I am a digital product designer who is passionate about creating thoughtful, intuitive user experiences rooted in data and evidence.
With a multidisciplinary background in engineering and digital product operations, I spent the past seven years helping to grow an early-stage travel startup from a team of five people through acquisition by American Express.
My work developing, launching, and managing both B2C and B2B products has informed my ability to collaborate effectively and balance the needs of the user with key business objectives and technical constraints.
With a keen eye for detail and a drive for understanding every product I work on inside and out, I bring both a human-centered and technical approach towards the iterative design process.
San Francisco Bay Area, California
A Long and Winding Journey to UX Design
UX Design Methodology and… Travel?
My longstanding love for travel goes all the way back to childhood, when my parents would pack us into our beat-up van each summer and hit the road for weeks across the great expanse of the western U.S. As I got older and more adventurous, my yearning for exploration brought me to far-flung places across the globe, and it was only a matter of time before I decided to merge my passion for travel with my occupation.
In a lot of ways, I see UX design and travel through the same lens. Both are about creating experiences for people that elicit joy, gratification, and curiosity. In fact, I find UX design methodology to be strikingly similar to how I would go about planning a long-deserved trip for family or friends:
Research → Where does the traveler want to go? Why? What is the goal of the trip? What is their travel style? Do they have any constraints or limitations? How do they want to get there? Who are they bringing?
Define → Analyze the needs and behaviors of the traveler to narrow down the scope. Come up with a few destinations and experiences that might fit what they are looking for given their constraints.
Ideate / Design → With a destination in mind, explore all the different ways they can get there and design a variety of daily itineraries. What is the most efficient route? Select lodging and activities based on the travelers’ persona.
Test / Iterate → With a prototype itinerary in hand, walk them through their potential journey and see what they think and how they feel. Identify any issues or hesitations, and go back and re-examine those pieces.
Deliver → Book the flights, hotels, and tours. Bon voyage!
On a more personal level, travel forces me out of my natural comfort zone and pushes me to engage with new and unfamiliar experiences, cultures, traditions, foods, and languages. Despite my natural tendency towards introversion, I’ve learned through the years that my most intense periods of growth and personal development always came when I felt the least comfortable. That’s part of the reason why I continue to travel, explore, and most importantly, learn.
I’ve been lucky enough to visit some extraordinary places around the world. Below are a few photos I’ve captured along the way.