Choose your own adventure…
I tried college in ‘93 and left in ‘95. While making an attempt at a degree in film and video production, I fell in love with the challenges, tools, and technology in graphic design, animation, and 3D modeling. And in ‘98 I secured a job that leveraged those skills along with others I’d been developing such as web page creation. I have been working on web and digital experiences ever since.
Next, I found myself managing small design team at a start-up, truly my design and experience management formative years. I became known as a bit of a disruptor and customer advocate, influencing management to focus on the customer experience as a core brand value. My reputation and desire to make progress created connections that ultimately led to finding my way into agency life.
Design is a problem solving process; I owe my approach to years of work with mentors, colleagues, lectures, and reading all kinds of books. However, at the end of the day it’s simple: get to know the customer/user, design a prototype to meet their needs, test it with them, iterate on the design, launch, and optimize. This is a simplification of course because there are many approaches and levels of effort to satisfy each step, but to be sure, each step is necessary.