Hi. I am Steve.
Its nice to meet you.
I enjoy facilitating teams in making life easier for users through design that speaks to their needs. My curiosity, problem solving skills and aesthetic sensibilities make me well suited to this role. I excel at leading teams and facilitating great outcomes. I consider it an important goal to adapt technology to make it easy to use by people of all backgrounds.
I reside in Raleigh, where I enjoy spending time with my wonderful wife. My hobbies include tennis, photography, video, and learning to play piano.
How I got started in user experience design
I started my career as a developer, where I observed the difficulties that poorly designed applications pose for users. Meanwhile, I dabbled in various creative endeavors in my spare time, such as filmmaking, drawing and acting. I found myself seeking work that was more human centered and consequently more nuanced than the development work I was doing. I found my home after I went to grad school for human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University, where I learned how I could combine my analytical and creative sides in service of application design that improves lives.
What I've been working on
I have been working on a collaborative tool to make conducting audits easier, more transparent and faster. Building off an initial design sprint, I continued to evolve the design with heavy involvement from users. Other projects include helping my team to begin creation of a design system to bring consistency and efficiency to our design process. I also tested proposedsolutions we brainstormed to address user painpoints within a complex sales transaction support application.
My experience in UX spans user research through design and usability testing. I have worked on countless projects of varying complexity and audience.
What I'm interested in
I am interested in how UX designers can be the best leaders they can be within their respective environments. This includes establishing UX benchmarks to show need and measure impact, visualizing user needs for easy consumption by teams, and communicating UX process in a manner that everyone can easily grasp.
I am also curious about how AI can be integrated seamlessly into an application to accelerate tasks and provide helpful insight. Building on my background in filmmaking, I am interested in the effective use of animation and motion design, whether to help users understand an application's behavior or to add enjoyment to the experience. I like to learn the latest techniques for streamlining UX work, whether its for creating mockups and prototypes efficiently, or for conducting user research.