About

I’m a product designer who strives to bring a human centered focus into my designs. I want to talk to and understand the people I'm designing for. More than that, I want to be involved in working on ideas that can help people.

Throughout my life, I’ve struggled to find where I belong - I’ve taught history in Denver Public Schools and English in Tokyo, I’ve learned how to fly to fulfill a childhood dream of becoming a pilot, I’ve tried to deal with a breakup by taking a train alone through Siberia in December (not advised).

I got into design after watching a video one of my students in Tokyo sent me - about how the engineers who designed Japan's famous Shinkansen trains used birds as their inspiration. I was hooked. I learned that design could help people. From how the choice of fonts used in aviation checklists helped prevent accidents, to how streamlining the information architecture of a healthcare portal could help someone who's never had it finally apply.

So I moved back to my hometown of Chicago and dedicated six months of rigorous work to learning all I could about human centered UX design. I’ve worked on projects ranging from online grocery delivery to my favorite project so far - helping to redesign parts of a website for an elderly care center to allow the residents' families to better stay in touch with them.