Who I am in UX

rina-aug2015

Who am I?

I am a curious person, inventive and creative, in pursuit of discovery, clarity, and optimization. That applies to life, websites, spaces for humans, and things that will be used.

I am genuine in nature, tend to be a team player, and can also guide teams throught the improvement of user experience.

In my free time, I enjoy watercolor and sketching, music and dance, the outdoors, and impressing my two awesome kids with my British accent blend. I enjoy a good laugh and prefer to surround myself with teams and individuals who have a sense of humor, but who are also just as driven as I am.

Why do I love UX?

  • Graphic design background
  • Front end development background
  • UX planning and strategy
  • Inquisitive and empathetic nature is built in
I have a natural gift for empathy when it comes to thinking about users and the barriers that may keep them from accomplishing something, be it psychological, technological, or a poor interaction experience. Similarly, I can also take into account the needs of stakeholders and business goals that form the foundation for the product or service being designed.

What do I bring to the table?

  • Bridge between design, dev, and business
  • Asking good questions with candor
  • Empathy
  • Advocating UX within the business and team
  • Eagerness to learn more

My strengths

My strong points have shifted throughout the years, just as they should. I’d have to say that my strongest suite of skills is headlined by wireframing, prototyping, and user flows.
  • Wireframing using Adobe CS, Mockflow, Omnigraffle (I can adapt to pretty much any tool)
  • Prototyping with CSS, HTML, light jQuery, Twitter Bootstrap
  • User flows and documentation
  • Some agile experience, writing user stories and defining product and UI
  • A desire and drive to produce measurable results
Design and coding take a mutual close second to UX, as I’ve been equipped with those collectively for almost 15 years. In the past few years, I chose to focus on the heart of user experience (see explanation below).
What’s the heart of UX, you ask? It’s user-centered design, where “design” becomes somewhat of a misnomer. User experience, as a practice, lends us the opportunity to fully engineer experiences through collaboration between stakeholders, practitioners of code and design, and the end user.

Want to see more?

Check me out on LinkedIn

Also, an old post from when I realized what interaction design is. I’ve grown so much since, but it’s always nice to reflect on where we’ve been.