A design journey

In 2007, I obtained my Communication degree from Mount Royal University and have had the pleasure to work for companies such as Global Television and E! Everything Entertainment as a broadcast and graphic designer.

In 2010, I moved from Calgary to Vancouver and enrolled in the Interactive Design program at Capilano University. I graduated 2 years later and began my career as a product designer.

Since then, I’ve worked in three different industries including e-learning, legal technology, and financial technology. For the first 5 years of my career, I split my time doing both design and front-end development. I learned a lot about how to properly build and ship software before deciding to focus on just design.

Values and beliefs

I believe that designers do more than just make things “pop”. We help ourselves and our teammates imagine different ways of solving problems. We empathize with users and work to understand the pains and issues they’re experiencing. We use our skills and knowledge to guide them to solutions. Sometimes its products or features, other times its ideas or concepts.

I enjoy collaborating with team members to create impactful outcomes, that not only benefits users, but the business itself. I strive to build delightful and memorable experiences and be that bridge that connects users to goals and stakeholders to results.

Trust, transparency, honesty, and feedback are what I value when working with others. I’m humble in my approach, opinionated when it matters, and try not to take things too seriously. I see failed projects as a chance for learning. Something that should be more positive than negative where you can adjust, iterate, and apply to future opportunities.

Design methodology

My general approach to solving complex problems is to apply a frankensteined hybrid using Sprint, game storming, and white boarding challenge frameworks. I've been using and honing this design process for last 6 years and it's been quite successful in my opinion.

We call this a “workshop” at Lendesk but at it’s core it’s a way to get stakeholders and teammates collaborating and aligned on a particular problem, challenge, or opportunity. Facilitators work with the group to identify who the audience is, what the outcomes should be, defining success metrics (failures too), user flows, some rough UI, and ownership of next steps.

Design principles

Created by the Lendesk team and I to always ensure that our solutions are guided by:

• Validate: Intuition and asking the right questions are a good start. Refinement with customer feedback is the way to finish.
• Focus: Don’t distract people. Offer the right information at the right time.
• Empathize: Our customers are as diverse as we are, each with different needs. Understand their expectations, needs, and pains, and meet them.
• Evolve: Iterate to keep changes evolutionary, not revolutionary. Nobody has time for a grand redesign.
• Unify: We use consistent patterns across our brand and products. They don’t need to be identical, but should be recognizable and compliment each other.

Inspiring reads or listens

• Books: Sprint, Creativity Inc., and Made to Stick
• Podcasts: HBR (Harvard Business Review) Ideacast
• Subscriptions: GrowthDesign, Dense Discovery, and Lovers Magazine