A UXer with an MBA, because UX is serious business
Hi there! I'm Michelle, a UXer with a diverse backgrounds in psychology, visual design, and business. Over many years, I've honed my skills in UX strategy, UX 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 create and teach courses in the Human Centered Interaction Design master's program for Harrisburg University.
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. Being able to focus on UX work that merges user and business needs results in better outcomes—for both users and businesses.
My backgrounds in psychology and graphic design have instilled in me a deep appreciation for research and a science-driven approach to problem-solving. 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. I follow the UCD process, and adjust accordingly to inevitiable wrenches that affect a perfect process. The only thing that really matters to me is to THINK before I DO.
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 am currently teaching two courses, Design Tools and Processes and Deceptive Design, and am now designing a course on UI design.