everything is UX

Whenever confounded with a user experience issue, I have sought out her expertise. She dives into every problem and comes up with the most logical/innovative solution (and I always wonder how she does it and why I couldn’t see it as clearly as she did). On top of all of that, she has one of the most creative minds when it comes to analytics… and humor. Alex is fun, unique, and a pleasure to work with.

—J. Evans, IA, Memory Lane
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For me, user experience encompasses all user-facing moments. It lies not only in an intuitive, usable site but in the site’s searchability, atomized off-site content, advertising (online and off), and general brand awareness (bloggers, media chatter, news). Usability, findability, search, taxonomy, data architecture, testing, research, and web analytics are all part of creating a strong UX strategy that grows with your company and your users—but none of this happens without focused leadership and collaboration.

Core skills

• Information architect. Extensive experience with site flow, user interface (UI), interaction design/HCI, navigation, wireframes, front- and back-end taxonomy and content strategy, functional specifications, user scenarios, prototyping, and more. Prefer wireframing and prototyping in HTML, but have experience with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, ImageReady, and InDesign; Macromedia Fireworks, Freehand, and Flash; Microsoft Visio, PowerPoint; Axure; OmniGraffle; Vue; AutoCAD (used for 3-D wireframes for jewelry structure).
• Usability engineer. Testing, audience analysis, personas, prototyping, perception and cognition optimization, calls to action—you name it, I’ve done it. Training with the likes of Jakob Nielsen (Worldwide Usability Tour, 2001) and a summa cum laude degree in psychology make my user-centered work a force to be reckoned with.
• Visual information design. Not just another artist—I can make complex data intuitive and approachable, presenting it both graphically and in context. Proficient in web, e-newsletter, and print. Trained with Edward Tufte in 2003.
• UX leader. Nowadays, it’s not enough to design great UX to make a big idea happen. You need to be able to lead and mentor teams, build relationships between stakeholders, analyze and develop strategy, and make your case to clients and executives. I’ve successfully done the following:
  • As UX Manager, mentored and led creatives in user experience innovation and best practices; acted as UX consultant to top 5 social network; when migrating from waterfall to Scrum environment, developed and implemented UX integration into Scrum process;
  • As Site Experience Product Owner, led two global, cross-functional Scrum (Agile) teams in UX transformation, platform migration, and UX analytics implementation;
  • Project managed initiatives such as site redesign, data migration from one platform to another, site personalization;
  • Built consensus between competing (sometimes bitterly divided) interests;
  • Written, presented, and trained to a variety of audiences; and
  • Directly and indirectly led UX projects, best practices, and strategy throughout my career.