I'm an Amazon Sr User Experience designer & researcher living in New York City.
Over two decades of experience working in digital products, casting broad vision to deliver design at scale.
Research Methodologies
Jobs To be Done Product Innovation
Generative & Contextual User Research
Design Validation, Usability Heuristic Evaluation
End to end user journey
Persona Development
Competitive Analysis
UX Strategy & Concept Development
Design Foundations & Standards
Design Systems
Authoring Standards Manual
Information Architecture / Navigation
Visual Language Interface Design
Native Apple Human Interfaces: (Apple iPhone iPadOS, TVOS, watchOS)
Art Direction
Marketing & growth design
Print Editorial and Book Design
I'm unfazed with ambiguity in highly complex technology domains. I institute process improvement, high-quality craft standards, and experience outcome results.
I have broad experience across multiple industries and org structures in B2B/B2C. Working in agencies, startups, Fortune 200 and self-employment allowed me to launch over 60 projects with 47 clients in the sectors of technology, e-Commerce, media entertainment, consumer products, finance, and government, earning press recognition from Adobe, TechCrunch, Engadget, Gizmodo, Huffington Post, and Business Insider. I helped 3 founders successfully exit startups (acquisition).
My strengths are broad, long-term, strategic system thinking. I connect philosophy and theory into practice with North Stars. I've got an open mindset to look at problems from multiple vantage points, decoupling, and innovate new.
With deep knowledge in Apple mobile design and Jobs-to-Be-Done research methodology. I partner with Adobe, to create live design Mobile workshops (40K views).
eCommerce
Petsmart
Sotheby's Home
Plated
Primary
CVS
Old Navy
Alibaba
REI
Technology
Amazon
Google
IBM
Adobe
Dell
Techcrunch
Gizmodo
Engadget
Media
HBO
NBC
Sony Pictures
Fox Now
LionsGate
Huffington Post
Columbia Pictures
New Line Cinema
Playboy
Consumer
General Mills
Xerox
Nestle
Dove
Patrón
Jack Daniels
Mini Cooper
Crown Royal
Finance, Education, Government
Fidelity
HSBC
TIAA CREF
Prudential
Bank of the West
United Nations
U.S. Gov Personnel Mgmt
New York University
"Lots of Leadership debates in this project, send Cat"
Amazon L7 Sr. Software Manager
"I drank your koolaid on JTBD thought leadership"
Amazon L8 Sr. Principal Engineer
Design Principles
Ownership-mindset, partner in the journey
As an owner and partner, I collaborate and contribute as a leader. I take accountability for things no one asks for, and no job is beneath me. I execute outcome-driven results and have the rigor for intentional craft.
Strategically focused, foundations and future
I invest strategically in areas that provide measurable long-term value, and increase universal accessibility.
Details make the Design
To understand, I dive deep and reduce what is not essential. I raise the bar on craft, and insist on a high standard of quality.
Earn trust with radical candor
I believe in honest, intentional design, earning trust by preventing defects from being sent down to someone else to fix.
Work Experience
Amazon
Core Selling Partner Experiences & Business Data Technology
Senior User Experience Designer
2021 - May 2024. New York City
To scale and institute UX from the grounds up in 300 data engineering org. Design leader, trailblazing strategic initiatives from 0-1 for a 300+ tech-lead internal tools BDT (Business Data Technology). I enable experiences for Amazonians to broker 2.38+ exabytes of data for 2,123 Amazon retail teams (Stores, Devices, other). My strengths are broad, thinking big and insisting on the highest standards.
Design and Product Strategy: Led the creation and institutionalized Amazon Business Data Outcomes (Jobs-to-be-done) with Principal Product leaders to enable product innovation. I simplify the jargon-intensive data world and create timeliness language, form agnostic blueprint centered on the UX.
Role model for customer obsession by establishing Navigation and information Architecture to streamline UX across 200+ pages with breadcrumb/url pattern. Identified themes, created design proposals, and drove consensus for overall design strategy for a single Information architecture/ navigation experience that provides an intuitive workflow and maps to users’ mental model. Launched task-based navigation on data platform across 6 applications, increased 224% page visits.
UX Lead for the #1 most popular ad-hoc query tool at Amazon, Hubble (Workbench).
Author of design system component standards: Data pattern, Date & Time, Org Chart Profiles. Drove the hot debate for a single design system, laid the foundations for design language that includes defining a design system, color theme, and centralized documentation to enable teams build a consistent and unified experience. Accelerated the adoption of design language by supporting front end engineering demos and ensuring pages are consuming the style package.
Drove collaboration with Katal/BDT team to build core Data Grid component to unblock/enable 2 2022 S-Team and VP goals, and contribution directly to Katal. Leading design components, standards, and best practices of interfaces (ie. Color Spectrum/Token, DataGrid, dataset format patterns). Contribute DataGrid component, influenced BDT engineering to contribute and build to Seller Central.
Establish center of design excellence with creation of a chapter of Business Data UX Bar Raiser, transforming from UX debt activity to an instituted process. I conduct avg 62 design reviews across 10+ teams/yearly and act as SXBR apprentice.
Hosted, organized, and coordinated 3-Day SPX UX Summits for 3 years (since 2021) in Seattle. Lead event program and day-of-coordination for 293 attendees. (food, budget, program, materials, room bookings, IT, sound, room layout, marketing)
Exceed S-Team goal within 6w of launch by 630 bps (180K tables) with a team of 3 (PMT, SDE, UX). Registering data in a semi-automated workflow between Amazon and AWS.
Instituted 0-1 product and UX development process. Enable 7 feedback mechanisms, 9 UX research playbooks, and 29 research artifacts. Design rooted in research, conducted 62+ moderated interviews, 23+ usability, and identified area of improvement for Job management, estimated savings of $40+ million.
Solopreneur | Lead Native Apple iOS Product Designer
Jan 2014 - Apr 2021. New York City
● Recognized by Adobe as Leader in Mobile Design, an expert in Apple architecture, system capabilities, HIG, Universal Native Designs
● Lead mobile iOS design for Fortune 200 Oil & Gas in Houston, Texas ($17.27 Billion Revenue). Generated ~$17M+ capital efficiency with a suite of 17 native iOS enterprise applications C-Level leadership, financial management, and Science/Engineering. Information design for live data analytical dashboards, financial scorecards, maps and navigation, file and asset management, and geographical science applications.
• Deliver cross-platform tools, cross-teams real-time dashboards and data visualizations displaying 500 KPIs for C-level. React/iOS to create high-performing applications.
• Bar raising interface craft to meet pixel perfection quality bar. (dynamic type, scalable SF Symbols). Spearheaded and built a custom iOS design system with over 600 foundational elements and components over 7 years.
● Lead growth design for pet adoption platform and app called AllPaws, and enabled acquisition by Petsmart. Petsmart is the top 1% charity in animal welfare with $400M grant and 565k pets saved.
• iOS app gained 20K downloads in 3 months, sustaining satisfaction of 4.5 across all versions.
• 28+ screens engagement per session, avg 8 min duration
• 10 million pet profiles viewed, 500K pet profiles favorites , 250K pet profiles shared
• 500+ visits and thousands adopted from social media