Summary

• Technical Writer Information Architect with 14 years of experience in UI / UX. Adept in documenting, researching and designing user-centered web sites and desktop applications using Agile and Waterfall methodologies. Expertise includes:
• Technical Documentation: Wrote technical documentation for all projects, including: business requirements, functional and non-functional specifications, instruction manuals/teaching materials and online web content including user help screens for intranet and extranet to improve search engine optimization SEO .
• UI/UX/Information Architecture: Analyzed business requirements and developed use cases, information architecture, site maps and process flows. Conducted user research and testing focus groups, card sorts, surveys , statistical analysis and reporting.
• Visual Design: Created visual graphic design for web sites and desktop applications, including prototypes and customer-facing sites. Responsible for developing UI standards, and implementing organizational and design guidelines. Created graphic design print work including: annual reports, book layout, and corporate identity development.
• Languages: High competence in spoken and written Dutch and German. Experienced in working with teams overseas.

Employment History

Confidential

Technical Writer

• Edited existing forms used by Iowa counties to collect and submit specific disease outbreak reports to the state and the CDC. Analyzed questions for proper capture of information to provide an enhanced user experience and a more accurate capture of data.
• Updated the Iowa Disease Surveillance System IDSS database via the iHealth forms application using SQL queries and XML. Implemented proper logic for each question and manually tested all solutions.

Confidential

User Experience Analyst / Designer

• Integrated the importance of SEO into the agency's digital workflow process, bringing awareness and a plan of action to all teams for its implementation. Through analytics research, developed targeted search terms to create robust meta tags within the HTML to improve search engine optimization SEO
• Utilizing age demographics and social media habits of users, worked with Strategy team to analyze high-level personas and create new sub-personas on a per-project basis to help better align goals for our targeted user base.
• Created site maps, use cases, task flows and wireframes for mobile, tablet and desktop projects, including sweepstakes, contests, and applications for clients such as: Michelin, Pella, Shell and Quaker State. Worked closely with account services BA's , visual designers and developers to iterate and implement solutions. Presented all phases of projects to clients.
• Developed a presentation and instructed a class to educate new hires about how the agency utilizes UX
• Created template tools in Photoshop InDesign for visual designers to quickly create final products for mobile, web and desktop at exact size. The tools saved time and money, and brought consistency to our base template. Visual designers can focus on the visual design instead of architecture and function, and developers can easily implement HTML and CSS against the designs.

Confidential

User Experience Analyst / Designer

• Developed UI layout, style and functionality standards for the GSFM Grain Seed Field Management Windows-based application for improvement of existing screens and development of future screens
• Redesigned screens that contained large amounts of information to break them in to smaller, task-oriented screens, improving performance time greatly over 256k networks used at Brazil plants running the application
• Worked with developers to create lean templates based on standards that would be able to be implemented across the application easily by contract employees
• Analyzed existing internal reports and created layout and design standards documentation. Researched branding standards to include the correct branding and confidentiality statements required for reporting. Worked with developer to lay out templates in SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio.

Confidential

Technical Writer Employer:

• Analyzed all pro se Family Law forms for the State of Iowa and redesigned them with the Assistant Counsel to the Justice of the Supreme Court to improve the user experience, reduce the amount of pages of instruction by 75 , and support both electronic EDMS filers and non-electronic filers.
• Created editable/savable forms with Acrobat Pro for all forms in the Iowa Rules of Court state . PDF forms have been designed to have database-ready fields. Provisions have been made to care for sight-impaired users.
• Attorneys and secretaries typically update forms. I authored an instruction manual for them, describing the process used to create and edit new and existing forms.
• Developed new information architecture for the Judicial Branch web site. Identified persona groups that use the site and led card sorting sessions to define primary nouns for menus and glossaries. Upon completion of the card sort and implementation of the new structure, the new site architecture was launched in August of 2013.

Confidential

Interaction Designer

• Designed proprietary web-based interfaces for software that give clients the ability to easily file financial reports with the SEC and for WebFilings' customer service department to interact with our client base
• Analyzed business requirements, created personas, performed gap analysis, developed wireframes and functional prototypes with Axure, Fireworks and Illustrator for improvement of existing products in an Agile environment
• Conducted internal user testing with customer service to verify assumptions before during the interface design process using Balsamiq Axure prototypes developed surveys created testing scripts interactive HTML prototypes for testing of our SEC filing application at Webfilings' annual conference