My Story
Staff photo for Orange Shoe Personal Fitness circa 2019
My first example of user experience comes from my dad. My dad loves to have people over for dinner, and every time, before they arrived, we would do The “Front-Door-Check”. We would walk in from our front door as if we were our guests arriving, to see how they were going to experience the party from the first impression. Was it inviting? How was the lighting? What did you smell first? Did anything need changing? What do we think, is it ready? We made any final adjustments, and voilà, we were ready.
I’ve always appreciated that viewpoint: putting myself in their shoes. I think it’s what makes me a great UX Designer designing the experience of the user
My Bachelor’s degree in Public Health gave me a holistic, system-level perspective and a value on risk reduction, prevention, and consistency. Through that degree I had the opportunity to work with the Alzheimer’s Foundation and the residents at local Continued Care Retirement Communities.
I decided to practice public health on a one-to-one basis as a personal trainer and fitness coach both at companies and self-employed. I had a successful and fulfilling career for 10 years. (Oh and I used to have colored hair).
It was the pandemic that catalyzed a shift. I had loved working with folks and helping them to become healthy, but it felt like the growth was limited to more of the same. I had started wanting more ownership over my work, to build on my creative problem solving skills, and to work together with a team. A lot of my previous experience had been all self-started. I believe one goes further as a team.
Along with my fitness career, I am creative. I began training and coaching aerial arts and creating aerial acts and choreographies for myself and clients. (I actually find a lot of similarities between design thinking and creating a choreography, go check out my blog if you’re interested!). I even produced a fundraising aerial performance show and raised $3000 for charity.
I’ve worn many hats in my time, all related to communication, ideation, relationship building and getting things done. Web design allows me to use my creative problem-solving skills to help on a system-level (and if it allows me to spend more time cozied up at my computer with my cat at my feet, then I can’t complain).
FAQs
-
Public Health
Personal training
Art
-
User research:
research script writing, user interviews, data analysis, data insights
Wire-framing: low to high fidelity
Prototyping
Sketching, brainstorming
User persona creation
Card Sorting
Site Mapping
Affinity and Empathy Mapping
Usability testing
-
You could say I’m a well-rounded generalist.
Communication and relationship-building skills. I’ve worked one-on-one in-person with very diverse populations.
Ability to connect the dots and synthesize information from many different disciplines.
-
Yes, a little. Front-end development tools: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
-
It’s a long “e”, like the word Vegan, or like the Shakespeare character, Regan, from King Lear, or like the former Secretary of Treasury, Donald Regan (not like the former president, Ronald Reagan.)
-
A type of acrobatic practice or performance involving an apparatus suspended ff the ground, often seen at the circus. Examples include trapeze, silks, lyra, rope, Spanish web and others.