Me
My dad was a painter, and he loved Lord of the Rings. I remember finding the books among his things and struggling to read the trilogy when I was six years old. My mom, she has this deep empathy for people. She is absolutely driven by it—everything she does is to positively affect others’ lives. I guess that’s why people say that design flows through my veins. I don’t pick up a paintbrush very often, but I do dream in pixels. In every experience I design, I can’t stop thinking about the user and how design and engineering decisions will affect their experience.
I got started designing in 1995 getting my hands dirty with ‘old school’ paste up layouts and color separations by hand. I soon segued into the professional world working at Bank of America in Branding and then Creative Services. Then in 1997, a magazine on my friend’s coffee table caught my eye. Its cover boasted “Learn HTML in Five Days”… well, he wouldn’t let me borrow the magazine so I only had two days to figure it out. And that’s all it took, by the end of the week I had my first website up, and I was hooked.
Meanwhile back at work, I moved into a role where I could flex my new-found Web skills designing online learning modules (then popularly called “eLearning”). I wanted to take my designs broader, so I moved to Texas to work at Travelocity.com. And then a friend of mine said that it would be so cool if I was a designer for Microsoft…What could be cooler than designing user experiences for some of the world’s most ubiquitous software? Microsoft beckoned… a calling haunting the back of my mind. I took a big risk (it was still the post-9/11 economic depression), quit my job, and moved to Seattle. I had four months before I had to get a job. It was down to the wire, and I was starting to consider a career as a barista, and then I landed an interview with the Visual Studio User Experience team. They were in need of a product designer for the new Visual Web Developer. I thought of my buddies back at the bank who were still using Visual InterDev and had plenty of complaints…
For the next three years I focused all my energy on designing a better experience for Web developers, including product design for ASP.NET, “Atlas” and IIS7. Finally, I decided it was time to shift back to focusing on designers, and on making the collaboration between designers (me) and developers (them) a little less painful. :) And so, that’s how I came to be a product manager on Expression Studio. After numerous evolutions and designs, I’m still here at Microsoft. And it’s the longest I’ve sat still, so to speak, in life. Why? Through my designs, and influence over the products that I work on, I get to make an impact on the lives of my users.
In my mind, when you use software, or a Web application and don’t have to think about it—if it’s innate and just works—that’s good design. And that’s the beginnings of a great user experience. Sure, I may leave Microsoft one day. Frankly, I get pretty excited seeing the new opportunities that Microsoft is making possible for designers. Working on the ASP.NET team I learned that I could accomplish a lot more without code than if I used PHP. And the “Atlas” stuff makes adding a little interactivity pretty easy! And then there’s WPF – with Expression Blend; it’s the first time designers can actually design software UI that works without having to depend on a developer or learn code. I know, I know—there will always be devs to make the stuff rock – but so much more is within the reach of designers now than ever before… and I don’t know how long I can stay out of the fray.
I’ve also been told I’d make a killer design and UX consultant and that it’d be “a great place to channel my righteous indignation”. (I’m not quite sure if that’s a compliment or an insult?!) For the moment, when I’m not pondering pixels, I play the violin and devour books. And okay, maybe you can find me sharing my opinions on design…that it’s inevitable, it’s instinctive. I think you know when something just feels right, and I’m passionate about everything—especially people’s experiences—feeling right. That’s just me.
