Resume
Personal Profile
Design and innovation drive my professional experience. I have this artistic side, and the ever apparent, nerdy side. I love taking those two parts and leveraging them towards the end-to-end design of the user experience. And of course, there's the spine-tingling moment that I'm addicted to – watching normal people go through the user experience you designed (hopefully, without tripping up), and seeing your behind-the-scenes efforts finally realized in the real-world.
But getting there is not just about me. I also love being part of the team and sharing in the vision to do creative, innovative work that makes the world enjoyable and meaningful. Pulling my weight for others, striving to get the team to click and get it done, leading when appropriate.
Career History
Ask.com
Design Director
- Direct all of the design work at Ask.com, of course
GetActive Software
Senior Manager, Usability and Design
- Manage a team of interaction designers and UI developers in developing the user experience for eCRM, CMS, and engagement tools for a client base of membership organizations totaling 6,000 client admins and 50 million members.
- Cultivate and evangelize a company-wide priority toward product ease of use. In 2004, "Ease of use" officially became one of the five GetActive Corporate Differentiators. Competitors, clients, and stakeholders alike recognize GetActive's market leadership in usability. Initiated the first Persona Development Program that formalized user archetypes for use in requirements, UI specifications, and cross-departmental communications. Spearheaded the Usage Analytics Initiative to promote data-driven product design.
- Play two key roles in both Products and Engineering organizations. First, establish and usher the creative direction of the product design, including standards in visual design, interaction patterns, best practices, and style guidelines. Second, serve as principal UI architect for front-end development and presentation layer, including Tcl, CSS and AJAX libraries.
- Audit the design of new product features from requirements to post-release to ensure usability criteria have been met. Set consistent design deliverables to meet the market and technical requirements required of each project team. Deliverables include interaction flow diagrams, mental models, usability tests, focus groups, analytics, and low/high-fidelity prototypes. Coordinated team efforts to produce real, tangible value to the company.
- Individual contributor to roadmap projects, including application code, prototypes, visual design, user experience design, and product management. Strong advocate of earning my leadership through example, with designers or engineers alike.
Tippett Studio
Lighting Technical Director
- Incorporated CG lighting and shaders into final shots to establish mood and personality of characters and environments. Served as hub in the production pipeline, integrating deliverables from modelers, animators, simulation artists, and texture artists. Integrated elements into draft comps for dailies.
- Developed Python scripts that optimized Renderman performance of an 800-node render farm using job control and multi-pass layer output of shots.
- Led R&D for elastic skin technology for use in really scary digital prosthetics.
- Filmography: Hellboy (2004), Constantine (2005)
GetActive Software
User Interface Developer
- Designed user experience and UI for ActionNetwork, selected in PC Magazine's 7 Best of the Web (2001).
- Led interface design for product and professional services engagements.
Freelance Artist
Graphic Designer/UI Consultant
- Full-service offerings included visual design, icon design, animation, usability heuristics, and user modeling. Clients included Redhat/arsDigita and Virage as well as vaporized startups such as Lightshare and Qrio.
Pixar Animation Studios
Information System Department Intern
- Provided workstation and infrastructure support for Bug's Life, Toy Story 2 and Geri's Game productions. Gained proficiency at crawling underneath dark desks.
Education
Academy of Art University
Master of Fine Arts – Computer Arts, Cum Laude
Program Concentrations: Lighting, Visual Effects
Final Project: Wingnut – 2004 Nickelodeon Nicktoons Film Festival Winner – 2003 Spring Show, Special Achievement Award
University of California, Berkeley
B.S. Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Program Concentrations: Computer Graphics, HCI
Skills
Applications
Photoshop, OmniGraffle, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Maya, Softimage XSI, Shake, Avid, Pro Tools, After Effects, Emacs, TextMate, CVS, Subversion
Languages
Expert-level: Standards-compliant XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ruby, Tcl
Knowledeable: SQL, PHP, Java, Python, Renderman, XPath, Perl, C/C++, Lisp, Assembly, Objective-C
Frameworks
Ruby on Rails, Prototype, Scriptaculous, MooTools, Yahoo YUI, ezPublish CMS, Radiant CMS
Professional Organizations
- BayCHI
- SIGCHI
Volunteer Work
Gracepoint Fellowship Church
Web Team Lead – Alameda, CA
Impact (Inner City Program)
Kid-friendly, Safety-guaranteed Driver – Oakland route
American Business School
English Teacher – Moscow, Russia
Central Asia Business Square
English Teacher – Tashkent, Uzbekistan