A UXer with an MBA, because UX is serious business
Coffee is life! I drink Cafe Du Monde with milk and maple syrup.
Hi there! I'm Michelle, a UX leader and educator with a diverse background in science, design, and technology. With over 25 years of experience, I've honed my skills in UX research, visual design, interaction design, and product management, always striving to create solutions that are useful, usable, and beautiful.
Currently, I am the Head of UX Design at ChaiOne, a digital consultancy in Houston. I also develop and teach courses in the Human Centered Interaction Design master's program for Harrisburg University.
I have an MBA for a reason. After several years of being both a Product Owner and UX lead, I realized I had an innate need to connect the work we were doing to business needs and goals. Getting a MBA helped to provide a solid foundation in business strategy and general concepts. Working at an agency and having to pitch work directly to clients has given me even greater perspective on what matters to companies, and it isn't usually about delighting anyone. Companies spend money on projects that impact strategic initiatives. Being able to focus on UX work that merges user and business needs results in better outcomes—for both users and businesses.
My background in biology, psychology, and graphic design has instilled in me a deep appreciation for research and a science-driven approach to problem-solving. I love collaborating with behavioral scientists to apply the latest insights from cognitive science and neuroscience to create user experiences that are truly intuitive and effective.
While at UNO, I also studied graphic design and studio art. Let's just say I changed my major three times and had a LOT of credits. I am a science nerd who is also a trained designer and artist, with a business degree. A trifecta of awesomeness, if you will.
My brain is wired for systems thinking. I need to understand how solving this impacts that, and that. That means I focus on whole user journeys, the relationships between the user, the product, stakeholders, and ancillary teams. It doesn't matter how awesome your cool app is if the customer team that supports it doesn't understand how to support it.
Most design processes are the same 5 steps with different labels. The only thing that matters is to THINK before you DO. For me, that means I need to understand deeply what the real problem is, who we are solving this for, and how does this project fit into overall business strategies and goals? The tactical part, implementing design, must follow rounds of understanding and thinking. None of this should be linear. In the real world, there is always new information to process and understand, new stakeholders to learn from, and new caveats that are introduced. As long as thinking comes first, the name of the process doesn't really matter.
One of the core principles I teach in my UX courses is that all design deliverables must be grounded in extensive qualitative research. Anything less results in made-up, useless fluff. I don't make fluff. I believe in creating deliverables that provide tangible value to the design process.
In the majority of projects I've worked on, quick sketches, simple diagrams, flow charts, and functional prototypes have been the most effective UX deliverables. These practical tools have helped me gain stakeholder buy-in, conduct usability testing, and ultimately arrive at the final design - all without relying on overly polished, but ultimately meaningless, vanity deliverables.
As a UX practitioner, my best friends are the PMs, POs, and dev teams. Close allies include marketers, brand experts, and anyone who influences my work. UX doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it thrives when we connect with everyone shaping the product. Collaboration isn’t just a buzzword—it’s a superpower.
For over a decade, I built the front end of everything I designed. I was also a SharePoint expert and I could make custom sites that looked nothing like Sharepoint. I mostly hung up my FED hat a while back, but the the skills and knowledge are still there. I understand enough about programming to intelligently design applications that are actually possible to code, and I work with programmers, rather than against them.
I have been sharing what I know for years. I started my first blog, on creating branding and site customizations for SharePoint, back in 2007. I regularly appear on UX podcasts sharing what I know, I post content on LinkedIn, and I currently have a few folks that I mentor. In August of 2022, I started teaching in the Human Centered Interaction Design master's program at Harrisburg University. I have developed and teach two courses, Design Tools and Processes, and Deceptive Design, and am now designing my third course.
Growing the skills and careers of my employees is very important to me and one of the best parts of being a manager of a UX team. I maintain a ebook library, create and curate learning content on Confluence, and design and present internal courses for the wider Experience team.