Hello NOBL!

I’ve been looking to find a place that I can plant my roots at and grow with a company over time. When I saw your blog, I couldn’t help but get excited, so I made this custom landing page for you to get to know me better. My background is in UX Design and Research but there are a few things that make me a little different.

I’m interested in organizational psychology and change management. I always end up trying to help companies improve the way that they work, so I’d love to make that a part of my job and drop prototyping products. I’m currently looking into courses in these categories, including HR, because I’m passionate about setting people up for success in a company. I’m also interested in organizational design aligned with purpose and building teams and systems.

I’m a facilitator. I believe we are better together. I think it’s best to set aside time for discussions, whiteboards, and workshops with a variety of experts from around the company to reach well rounded decisions. I love helping people effectively communicate across departments and find it really easy for me to put myself in each person’s shoes and advocate for compromise. I also think it’s important to align to a single vision. Clarity is one of the most important things to a success of a team, so I use my skills to help companies create and maintain this.

I’m strategic. I believe a consistent business that serves it’s customers creates a brand equity that creates a buffer against competition. I know it’s hard for businesses to move from quarterly goals to a long-term vision, because at first they might not see where their investment is going. I also know that the businesses that choose to make that investment end up being some of the greatest in the world, but it takes a commitment and time. I try to surface the consequences of decisions, both good and bad to leaders, so they can choose the path that will benefit them in the long term. 

I’m a strategic UX researcher and designer who looks for win win situations.

I’m interested in using my background to help organizations adapt and excel in this new world we are working in.

I mentor designers in my spare time, because I believe in investing in people and the future of design thinking.

I’ve been told I use both my left and right brain equally. I use that, reading between the lines, and creating safe spaces to align groups of people across companies.

Through a combination of natural instinct, experiences, and training throughout my life, I have become a strong communicator. Friends have referred to me as “a therapist” and I often get a surprised “you are a great listener” when I’m talking to someone about their concerns one on one.

This type of training started back in high school when I was accepted to the Peer Assistance & Leadership (PAL) program. I was taught conflict resolution, decision making and other leadership skills.

Once I got to college, I continued down this path by becoming a community advisor (CA) and eventually being promoted to one of the 4 Senior CAs on campus. I helped lead the yearly training and mentored other CAs throughout the year.

For the past 15 years my reading list has consistent mostly of non-fiction books centered around psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, behavior change and relationship building.

A few years ago I decided to become a matchmaker part-time because I thought it sounded fun. I was able to help people reflect on where they were being blocked by fear and how they could become open to a new relationship.

When you bring UX and design thinking practices into a business or elevate them into new parts of an organization you must be careful. You should first focus on understanding how things are currently working and where people are hurting. Your first goal should be to own trust of the people you want to introduce new process and practices to, so that you can help them.

I’m so passionate about UX that I created a youtube channel to help business owners to understand what User Experience is and how it works. I decrease the intimidation factor by breaking the concepts down into easily digestible chunks and avoiding jargon.

I meet people where they are at, so they can feel empowered to take these principles – such as listening to end users – and incorporate them into their company culture. Teaching internal employees this type of two way relationship is what brings long term sustainability to an organization. It creates trust and loyalty with the people you serve, so that a competitor can’t swoop in and take over your market.

If your employees understand the process is about trial and error from the beginning, it will be easier to learn quickly, prioritize user needs, and stay relevant in the market.

She talks about the bias we bring to our products and how important it is to get past this to find the “inner thinking” of the people we are serving. She refers to popping the bubble of Dave Gray’s “Liminal Thinking.” If you haven’t seen his whiteboard description of this, I’d give it a listen too.

If the only research you are doing is usability testing, you might be wasting time and money.  For example, you could build a salt shaker that is wifi enabled, but is that the best use of time? Probably not. This might seem obvious to you from an outsider’s perspective, but it wasn’t to SMALT.

Running an organization is about prioritizing, because we don’t have unlimited resources. Research helps us prioritize and exploratory research helps us pick the right problem from the start to solve.