UX and an enduring fascination with environmental design.

Favorite things growing in my yard

Acer palmatum 'Seiryu'; Daphne × susannae 'Lawrence Crocker'; Daphne x burkwoodii ‘Carol Mackie’; Edgeworthia papyrifera; Parthenocissus quinquefolia; Spiraea japonica ‘Peacock’.

Favorite books

My favorite books tend to be graphic novels that are at least semi-autobiographical, with a strong sense of time and place. I recommend anything by Marguerite Abouet, Lynda Barry, Guy Delisle, Keiji Nakazawa, Marjane Satrapi, Riad Sattouf, Art Spiegelman, and Chris Ware.