I am a UX/Design Researcher that has spent the last 20+ years in design, research, and leadership—working at places like frog design, USAA, and Intuit. My experience spans design research, interaction design, concept generation, design team management, and executive design leadership.
Over the past three years, I navigated my own recovery from depression and anxiety. I experienced firsthand how confusing, fragmented, and overwhelming it can be to find and access the right care. That difficulty pointed me to a problem I want to help solve: making the path to effective treatment less confusing for everyone who has to walk it.
In addition to my design and research skills, I bring lived experience and training as a Mental Health Peer Specialist (MHPS). This keeps me grounded in the reality my peers face every day and makes me a more empathetic, informed researcher.
I can think of no better way to spend my time than helping improve the recovery journey of the peers in my community.
If you're working in health or wellness tech, let's connect. I'd love to learn from you.
Methods
Research Planning
Contextual Inquiry (ethnography)
Shop-alongs (ethnography)
In-depth Interviews
Heuristic Evaluation
Quantitative Surveys
Card Sorts
Data Synthesis (insights & ideas/recommendations)
Concept Testing
Usability Testing
Design Thinking Workshops
AI tools such as Claude, tl;dv, and Claude Design for research planning, synthesis, and design
I have experience working for and in a wide variety of organizations – startups, medium and large sized companies, in manufacturing, consumer electronics, entertainment, financial services, and enterprise SaaS software. I have excellent verbal and written communication skills (in English and Spanish). I am comfortable working in design sprints and agile environments.
Experience
Grocery AI
I have started my own research project to determine what the potential is for AI-enabled services in the grocery shopping user experience. I am conducting contextual inquiries, shop-alongs, and surveys to gather data and synthesize them into user pain points, needs, and opportunity areas. My end goal is to deliver a report that details a summary of my findings, UX Design Principles, and ideas/recommendations for where AI investments should be made in this space.
USAA
When Dell acquired Spanning, I decided to join USAA and help them build out their new Chief Design Office. In the span of 18 months I built 8 teams across all of the Bank for a total of 70 people. My primary impacts at USAA have been: to move design upstream from a production-oriented focus to a strategic focus; to develop a prioritization framework that business, design, and engineering use to prioritize work efforts; and to influence partners to launch new digital products.
Spanning
I left frog in 2013 to go “in-house” and become directly integrated in the product development process. I landed at Spanning Cloud Apps, an Austin-based SaaS company that offers online backup products and services for Google, Salesforce, and Microsoft 365. My biggest impact there was pushing the product management and development teams to build responsive web products that worked equally well in desktop browsers and mobile devices. The products that we shipped while I was there made the company an attractive acquisition target for EMC and later Dell.
frog
frog is where I cut my teeth as a researcher and designer. It was there that I learned how to conduct contextual inquiries and surveys, facilitate design thinking workshops, create product concepts, and do detailed interaction design. During the 9 years I was there I worked with a myriad of clients including Standard & Poor's, KPMG, Disney, Flextronics, AT&T, Motorola, and LG.