QUALIFICATIONS PROFILE
User Experience Consultant with extensive experience in optimizing ecommerce website design and content for user needs (engaging experiences) and business needs (sales, repeat visits). Creating and driving team vision for building UX enterprise-wide.

Research methods include:
usability testing, field studies/ethnographies (in-home, and in-store via shopalongs and intercepts), in-home product evaluations, task analysis, contextual inquiry, brainstorming/ideation sessions, competitive analysis, design review (heuristic evaluation), content analysis, card sorting, mental modeling, in-depth interviews, surveys, remote usability

Design strategy documents include:
sitemaps, wireframes, content audits and inventories, static and interactive prototyping

EXPERIENCE
Evantage Consulting, Minneapolis, MN, October 2007-present
User Experience Consultant
Manage and lead team of 6 peers to develop company UX standards and best practices, and to promote our thought leadership throughout the UX community. Design the information architecture for client websites. Prototype interactive sites in Axure. Interpret user needs via user research and analytics. Provide design reviews and competitive analyses for client sites.
Key Achievements for a new website, SedationFacts.org:
• Provided all primary research including user interviews and personas
• Created a content inventory based on stakeholder and user needs
• Built wireframes to represent the information design of the site
• Tested the wireframes for their user-friendliness and redesigned the site based on test data
Other Achievements:
• Development of unified team approach to UX processes and methods
• Creation and promotion of team blog
• Currently in training to teach Axure training classes nationwide
• Rigorous project management of small-scale client projects and large-scale internal projects

Target Corporation, Minneapolis, MN, June 2002-October 2007
User Experience Research Consultant
Measure and enhance the guest experience across Target.com campaigns. Translate primary and secondary research into actionable insights and design improvements that are aligned with both the campaigns’ and corporate strategic directions. Lead cross-functional teams throughout the entire user/market research process (planning, designing, conducting, analyzing and communicating customer insights). Drive user research as a strategic service (i.e. develop low-fidelity prototyping and iterative testing, observe customers to discover unmet needs).
Key Achievements:
• Tracked trends across accumulated usability data, then published and presented best practices to relevant teams
• Developed means and a process to support rapid, iterative testing methods
• Grew our team’s services from tactical usability research to include strategic user research services, which was proven by a large growth of service offerings, increased demand, expanded clientele and a move from HR into Strategy & Research
• Designed corporate training program to train usability testing and card sorting across the corporation
• Managed temporary contractors

UnitedHealth Group (Optum), Golden Valley, MN, Nov 1999 – Jun 2002
Front End Web Developer
Develop and code Optum’s customer-facing, B2B and intranet sites (coding HTML, CSS, DHTML, JavaScript) with the flexibility to meet future content needs. Understand business strategies, monitor site traffic, and develop requirements for the sites. Design and develop interactive health tools. Manage content production. Oversee quality testing in 6 different environments
Key achievements:
• Developed code, usability and accessibility specifications for Optum’s sites, and led team in implementing standards
• Established and led a code review process, created code specifications and trained other developers of new processes
• Created production methods and best practices; trained them to others
• Developed and designed interactive (Flash) health tools for HealthForums.com

CERTIFICATION + EDUCATION
Human Factors International (HFI) Usability Analyst Certification, 2008

Master of Liberal Studies Degree: Driving Web Innovations
Innovation Studies Post-Graduate Certificate: Innovating the User Experience
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN: 2009 (anticipated date of graduation)

Bachelor’s Degree: Political Science, Spanish
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN: 1992

COMMUNITY
Local organizer, Information Architecture Institute (IAI), Aug 2007-present

Volunteer, Animal Humane Society website user experience, March 2008-present

ADDITIONAL SKILLS
• Fine intuition to meet business needs by innovating methods and services
• Natural talent to network and draw from creative resources to solve challenging problems
• Not afraid to voice unpopular ideas
• Nicely balanced on the Hermann Brain scale (left brain analytical/organized and right brain creative/emotional)
• Strong negotiation and interpersonal skills
• Comfortable with rapid change and leading through ambiguity
• Comfortable delivering presentations to large audiences
• Comfortable taking calculated risks
• Bilingual in Spanish-English