ABOUT

When I designed and developed my own photo editing app back in 2014, I had never heard of User Experience Design, it’s actually what led to me into UX Design. Back then, I believed it would be an instant success based on untested assumptions such as “rainbows on photos; it’s a great idea, so much of fun; who wouldn’t want to add rainbows to their photos?” Now I look back, without regret, appreciating all that I learned and gained from making these apparent UX mistakes in my first mobile app endeavor.

So there it is, my assumptions did not come true. Despite my greatest intentions and efforts, the app was making less than $30 per day. At that point, I learned to teach yoga as way to make ends meet and kept working on improving my app, self-teaching myself skills and learning as I went about it.

Three years after Rainbow Love’s iOS launch, I took a major risk and invested a substantial amount of money to develop Rainbow Love for Android. I had good reasons to believe this would be a great business decision as I had many people requesting it and I believed having an Android version would increase exposure and the app’s overall downloads. But again, these were untested assumptions. To make a long-story short: it was a failure, but it was a failure that let me know I was missing something important in my design.

As I continued to work and learn on my app updates following the release of Android, I put improved app analytics and event tracking in place. I started asking my users to beta test versions before release, I would poll my users on social media and keep better track of support emails to see if I could find trends of my users needs or problems. In other words, I started doing UX Research. My methodology were a little loose but, I was pivoting to research backed design to make better design decisions and as a result I started to see meaningful results in app downloads and sales.

To further advance my learning I enrolled in General Assembly’s 500-hour,10-week User Experience Design Immersive (UXDI). It was the best thing I’ve done. It taught me so much about design and opened up infinite possibilities and a world of endless learning in improving interfaces for business owners and their users.

It taught me… a better process for design; reliable methods for researching and analyzing user data; not to make assumptions, but to test them. But the most important thing I learned is that a design solution is not always a complex redesign, it can be as simple as removing one button from a screen or page and can change or “fix” everything.

So why I am sharing this with you? Because testing assumptions have me a better designer. Design can be beautiful without research data but it doesn’t make it functional and satisfying to the user. With each project I take on now I apply solid research methodology and I’m always asking “why” and I’m always open to where the data leads. My unique experience of learning has provided me with a greater value for user research, the business owner and the user.

Now as I embark into the world of contract work, I am now applying UX research and testing methods to projects I work on with my small business clients and continue to better my own apps and the experience for my users. I am now using UX research religiously to test and validate existing products and ideas for new new products, whatever they may be: web-based apps, mobile apps, websites, email campaigns and even marketing.

I am also interested in working with teams on bigger, more “business-y” projects and as well as consulting, especially working with new independent app developers to provide the kind of guidance and assistance I didn’t know I needed when I launched my app.