Gabe Grayum: User-Centered Design Professional

Interaction Designer, Visual Designer, User Experience & Usability Evangelist, Ex-Developer

Prominent Skills:

User Experience Design

Qualitative & Quantitative Research, Interviews, Contextual Inquiry, Goal & Task Analysis, Personas, Scenarios, Storyboarding, Wireframing, Prototyping, User Testing…

Visual Design

Pixel Level Mockups, Typography, Color Theory, Interface Guidelines

Technical/Development

HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, AJAX, PHP, Rails, SQL, Git, svn, Xcode, Cocoa Touch (familiarity)

Favorite Software/Tools

Fireworks, Omnigraffle, Pen & Paper

Qualifications:

• 6 years focused on creating interactive software products with valuable & intuitive user experiences.
• 13 years practicing web design & development. Thorough knowledge of current best practices.
• A decade managing and documenting technical projects and leading teams to turn vague concepts into valuable products that advance business goals.
• Experience with full software development life-cycle, architecting scalable platforms, object oriented programming, database design and agile methodologies.
• Exceptional aptitude for teamwork and collaboration with diverse disciplines in distributed environments, listening, organizing and facilitating conversations.
• Strong proficiency with IA/UX and web usability best practices.

Profile:

• Passion for user-centered design and desirable, usable products.
• Strong leader. Takes charge when needed. Manages products, projects & teams.
• Entrepreneurial with business acumen. Big-picture oriented.
• Exceptional combination of right brain/left brain strengths. Problem-solver.
• Ongoing quest to improve products and business processes.
• Continual learner. Avid reader of industry publications.

Professional Experience:

User Experience Lead

Janrain (Startup) — User management SaaS for the social web
2009 – current

• Lead the design team to shape the user experience of Janrain's user management platform, and social login & sharing features for websites and mobile apps. Janrain Engage is used on over 200,000 websites.

UX Designer (Freelance/Contract)

2008 - 2009

• Pensive Studios (iPhone App) – Conceived of and managed the development of a productivity application for the iPhone. Designed the complete user experience utilizing standard UX methods to create a delightful user interface consistent with Apple's guidelines.
• Cinemigo (Web) – Designed and implemented the UI for a UK based cinema & movie review website. Developed sitemap, wireframes & interactive prototypes. Created a compelling visual design and built templates with HTML, CSS & jQuery.
• Ensequence (10 foot UI) – Worked on a next generation concept of HBO On Demand. Analyzed competing products & HBO's user research to define user goals, activities & feature set. Wrote use cases and created site map, wireframes & spatial navigation model.

Lead UX/UI Designer

Pheedo, Inc. (Startup) — Enterprise level SaaS, syndicated content & rich media
2005 - 2008

• Designed the user experience of a web 2.0 product contributing to:
  • 1 billion monthly impressions, 27 million uniques (3,400% 2 year growth).
  • 300% revenue growth for clients like NY Times, Cnet, NBC, Wired & USAToday.
• Led the UI team thru research & discovery, interaction design, development, usability testing. Maintained the short-range product road map.
• Advocated for and defined the role of UX within the organization and an agile development process. Created UI standards and libraries.
• Increased efficiency 50% within the account management team by envisioning and then building a suite of tools for managing customer data.
• Led a ground-up rebuild of the user interface, applying UX methodologies to design an extensible architecture supporting complex user interactions.
• Designed an analytics package and dashboard, defining key metrics and producing a coherent information design. Used as a key selling point attracting top clients from the competition.

Senior Web Designer/Developer

Curiosity Group (Agency) — Interactive marketing & brand experience
2004 - 2005

• Worked within cross-functional teams to plan, architect, design, build and test interactive media for clients including HP & Apple. Focused on interaction design, meeting usability heuristics & creating standards compliant interfaces.
• Turned a floundering intranet project into a success story by applying user testing & other UX methods to clarify objectives and redesign & launch the application.
• Built a prototype RSS advertising platform after conducting extensive market research, defining objectives & exploring design concepts.
• Reduced scheduling issues and resource conflicts by conceiving, designing and building a gantt chart web app to meet the needs of production management.

Lead Web Designer/Developer

J-Tech Communications (Agency) — Web strategy, planning, and design
2003 - 2004

• Designed the information architecture and user experience of websites and applications for the company's largest projects to date ($100k).
• Led a nimble team thru the development life-cycle, contributing art direction, managing programmers & ensuring usability. Repeatedly delivered site launches on schedule and within budget and garnered praise from top clients.
• Created and implemented standard practices for designers and programmers.
• Boosted overall efficiency and profitability by developing an improved pricing structure and implementing processes changes.

Principal Web Designer/Developer

GetYourOwn.net — Website design & development
2002 - 2005

• Created information architectures and user interface designs for dynamic websites by applying user-centered design practices. Produced diagrams and blueprints, building prototypes, production code and testing for usability.
• Hired by a client after nine months based on delivering consistently exceptional results on schedule and within budget.
• Operated as a small business, marketing services, interacting with clients, managing accounts, providing support, defining processes, creating business documents, etc.

Web & Marketing Director

ACGI — Autodesk reseller & software services for the AEC industry
2001 - 2002

• Expanded brand into new markets thru market research, web strategy & marketing campaigns. Made $250k in sales. Managed diverse web projects to meet objectives and cohesive branding.
• Designed curriculums and materials for custom training sessions, tutorials and seminars, applying user-centered design concepts for optimal targeting.
• Established a profitable Autodesk software sales, support & training department, developing its standards & processes.

Designer

Kinematic Automation — Automation and diagnostic equipment manufacturer
1999 - 2001

• Designed complex products creating SolidWorks models, AutoCAD drawings, diagrams & software requirements. Built prototypes to prove concepts that were implemented into new product lines with values up to $1 million.
• Reduced the labor involved in creating bills of materials by assisting in the design of a software application to automate the process.

Co-Founder

Bored Finger Boards — E-commerce in the early days
1997 - 2000

• Invented and produced a line of finger skate/snowboards. Designed company's identity.
• Discovered the true power of the web, building a website that sold our invention around the world and created community thru regularly produced content.

Designer

MRL Industries — Semiconductor and industrial thermal processing
1997 - 1999

• Refined information design and technical project documentation skills thru the design of products ($600k avg. value) using Pro-Engineer and AutoCAD for clients such as HP & Motorola.
• Saved engineering labor on the daily process of part list creation by automating the process.

CAD Designer

Condor Earth Technologies — Geographic information systems & earth science
1995 - 1997

• Developed information design and cartography skills during creation of maps and detailed engineering drawings representing GIS and earth science data for clients like NASA's JPL.
• Made the entire project archive findable by cataloging, indexing, and creating a database of metadata for 1000's of drawings distributed across physical locations.

Education:

Computer Science - Geographic Information Systems

Columbia Community College
1995 - 1997