** 🦺 🚧 Updates in progress. Currently shaking my fist at decisions younger me made in the past 🦺 🚧 **

Works

"Good design successfully manages the tensions between user needs, technology feasibility, and business viability." — Tim Brown
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Selected projects

I'm  highlighting four projects; two recent with two of my all time favorites. More projects by company can be found on my Works page, where you can learn more about my process in different company environments.

01

Bulk Email Communications

Bulk email messaging feature enabling communication and engagement with multiple participants within a research orgs participant CMS.

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Bulk Email Communications

‍Problem:

Messaging was previously limited to study-specific communication, forcing researchers to create fake studies or send individual messages outside of study contexts to reach participants. This made it difficult to engage participants, maintain panel health, ensure compliance, and update them on past study outcomes over time.

Role:

I led the end-to-end research and design of Bulk Email, a long-requested feature that enabled research teams to communicate with participants beyond individual studies. Through iterative research, design, and testing, I ensured the solution met usability, security, and compliance needs while aligning with broader platform goals.

Impact on the Future:

Beyond solving immediate communication challenges with a lightweight MVP email composer, this project provided a way to test backend ideas for decoupling participants from studies. These learnings helped inform larger strategic discussions on how to better structure relationships between users, studies, and participants—shaping future improvements to the platform’s architecture.

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Final design layout for email composer.
See how we tackled usability, security, and compliance while reshaping participant communication.
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02

Usage Metrics and Tracking

Empowering research admins and operations managers, this project introduced key metrics to provide actionable insights, optimize workflows, and enhance research efficiency.

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Usage Metrics and Tracking

I introduced a scalable insights system into a web-based user research platform, helping admins access key metrics like emails sent, incentives paid, studies conducted, and user engagement. This work began as small, strategic enhancements and evolved into a full metrics dashboard initiative.

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03

Blueprinting a Service

Mapping the security experience at USAA across 5 channels to uncovered gaps, streamlined processes, fostered cross-team collaboration, and lay the groundwork for enhancing member authentication and access.

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Blueprinting a Service

The Problem:

USAA’s aggressive MFA rollout led to low adoption, fragmented authentication experiences, and a surge in support calls, exposing critical security and usability gaps across five channels. Without a unified security strategy, authentication processes remained inconsistent, inefficient, and frustrating for both users and internal teams.

Role:

I co-led an investigative effort alongside a seasoned experience architect, working with business partners, engineers, stakeholders, and customer support teams. Allowing me to:

  • 1:1 interviews & call center ride-alongs to understand real user pain points.
  • Experience audits across five authentication channels (mobile app, web, interactive voice response, call centers, and third-party IoT).
    • Map authentication experiences across all channels.
    • Uncover security & usability pain points affecting adoption.‍
  • Design thinking & empathy-building workshops to align teams on user needs.‍
  • Ideation sessions to explore and prototype scalable authentication improvements.
  • Align cross-functional teams on a scalable authentication strategy.

This resulted in a comprehensive security blueprint that mapped authentication experiences, highlighted inefficiencies, and aligned teams on a scalable security vision.

Impact (The Outcome & Future Implications)

The blueprint became a strategic tool that:

  • Created alignment across security, UX, engineering, and business teams.
  • Guided future security initiatives, including the "Authenticator of Choice" vision.
  • Drove forward progress, ensuring authentication improvements were user-centered rather than purely compliance-driven.‍
  • Allowed for efforts that streamlined authentication processes to improve security and usability some leading to reduced call center authentication times, saving millions in operational costs.
  • Strengthened cross-functional collaboration, proving that design plays a pivotal role in security strategy.
Service blueprint of security ecosystem
One of several versions. Blueprint was updated and broken down depending on effort and needs and further expanded on per channel or per area of focus.

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Security teams are risk-averse by nature—discover how we built trust, alignment, and a unified vision for authentication at USAA.
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04

A Unified Logon: Redesigning Access

Redesigning USAA’s legacy login experience while introducing Multi-factor streamlined authentication methods and enhanced security experience.

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A Unified Logon: Redesigning Access

Problem

USAA faced rising account takeovers and fraud, making multi-factor authentication (MFA) a critical security measure to protect member accounts. However, the existing authentication system was fragmented and difficult to use, leading to low MFA adoption, security gaps, and increased call center burden.

Following our Security Blueprinting Initiative, which mapped authentication challenges across multiple channels, we prioritized redesigning the web login experience as the first step toward a more secure, scalable, and user-friendly authentication framework.‍

Role

As lead designer for the Identity and Access Management team, I worked closely with security, IT, and stakeholders to design a modernized, user-friendly authentication experience that:

  • Simplified the login process while maintaining security across all digital portals.
  • Increased adoption of secure authentication methods.
  • Reduced call center authentication time, saving millions in time and operational costs.
  • Established foundational authentication patterns that influenced future security initiatives across USAA.

Impact:

This effort laid the foundation for a scalable, accessible authentication framework across USAA’s platforms. Beyond the immediate security and usability improvements, it strengthened cross-functional collaboration between security and UX, proving that design plays a critical role in business and security strategy.🚀

Multi-Factor (MFA) Experience

Original screens:
Original (Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) experience

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New screens:
Updated logon screen for USAA. First step in process is to enter you user name or email.
Two column solution to allow for dynamic content
Single column layout
Security and UX often clash—but they don’t have to. See how we balanced protection, compliance, and user needs to improve authentication.
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Works collections:

Below, you’ll find more snapshots of my work—companies, environments, and projects. Explore each company for more case studies.

2022-2023| Senior Product Designer

Enterprise Team & Staff operation product experiences

User Interviews helps teams quickly connect with customers and users to uncover valuable insights.
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Led design efforts to enhance enterprise admin experiences, refining permissions, access, and role structures for large research teams, enabling them to expand their ability to conduct research projects more efficiently.

2020-2021 | Senior product Designer

Good Sam Experiences

Good Sam, Good Sam, a Camping World subsidiary, provides products and services for the RV lifestyle.
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Led UX initiatives across Good Sam’s digital products, while driving design process improvements, stakeholder collaboration, and research integration. I also worked to mature and strengthen the design team and internal design culture.

2016-2019 | Experience Designer

Member Identity and Access Management - M.I.A.M.

USAA provides financial and insurance services to military members and their families.

As an Experience Designer, I played a key role in improving member access and digital security experiences for USAA, a financial institution serving the armed forces, veterans, and their families. Optimizing security while maintaining a seamless user experience posed unique challenges, requiring a balance of usability, compliance, and trust.

2015-2016 | UX/UI Designer

Predictive Science

Data analytics Marketing platform experiences

Spun out of Dell’s Digital Innovation Lab in 2013, Predictive Science was a big data startup helping Fortune 1000 marketers optimize ROI through algorithmic insights.
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As one of two UX/UI designers, I crafted data-driven, user-friendly experiences and collaborated with leadership on marketing and executive-level assets.

‍*Note:  Startup no longer exists 🫣

2013-2015 | Mobile Design & Operations support

a digital service and product design agency

Early in my career, I had the honor of apprenticing as a Product Designer at Funsize, a small but talented mobile product design agency in its early days. Working with some of Austin’s best mobile product designers, I gained hands-on experience in mobile product design while also getting exposure to  business operations in a startup environment. Grateful to the Funsize team for giving me my first break in design.

*I still have some artifacts from those early days. I was able to be a part of some pretty interesting projects. If you are interested in hearing about them, hit me up and lets chat.

Additional Experience

2009-2018 | S-3 Operations Liaison/Plans & Operations coordinator

United States Army Reserves

607 Military police Battalion

The last nine years of my military service, I served on the battalion staff of the 607th Military Police Battalion. Throughout this period, I gained exposure to and became proficient in the Army Design Methodology (ADM) and the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP). These processes, rooted in design thinking, aimed to assist battlefield leaders in collectively crafting solutions through a blend of critical and creative thinking.

Military Design Thinking