Author: leslie

Employment

PAYPAL.com
Senior Visual Design Consultant 5/2011 to Present

• Establishing visual design directions
• Product visionary roadmap concepting
• Collaborative brainstorming for user flows and online experiences
• Domain and technology researching

FRANKLIN TEMPLETON INVESTMENTS
Senior User Experience Designer 7/2005 to 4/2011   |   Visual Designer 2/2001 to 6/2005

Art Direction and Design

• Manage visual design for over 35 corporate websites in 13 languages, web-based enterprise applications, intranets and styleguides
• Lead creative development, including template creation and visual execution of global site redesigns and new content templates
• Effectively integrate user experience disciplines and facilitate intra-team collaboration to translate user goals and business requirements into intuitive design solutions
• Ensure support and translation of corporate brand and product strategies for external and internal web initiatives
• Lead design UAT for site build issue tracking and resolution
• Provide design direction, business perspective and insight, guidance and mentorship to global team of senior, junior and contract designers

User Experience Research

• Conduct client interviews to build corporate knowledge base on customer activities
• Conduct expert reviews of website to identify usability issues and enhancement opportunities
• Generate Mental Models as part of project discovery and proposals
• Participate in team lead usability studies and document observations
• Track VoC user experience trends to determine actionable design solutions to enhance website experiences
• Evaluate user needs against business goals and development feasibility to determine project initiative priorities

Strategic Planning

• Analyze opportunities and project knowledge gaps, define successful approaches and proactively solve problems within design project lifecycle
• Concept design initiatives to address business and online challenges

Project Management

• Manage team design project work-flow, schedules, scope, timelines and deliverables
• Provide clear communication to business partners and management regarding project status, resource requirements, design issues and priorities
• Mitigate project risks and ensure timely resolution of key design issues
• Lead and collaboratively participate in key project-decision making; e.g. requirements gathering, resource allocation and coordination of global project teams
• Conduct vendor/agency evaluations for large scale project participation and long-term corporate relationship fit

Process Optimization

• Documentation of team design processes, job roles, responsibilities and training procedure
• Streamline design-to-development review process across global team, contractors, vendors and internal developers.

Relationship Management

• Directly manage client relationships in support of strategic and creative goals for both the US and international markets; e.g. Europe, Asia, North America
• Create, facilitate and lead client presentations and meetings
• Demonstrate sensitivity and awareness to the cultural and business environments of global business partners

Resource Management

• Define priorities and manage resources as appropriate across projects
• Manage, schedule, assign visual design and information architect production requests

EVITE.com
Designer 2/2000 to 11/2000   |   Jr. Designer 9/1999 to 1/2000

• Successfully launched redesign of Evite invitation
• Established site visual design and developed standards
• Collaboratively developed ongoing site UI, site promotions and product enhancements from concept to launch
• Actively assisted in building design team
• Led creation of designs for user testing and collaboratively organized focus groups

Awards

KASINA TOP TEN FINANCIAL WEBSITES
FranklinTempleton.com
2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009. 2010

STAR AWARDS, Mutual Fund Education Alliance
FranklinTempleton.com
– 2010 Best Retail Website (US)
– 2010 Best Online Marketing Campaign Advisor – 2020 Vision: Equities in the Decades Ahead
– 2007 Honorable Mention, Best Electronic Advisor Newsletter

WEBBY AWARD, BEST SERVICE
Evite.com
2001

Lectures, Conferences & Seminars

Unconference, Focus on Presentations
Palo Alto, February 2009

UI 12
Boston, November 2007

WEB DESIGN WORLD
San Francisco, January 2007

USABILITY WEEK, NEILSEN NORMAN GROUP
Accessiblity Focus
San Francisco, January 2004

LECTURES, DISCUSSION GROUPS
Active participant of the AIGA and Bay Area design community
2002 to present

Education

University of California, Santa Barbara
BA History, 1994 – 1999

University of Sevilla, Spain
Abroad studies, History 1997 – 1998

References

Available upon request