I'm Nicole, a digital designer.

I'm motivated by the potential of design to make life better, piece-by-piece, by making everyday tasks easier and hopefully a little more fun. 

I've been involved in designing digital interfaces for 20+ years, as a product designer, an experience designer, an experience design team lead, a user research lead, and just enough coding to be dangerous at prototyping. 

I've worked with brands from multiple business sectors, including...
 

Interaction Design

I've been working on digital experiences since I was 16. I read, I gather information from users, I use my experience, I explore patterns, I explore what's already been made. Then I make things, I talk to other makers and revise what I've made, I have good hobbies to help me think in new ways, I go back to the users, and I make again. 

I think I kind of have the best job ever.

My work usually looks like these things:

• Wireframes & annotations

• Prototypes

• User flows

• Concepting and sketches

• Competitive analyses

• Storyboards

• Research and data analysis

• Information architecture

• Whatever it takes to best explore & express the interaction ideas

User Research

Sure, I'd like to think my instinct for interaction design has gotten pretty sharp through my experience designing, interviewing, testing, reading, researching, but... 

The biggest and earliest revelation I've had in all my experience is that design always reaches its highest potential with user involvement and empathy. 

I have significant experience leading all kinds of usability investigation efforts and scaling them based on time and money restraints.

I've led:

• Field studies

• User interviews

• Scenario-based testing
  (state-of-the-art lab style to conference room to field guerrilla-style)

• Heuristic evaluations

• Accessibility audits & solutions

• Card sorts

• Focus groups

• Surveys

• Usage data analysis

• Whatever it takes to learn about the users

What Else?

When I started as a designer, we all did our own front-end code. Since then, my job has become more specialized, and I do it much less, but still find it handy for prototyping and working with developers.

Code I know:

• HTML

• CSS

• Javascript

• PHP

• JSP

• Relational database architecture

• SQL

• A little C++ and Java

I think it's important to be adaptable with tools and software. I love the challenge of finding the best tool for the job and my team and, when it's time for a change, digging into something new.

Tools I use the most today:

• Sketch

• InVision

• Usertesting.com

• Tableau

• Principle

• Keynote

• Illustrator

• Photoshop

• Whiteboards, paper, post-its, etc.

• I catch on quickly and like learning new things too. Throw something at me!