Hi – I’m Ray, welcome to my portfolio!

About me

I’m originally from Michigan, and a huge Detroit Tigers and Pistons fan.  I love to get outdoors and hang around!  When I’m not watching baseball I enjoy traveling, I’m partial to blue water, sun, and sand.  Another passion of mine is fitness, I’m an after work gym type of guy.  I also enjoy a good sci-fi movie or TV show, especially when it takes place in the future.  Currently I’m trying to learn how to play piano – it’s been a big challenge!

My professional journey

I’ve been interested in tech pretty much my whole life, when I was a kid I used to play around in photoshop and log into AIM chatrooms on our 56k modem.  Since then I’ve refined my craft a bit, starting by getting a Masters of Science in Information, with a specialty in Human Computer Interaction from the University of Michigan.  Soon after graduation I moved to silicon valley and I’ve been working on all kinds of cool desktop / SaaS / mobile projects.  My perspective is wide in that I’ve worked for large corporations (Oracle, Symantec) where I had a more specialized role, and a startup / services environment (InfoStretch / QMetry) where I had a wider array of responsibilities.  Nowadays I relish taking the complex and making it simple regardless of the medium or subject matter.  I’ve also developed a knack for leading projects and teams due in large part to my experience working with international teams (in those environments documentation, organization, and coordination is critical).

Interaction and UI design

I’ve had a lot of experience defining product workflow from the IA all the way down to individual clicks.  I make sure that every action the user takes is easy to understand and empowers them to easily complete tasks.  I’m also very adept at creating page layouts and hi-fi mock ups.

Project management

I take pride in my ability to lead complex projects with multiple stakeholders.  I’m passionate, organized, and persistent.

User research

I have extensive experience crafting user studies and conducting several types of research with end users.

Software toolkit

The software tool that I use the most currently is Axure, I also have experience in photoshop and illustrator.  I pick up most tools very quickly, learning a new tool is something I enjoy.

Onboarding expert

I pride myself on ramping up onto a new project or role quickly.  Generally I’m able to see parallels in projects and or tools which helps me to understand new parameters quickly and help me hit the ground running.

Every project is different, and based on time and resources, some of these steps might be skipped or elongated.

Research

I like to start researching as early as possible.  Meeting with the product owner and finding out what’s on the long term roadmap so we can get preliminary customer feedback has been critical to our success in my previous roles.

Gather requirements

Once a new project kicks off, the first thing that I do is go over every requirement with the product owner, and ensure it’s all documented somewhere (and in some cases, document it).  Working with other stakeholders such as the engineering team is also paramount in the early stages.

User stories

Once I’ve worked out all the requirements, I usually start writing user stories.  This serves multiple purposes — It helps me get into the user’s head, and solidifies the requirements (or sheds light on the need for new ones).

Flows

Now that the stories are written, I expand on each story by creating detailed task flows.  This is a good time to loop in other stakeholders such as engineering – this helps ensure that the code they write can execute the experience I define.

Wireframes

The flows can now be turned into low fidelity wireframes.  Again, during this process the major stakeholders are involved in reviews.

User research (validation)

Ideally once we have a solid direction with the wireframes we could perform either user testing or at least get some user feedback (admittedly this doesn’t always happen due to time constraints).  If the situation requires, I will define interactive prototypes to use for this testing as well (and to use as specification for handoff to engineering).

Hi-Fi specifications / Mockups

With the actual experience mostly defined, the hi-fi screens can be specified.  A lot of the time this is not required as a style guide is defined.  I have contributed to and driven several style guides.

Final specifications handoff

One of the last steps is to make any final changes, perform reviews and finalize everything.  I like to present all the final specifications formally at a meeting to ensure everyone is in agreement, and understands everything.  After handoff I stay in constant contact with the engineering team to provide any help required to get everything properly implemented.  As this is going on, I generally try to get access to a development environment so I can perform my own QA on the feature(s).

Usability testing

After implementation it’s always great to test the tool out in the wild. If there are any major issues we can then take that feedback improve the designs.

Party!

Celebrating a successful product is always a good idea ;).