I'm a Human-Centered Researcher and Designer with over a decade of experience conducting research and designing web, mobile, and in-person experiences across fields of education, health care, and public safety.
 

I currently spend my days leading and managing Design at Appriss Insights. I've crafted our design team and practice from the ground up and introduced human-centered design to the way our products are designed and built. Our products aim to help people who have been affected by crimes by providing information, resources, and critical notifications. I lead and create all human-centered design efforts for Appriss Insights’ products, including foundational user research, usability testing, UX strategy, user and task flows, persona development, wireframes, prototypes, design system, and visual design. I work to build collaboration within our cross-functional team of product managers, engineers, portfolio managers, business analysts, and directors to deliver solutions that meet the needs of our users. In order to integrate a human-centered design approach throughout the company, I build collaborations with our sales and client relations team and our marketing team resulting in more thoughtful designs and better user experiences. I am constantly learning new things, and I value working with a team that prioritizes collaboration and sharing best practices.

Prior to Appriss, I worked as a Product Designer at Humana's Digital Experience Center building products and expanding design in Pharmacy IT.  At Humana, Product Designers are full stack, which means working across a wide breadth of design including research, usability testing, visual design, and prototyping. On a daily basis, I actively collaborated with designers, developers, and product managers in a pairing environment in order to drive quick iteration and production for business and consumer-facing products. In order to engage with the people we were building for, I regularly led co-creation workshops and user research sessions with pharmacists and home health care practitioners in order to design solutions for their specialized work environment.

In addition to my work in the world of user centered design and technology, I have over a decade of experience in ethnographic research, writing, visual art and design, and teaching. 

I've worked in universities and conducted independent ethnographic fieldwork on contemporary arts practice and migration. Most recently, I was a Research Fellow in the Laboratory for Race and Popular Culture (RAP Lab) & Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. While there, I conducted research and completed design work for POP, a project for teaching and learning about pop music in high school and college classrooms developed by Adam Bradley in the RAP Lab. I've also been in residence at Brown University, Vanderbilt University, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Some other things I'm working on:
- Education at Designlab: I run weekly remote Group Critiques with students in Designlab's UX Academy. We talk research, design, and careers. 

- Mentorship with Out of Office Hours: Out of Office Hours connects newcomers with people working in the tech industry, be inclusive, and strives to combat the lack of diversity from the ground up. I've participated as a mentor and mentee.

On the day-to-day personal side of my life,

I'm from Miami and I have lived in a number of cities over the years, from Nashville to Denver. Recently, my wife and I relocated to the Bay Area. If you want to see some snippets from my daily life, Instagram or Twitter are good places to start. I take photos of pretty things or strange things, and I tweet about UX design, women coding, diversifying tech, and of course, some random things too. We have two pups, Miles and Coco, so expect lots of pictures of them too. I participate in a healthy set of digital and in-person groups that I think are awesome (in case you are looking for a few good people out there in the world): Designlab, Moms of Color SF Bay Area, Out of Office Hours, Creative Mornings, Women Who Code, and InVision’s Design Leadership Forum. 

Thanks for visiting. Want to get in touch? We can talk about UX Design, Anthropology, Art, and maybe barre, I love barre. Write to me here.