Lead UX / UI Designer & Instructor
773.490.3051 | syoung@bestung.com | www.BeStung.com
Experienced UX leader and design instructor possessing over 20 years of expertise designing easy-to-use, visually appealing websites and mobile apps. Utilize my dedication, drive, and strong observation skills to identify and solve user’s problems by synthesizing user-centered design from consumer insights, data analytics, user research, and business requirements.
Utilize extensive experience leading the user experience process from start to finish. Create accurate estimates and complete projects on-time and within budget.
Conduct user research in a variety of ways including watching users in their environment to help discover their most pressing needs.
Experience conducting stakeholder, user, and contextual interviews, surveys, performing competitive analysis and usability evaluations, and conducting usability testing.
Perform an expert assessment to see how well the product is performing versus industry standards.
Setup and conduct usability testing sessions to discover how well a design is actually performing as well as what users really think.
Synthesize research findings to create site maps, process flows, wireframes and low and high fidelity prototypes to test ideas before significant money is invested on development.
Bring the product to life by designing a clean and visually appealing interface while making sure the most important information stands out.
Proven ability to significantly increase conversion rates of digital initiatives.
Design and help build a Design System to provide interaction patterns, code snippets, and branding rules to speed up the process and ensure consistency.
Strong communicator who is able to share knowledge by engaging students with humor, creative lessons, and a strong classroom presence.
Worked on a variety of projects including Partner portal redesign, Estimated Shipping inclusion, 3rd party payments, Accessory Shopping Tool Wizard, Facet & Filters Improvements, LPC Dashboard Account Snapshot, and Incentive Program
Lead the user experience effort to make it easier for customer service reps to do their jobs. In a short amount of time, I was able to conduct extensive research, design a user journey for customer service reps and then design a new experience, which would not only increase customer service reps efficiency, but also provide ways for trucking companies to increase revenue.
Lead discovery tasks including creating stakeholder questions and conducting stakeholder interviews, conducting heuristic evaluation and competitive analysis for reynoldskitchens.com.
Lead discovery tasks including creating stakeholder questions and conducting stakeholder interviews, conducting heuristic evaluation and competitive analysis, and designing sitemap and wireframes for OptionsHouse customer welcome center website.
Lead discovery tasks including conducting heuristic evaluation and competitive analysis for Roche Sequencing.
Working as a Lead User Experience Designer on the redesign of Metrarail.com, responsible for leading the information architecture, modifying copy to make content more user friendly, creating wireframes, defining user interaction for Metra's soon to be launched responsive website.
As the Lead User Experience Designer I was responsible for creating positive user experiences for websites, web applications, and mobile applications.
My major responsibilities include conducting user research, designing and developing Information Architecture and user interaction, creating user flows and wireframes, building prototypes, and designing visual design. I worked on a wide variety of projects including: Carwise.com, Mobile Estimating iPad Application, FNOL iPhone Application, and Next Generation Portal Design.
OWN's Director of Product Development brought me on board to gather and translate business and product requirements into a compelling user experience. I worked on a wide variety of projects including: oprah.com/own, OWN Show pages, Your Own Channel (YOC), Community section, My Profile, Newsletter Registration, and Finder.
The Write a Review form on Sears.com lacked simplicity as was causing user errors. As the lead UX, spearheaded the effort to redesign the form, created html prototypes and user tested design to ensure it was more usable, and then created the visual design while adhering to Sears.com style guide. The redesigned form resulted in a much higher conversion rate as well as far fewer errors for customers and can be viewed at http://tinyurl.com/2elku2y.
Sears was seeking a way for users to post question and write reviews on their re-branded shoe verticals section of their site. I designed the interaction to seamlessly integrate Viewpoints’ Reviews and Ratings widget onto Sears.com. I worked directly with the Sears’s product and UX team, front end and backend developers to ensure everything could be properly implemented. (Example: http://tinyurl.com/2dxq944). I also designed the Admin screens to ensure 3rd party content editors could easily add, edit and delete content.
Sears wanted to redesign its blogs section of their site to give it a more magazine layout feel. Under a very tight deadline I was able to please Sears by producing multi-category level wireframes in the magazine format they requested.
Sears wanted to redesign its store pages to be able to features news and event updates for each store. Working as the lead UX, I designed the user interaction while working within our admin system limitations as well as delivering under very tight deadline. (Example: http://tinyurl.com/2aoovbk).
Sears was seeking to tweak their existing social pages. Instead I proposed redesigning the page to better group and arrange the items on the page. I created wireframes and worked with visual designer to ensure the vision was carried over into design which is live at mysears.com/social.
Working at the lead UX, I helped design a module to go on both Viewpoints.com as well as the platform for users to ask questions and receive answers from other community members on various products and services. I worked with Product management to understand scope and with frontend and backend developers to discuss interactions and understand the potential limitations. I designed wireframes for product pages and category pages and then collaborated with visual designers to ensure the user experience was consistent with other products.
Working at the lead UX, I designed a way for consumers to share their reviews with social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter. I worked directly with the product manager as well as frontend and backend developers to brainstorm interactions and create an ideal solution. I then created wireframes to describe detailed scenarios when sharing a review with other social networks
Viewpoints was creating a way to implement its read and write product reviews module as well as ask and answer questions modules seamlessly onto client’s websites. I worked directly with product management to define scope and with frontend and backend developers to brainstorm interactions and create an ideal solution. I also created wireframes to draw up potential scenarios where our widget would get integrated. Then created usability test and provided recommendations as to which features users found helpful.
I was responsible for creating the interaction design for proprietary software tool called the Product Moderation Queue (PMQ). This tool was introduced to help Administrators to identify duplicate and unmapped products on Viewpoints.com. To successfully accomplish this I interviewed actual tool users to discover their current process, their needs and their desires. I then strategized with frontend and backend developers to discuss interactions and design the ideal solution. (HTML Prototype: http://tinyurl.com/2aoovbk).
Created wireframes and then designed the look and feel to create an online presence for CashMax. In addition was responsible for hand coding this XHTML 1.0 Transitional website using valid and accessible HTML, CSS, and SSI. Then migrated the code into Dreamweaver templates to more easily reuse code as well and ensuring the site was easier to update. Finally the site was tested to ensure mycashmax.com worked in 5 main browsers, IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 3.5, and Safari 3.0.
Selected to work as a visual designer with Allstate’s User Experience (“UX”) team as well as nationally recognized Adaptive Path team to create a simple-to-use prototype and then build the web-based application for Independent Insurance Agents based on the finding of the prototype. During prototype phase was responsible for conception of ideas, presenting concepts, migrating visual comps to CSS and HTML code, incorporating usability findings in look and feel of applications. During the build phase was the lead designer responsible for designing mockups based on wireframes and working with developers to easily build the application. (Not public, but demo can be provided upon request).
Managed engagement, designed interface, organized site content, shot photographs, and coded kitemandarinandsushi.com for this stylish Japanese and Mandarin restaurant in two weeks.
Worked with the Research and Development team for a three month period during which time was responsible for coming up with high level ideas, creating wireframing, and designing a high fidelity prototyping for “new search” concepts. (Not public, but demo can be provided upon request).
Managed project, designed interface and navigation, and coded site for this strategic consultancy firm in a very short two day period. (No longer live, but screen shots can be provided upon request)
Worked with International Trucking’s internal IT team to build sub site for International’s Intranet site. This site is used to store business intelligence information. (Not public).
Utilized Photoshop and Illustrator to design and develop front end design templates to Visio wireframes for seven different concepts. (Not public).
Managed engagement, designed interface and created navigation for ccrinvestments.com in very short 2 week period.
Managed engagement, designed interface and navigation, and coded ajdemor.com.
Designed a simple way for condo associations to manage their properties.
(Examples: bestung.com/work/MII and bestung.com/work/MII/members.shtml)
Worked on a very tight, two-week deadline to create wireframes and visual designs to help the Chubb team visualize what their new financial system could potentially look like.
(Not public, but screen shots can be provided upon request).
Client had recently redesigned and redevelopers a global portal, but the global design did not include a roadmap for each individual group to build its own site. Responsible for reorganizing the site content, designing the look and feel, and coding this portal site using HTML, JavaScript and CSS.
(requires authorization).
Client had recently redesigned and redevelopers a global portal, but the global design did not include a roadmap for each individual group to build its own site. Responsible for organizing site content, creating user testing scenarios, user testing preliminary designs to see and hear what users thought, establishing an information hierarchy consisting of 4 levels to the site, designing the look and feel, and coding the portal using HTML, JavaScript and CSS. (Portal live, but requires authorization).
Client had seen decline in new idea submissions as well as the wrong types of submission. Redesigned the innovatewithkraft.com to provide a more professional appearance and revamped the content to ensure the site’s purpose was clearer to users.
Client wanted a sleek new functional layout for its Diversity and Inclusion Portal. This time-sensitive initiative will make the PepsiCo D&I site more visually appealing and interactive. Responsible for overall Project Management, documented and executed overall and detail project plans, monitored and report projected performance, and coded HTML and CSS. (Not public, but screen shots can be provided upon request).
Client wanted to implement Registration functionality on the KraftCanada.com Diabetic site in both English and French. Responsible for coding static page templates (HTML/CSS) in both French and English and consisting of pages with and without error messages. Tested and fixed application bugs to ensure kraftbrands.com/cdndiabetesreg worked in 4 main browsers, IE6, IE7, Firefox 2.0, and Safari 3.0.
Client created an email marketing campaign and needed the design coded. Responsible for coding static page templates (HTML/CSS) in both French and English and consisting of pages with and without error messages. Tested the application and fixed bugs to ensure kraftbrands.com/cdndiabetesreg worked in four main browsers, IE6, IE7, Firefox 2.0, and Safari 3.0.
Selected to assist the UXA team with various projects, as well as sell the need of UXA practice development to the team’s manager.
Led the effort of strengthening the UXA team by creating a detailed team development plan consisting of four main areas: marketing, storage, standards, and process. To accomplish the tasks I designed and developed UXA team website, helped team define team document storage process, began developing web based style guide, helped build UXA methodology to integrate into Allstate Financials team methodology.
Worked on various projects while performing the following tasks: created help documentation for electronic signature rollout, interviewed users to identify their needs for a policy status page, designed wireframes to present to the business, built a clickable prototype to be tested by users for initial payment screen, wrote usability testing script and performed user testing on clickable prototype, analyzed test results, and prepared usability findings for business.
Hostway, the nation’s largest hosting provider, was looking to redesign and redevelop Site Control, their web based control panel. Led a nearly one year intensive process to design the user experience for the control panel which was to be used as the model for all franchise control panels. Tasks included project planning, stakeholder interviews, user research, and conducting competitive analysis. As a result of this analysis, the applications information architecture was reorganized. Then process flows as well as high fidelity wireframes were created to help create a better user experience. CSS and HTML code was simultaneously created to provide developers with all necessary details to build .jsp. Additional responsibilities included designing the application’s look and feel. (Site live, but requires authorization).
Utilized Photoshop as well as CSS Web Standards to ensure the user interface for this Virtual PBX phone system was simple and easy for users to operate. (Not live).
Designed a new user interface, coded, and helped to reorganize bronnergroup.com to better brand Bronner’s main focus areas.
Managed engagement, focused strategy, designed user interface, organized site information architecture, performed individual usability testing, and coded HTML for cleanaircounts.org.
Managed project, designed user interface, organized information architecture, and performed usability testing for Chicago’s Emergency 911 center.
Designed interface, created site flow, and performed usability testing. (Web Application is no longer live).
Responsible for user interface, usability testing, and information architecture for ndstraining.com which easily allowed City employees to view and register for classes.
Designed look and feel, created site architecture and coded BIS intranet site which allowed employees to share and access pertinent information real-time. (Not public).
Designed user interface, created site layout, selected color scheme and create icons for the City’s ArcIMS interactive zoning map
Responsible for project management, client consultation, strategy formulation, site information architecture, user interface, and coding to ensure site was clean and simple to navigate. (Not public).
Created over 20 websites for various Small Business Enterprises including: christywebber.com, alvarezcorp.com, and chicagoarchitecturalmetals.com.
Designed user interface for interactive web based survey. (Not public)
Managed project, created visual design, and organized information architecture for largest state child welfare agency in the United States. (Not public).
Managed, art directed, designed and coded unitedlearningcenters.com.
During my time at Magnitude Network, I was responsible for designing, coding, and managing over 40 radio station websites on a daily basis. I also received the honor of winning the Consumer Focus Award. Some other responsibilities included training employees for daily job duties and programs such as Dreamweaver and Photoshop, designing corporate brochures, writing and designing recruitment advertisements, and writing radio commercials for MN’s online entertainment store.
Magnitude Network (“MN”) delivered on-line media and streaming solutions to broadcasters, advertisers, and merchandisers. MN offered a Turnkey Internet solution for broadcasters including Web design and Web development. I performed the following tasks during this project:
I was responsible for helping manage a wide variety of client on a daily basis. Also wrote and designed recruitment advertisements, created and designed display ads for clients such as Ameritech New Media, Follett College Stores and FERS.