career experience

I’m proud to have worked on some major projects and products for some incredible companies. I believe the culture at a place shapes you just as much as the product you designed and stuck into your portfolio - so I’ve taken some time to lay out what I’ve learned from the organizations that have shaped my approach to design thinking and customer service.

Dick’s Sporting Goods - A Culture built on teamwork

Passionate | Committed | Skilled | Driven

When I started at DSG in 2011 very few people were using the words “User Experience Design,” but by 2014 they were actively training their people in it. This was an old school brick-and-mortar business that was just trying to get into the eCommerce space in a big way. I was incredibly luck to be there during the years they built out their website, built out their online business team and to be the sole designer on their first ever mobile shopping app. It was so clear that nobody really knew exactly what we were doing, but we knew it was important and we knew it was making a big impact on the business. This company also knew a lot about listening to its customers and doing right by them, which made UX pretty intuitive for them and a clear mission to get behind. Culturally, one of DSG’s internal slogans is “We Play To Win.” And admittedly, when I started I wasn’t sure I was competitive enough in nature to make it there (and I didn’t love that I somehow was immediately signed up for the eCommerce flag football team). But what became clear was that DSG’s corporate culture viewed everything as a team sport. They train, compete, and win or lose - they do it together. Their corporate values are about being passionate, committed, skilled and driven - but what I learned most there was how to be a team player. How to commit to doing my best for the group, but also how to believe and support and trust in others to do their parts as well. How to say, “I don’t think I should be the pitcher, but I’d make a decent second baseman and a great outfielder” both on and off the playing field (seriously, they really did make us play sports together).

The Home Depot - A culture built on service

Building Strong Relationships | Doing the right thing | Respect for all people | giving back | excellent customer service | creating shareholder value | entrepreneurial spirit | taking care of our people

After building DSG’s mobile app, I was recruited by The Home Depot to work on their mobile app and mobile platforms team. I was paired with an architect and was excited to have the opportunity to work on a team that had a very mature UX model. It was clear from the very beginning that this organization wasn’t “figuring it out” - they were optimizing an already incredible program. I’ve been surprised to find that most people don’t think of THD when they think of incredible UX programs, but this organization is stacked with massive teams dedicated to the internal store systems, as well as the external facing eCommerce platforms and mobile apps. They win major awards every year, and they scale everything to grow foor millions of users and billions of dollars. They test everything - and they’ve got massive teams with expertise in data science, analytics, A/B testing, T/T testing as well as qualitative testing and shop-a-longs happening all day every day. They make it their mission to understand their customers, and their entire model is built on the concept of service. In terms of corporate culture, they talk about their structure as an inverted pyramid, and they train their managers in service-based leadership. At the end of the day, everything they do is at the service of either their store associate or their customers. Since leaving THD, I’ve been even more impressed with the lack of ego that was present. They hired the smartest people they could find, and those people were still continually humble and continually willing to try new things to learn and grow and get better.

This phase of my career was so important, because I learned SO MUCH about technology, UX, and process. Since then, I’ve been in interviews where people want to quiz you on the agile process - but THD’s mentality was to never get comfortable with a particular process. They shook up their teams, their models, and their pods constantly. They tried out different ways of working based on the successes of other large companies. They would have one pod try something out just to see what would happen. They made sure you never got too comfortable, and as a result my brain just felt like it was on constant “sponge mode” for the 4 years I was there. To this day, this job and this team was my favorite place to work and learn and grow - and I only left because I wanted to move to Colorado for my personal life.

While at THD I had to opportunity to work on their mobile app, spent time as their sole dedicated designer for mobile web for their Core Shopping division, spent time on the concept team for their Project Color app, and also worked on their Home Decor division building experiences that connected to Pinterest and other social medias.

Transamerica - A culture built on “the bottom line”