Where I’ve Worked.
Walt Disney Imagineering
June 2017 - Present
Product Design Lead
As a product design lead at WDI, I am leading a team of seven developers working on an automated system for building internal tools for theme park attraction visualization and review. Our platform is utilized on every in-development project at Imagineering, exposing us to about 100 active internal stakeholders. My personal responsibilities involve managing the product roadmap, overseeing day-to-day team operations, onboarding new users, triaging support requests, developing presentations, and marketing and presenting our product to new stakeholders both inside and outside the company.
Through this role, I have gotten extensive experience in people management, the agile development processes (including significant JIRA experience), working with stakeholders, and translating needs and requirements between developers, designers, and non-technical stakeholders.
UX Designer
My UX work at Disney has spanned across three separate projects. The first was in designing a UI framework and workflow for an internal tool used for project coordination and logistics management. Here, I blended design styles from the tool itself, our studio standards, and other applications used in tandem with this tool to create a flexible, clear, and sensible set of UI elements to be used by the development teams.
The second project worked on designs for an in-park Cast Member-facing interface for the Millenium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run and Rise of the Resistance attractions recently opened in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. The tool provided a simple interface for running very complex maintenance tasks on aspects of each attraction. My role on this project was a blend of design, development, research, and testing, with a quick, iterative pipeline for putting actual working interfaces in front of representative users every week.
My third and current project is designing interfaces for internal tools for upcoming theme park attraction visualization and review. My role here has included a significant amount of user research, as this project spans a wide range of stakeholders and platforms. On the research side, I conducted interviews and surveys with major groups of stakeholders, providing data that ultimately triggered a complete redesign and refocus of the platform itself. On the design side, I have been designing interfaces for game engines, responsive web apps, VR tools, AR tools, and have even done some work on UX for developer-facing APIs.
Finally, throughout each of these projects, I assisted in developing best practice and style guides to evangelize a studio-wide visual identity.
Front End Developer
I started at Imagineering as a front-end web developer, where I designed and developed a flexible UI library that allowed Python and back-end developers to easily create web-based interfaces without ever touching Javascript. This platform rapidly increased the speed at which our team could create robust, user-focused scripts, and—among other significant accomplishments—assisted in the coordination, sign off, and shipping of tens of thousands of props, furniture items, light fixtures, and more for Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. In this role, I largely worked in React, but did other significant amounts of programming in Node, basic HTML/CSS, and Python.
Raheem
July 2016 - December 2017
Product Designer
Raheem is an independent service for reporting police conduct in the U.S. The team was 100% volunteers located all over the world. I specifically worked with Brandon Anderson—the company’s founder—early on in the product’s life as a product designer across many areas, including contributions to the product’s original chat bot concept and data visualization for the data captured. Through this work, I gained some major insight on working in a small, new, and completely distributed company, as well as discovering my personal passion for social justice technology projects.
Junior
May 2016 - August 2016
Technology Apprentice
During grad school, I did my summer internship at Junior—a digital product design company based out of San Francisco—as both a developer and a designer. As a developer, led the work on creating a Slack-based chatbot for a client company, including researching the area, designing the conversation flow, developing the prototype, and designing and presenting our pitch deck to the CEO. On the design side, I worked on a two-person team to reinvent another client’s entire web experience, doing everything from guerilla user research to designing screens and user flows.
Dilks Lab
August 2013 - May 2015
Lab Manager
At Emory University, I worked as the lab manager for a brand new research lab in the psychology department. In this role, I led the design and development of the lab’s analysis pipelines for neuroimaging (fMRI) data, eye tracking data, and behavioral results. Alongside this, I worked on my own research for each of these platforms, utilizing Python, MATLAB, and Unity (game engine) to design and conduct the experiments.
Publication Credits:
Dilks, D. D., Cook, P., Weiller, S. K., Berns, H. P., Berns, G. S. (2015). Awake fMRI reveals a specialized region in dog temporal cortex for face processing. PeerJ 3:e1115.
Where I’ve Studied.
Georgia Institute of Technology
August 2015 - May 2017
Human-Computer Interaction, Masters
I did my Master’s in HCI with a focus on interactive computing and product design. My coursework ran the gamut from programming to UX design to research to industrial design and more. Alongside my courses, I also was a graduate teaching assistant for the undergraduate Intro to User Interface Design course and the graduate level Intro to Visual Design course.
Further, I did research in the FIDO (Facilitating Interaction for Dogs with Occupations) lab, creating wearable technology for service dogs, search and rescue dogs, and other assistance animals, eventually doing my master’s project in collaboration with Canine Companions for Independence, reinventing their tracking systems for puppies in training.
University of Rochester
August 2009 - May 2013
Brain & Cognitive Sciences, Bachelors of Science
My Brain & Cognitive Sciences degree worked focused largely in the areas of perception and psycholinguistics. I started working in a research lab my sophomore year, working on visual perception, conceptual processing, and stroke patient rehabilitation.
Music Composition, Bachelors of Arts
As a music major, I split my time between performance and composition. My main focuses were bassoon and saxophone, but also played (and still play) flute, clarinet, piano, guitar, and sing. I performed in various groups and bands both on and off campus, including Andy Riot and the Sockhoppers, a 50s group, and Cabbage & Baggage, a bluegrass, jazz, celtic fusion trio.
On the composition side, I wrote and arranged a massive number of pieces during my undergrad time and after. My speciality here was composing pieces for a small, eclectic group of instruments, usually out of necessity, as my pool of performers was quite limited. If you’re interested in learning more about any of my work or hearing a demo, please reach out!