Summary

I have been immersed in web technologies for over 15+ years, 10 of which have been in a professional environment. My focus has always been on clean, simple, highly effective web applications that fulfill three criteria. They must be effective, efficient, and bring satisfaction to the user.

Experience

Director of User Experience for Musician's Friend, Guitar Center, Music123, Woodwind & Brasswind from Nov 2007 – Present

• Built an enterprise user experience team comprised of 3 groups; UX design, usability, and web graphic production. At one time it included a 4th of front-end development.
• Led and helped design the wireframes, scenarios, user flows, personas, and visual designs for Musician's Friend, Music123.com, WWBW.com, and GuitarCenter.com’s new ecommerce systems utilizing the ATG platform. This consisted of over 900+ requirements, 500+ annotated wireframes, and 250+ visually designed pages by my team and myself.
• Led and helped design of Musician's Friend’s first mobile website and first native iPhone app in 2008, as well as the redesign of these for Q2 2011.
• Guided and facilitated usability testing, surveys (using ForeSee Results), and heuristic evaluations on Musician's Friend and Music123.com before, during, and after the redesigns.
• Led the web production team in charge of graphically supporting the marketing and merchandising team and their weekly on site, email, and affiliate promotions.
• Led the design of integrating community elements throughout the ecommerce browse experience on Music123.com and Musician's Friend, which utilize the JIVE community platform.

Owner, User Experience Designer of Ridgeline Media, LLC from Nov 2007 – Present

• Specialized in interaction design, visual design, and front-end development using Ruby on Rails for personal and small business web applications.
• Created lifejot.com, a grocery list web application. Currently has 15,000 members and over 202,000 items added by customers.
• Developed wireframes and visuals for Global Data Services magazine software application. Worked with the business owners and users to identify needs and map out all new requirements.

Manager of User Experience Design for Musician's Friend, Guitar Center, Music123.com from Aug 2005 – Aug 2007

• Managed a team of 5 of visual designers, interaction designers, and front-end developers in charge of wireframing, prototyping, information architecture, and front-end development of Musician's Friend, Guitar Center, and other sister sites.
• Led the UX design and development effort for GuitarCenter's first ecommerce site in 2006.
• Redesigned the flow and user interface of Musician’s Friend checkout process resulting in a decreased abandonment rate of 27%.

Sr. User Experience Designer for Musician's Friend, Giardinelli.com from Feb 2005 – Aug 2005

• Led a team of 2 responsible for wireframing, visual design, site updates, promotional updates, web development, newsletters, and email blasts.
• Led the interface design effort for rolling a new ecommerce website called musician.com geared toward the recording community.

Web Designer Musician's Friend, Giardinelli.com from Nov 2003 – Feb 2005

• Responsible for wireframing, visual design, site updates, promotional updates, web development, newsletters, and email blasts.
• Responsible for developing all front-end materials consisting of CSS, HTML, JavaScript, and SIMTEM, an internal proprietary templating language used by Musician's Friend, Inc.

UI Designer/Developer for WebMastery, LLC from Nov 2001 – Oct 2003

• Created and implemented multiple custom .NET e-commerce solutions for a number of companies.
• Programmed using ASP.NET, VB.NET, ADO.NET, ASP, VB 6.0, and XML for numerous websites.
• Overhauled pre-existing websites for improved search engine placement and optimized download time.
• Graphically designed website layouts and logos for companies wanting to take their business online.
• Devised HTML templates based on website layouts for quick addition of content and/or new pages.
• Produced custom email cards and newsletters for businesses looking to promote sales through email marketing.

Education & Certifications

• Bachelors of Science in Computer Information Systems, Southern Oregon University, May 2002
• Minor in Business Administration, Southern Oregon University, May 2002
• Practical Usability Testing Certification, Human Factors, Inc., April 2010

Software & 3rd Party Product Experience

3rd Party Products: ATG , JIVE, PayPal, Bill Me Later, Google Checkout, Certona, Omniture, Unica/Net Insight, BazaarVoice, Power Reviews, Offermatica, BizRate, ForeSee Results, TeaLeaf, Heiler, Endeca, Akamai, Loyalty Labs, QAS Address Verification, RightNowTech, Translations.com, MotionPoint, UserTesting.com, CrazyEgg.

Software: OmniGraffle, SilverBack App, Adobe Creative Suite, Morae by Techsmith, Axure, Microsoft Office

Awards

Personal

• Musician’s Friend “Innovator Award” – 2006
• Musician’s Friend “Outstanding Service Award” – 2005
• Musician’s Friend “Outstanding Service Award” – 2004

Ecommerce

• Multi-Channel Merchant (MCM) “Silver Website Award” – 2011
• Multi-Channel Merchant (MCM) “Website of the Year Award” – 2010
• Multi-Channel Merchant (MCM) “Gold Website Award” – 2009

Strengths

• Customer Focused: Must be the customer advocate. All designs MUST be effective, efficient, and bring satisfaction to the user.
• Self-Motivated: Always thinking of new ideas, opportunities, and exciting ways to engage the customer.
• Ambitious: Driven to learn, create, and apply cutting edge ideas and functionality.
• Creative: Continuously thinking of ideas or opportunities to optimize performance.
• Teamwork: Take pride in challenging the team to come up with new ideas. Helping them grow is a must. It in turn helps me grow.