Chris Pallé
Verified Expert in Design
UX Designer
Old Bridge Township, NJ, United States
Toptal member since July 24, 2020
Chris is a hard-charging, success-driven, change strategist with robust entrepreneurial instincts and a 20-year career of applying people, creative, marketing, and technical acumen to scale and deliver impactful commercial & digital design solutions that propel growth for emerging to Fortune 500 enterprises. Chris excels at unpacking challenges, uncovering design opportunities, provisioning inspired design direction that dissolves uncertainty, and presenting brilliant presentations.
Portfolio
metaMe | Own Your Data
Amplifind | Find Your Audience
Junior Achievement Student Center Redesign: JA MyWay™
iCIMS | User-centered Salesforce Enablement
Work Experience
Part-time Lecturer | Educator
Rutgers University
- Developed curriculum focused on the design process to teach students user-centered design best practices, including problem articulation, user interviews and observations, and persona development.
- Led 35+ students per semester through rigorous discovery and design process using goal-directed UX/UI design principles and Adobe XD for prototyping.
- Introduced product management skills into the design process for requirements gathering and articulated user stories ready for agile management system such as Jira.
Director of Operations and Design | President
Wisdom & Craft | Self-Employed
- Attracted and captured new business. Devised and executed winning business development strategies while orchestrating a portfolio of projects valued at up to $500,000 each.
- Assisted in raising $1 million in venture funding for metaMe and winning a tech company's pilot program to develop an early-stage blockchain-based protocol.
- Optimized the plan of a next-generation research engine JV initiative for IEEE with limited resources and aggressive timelines tasked with simplifying search and delivery of 2 million archived technical documents.
- Saved The Economist $150,000+ in development costs by identifying and integrating successful feature sets into larger product vision while conceptualizing, prototyping, and testing a brand-aligned mobile app for a new digital product.
- Influenced the evolution of product quality for iCIMS via an enhanced sales process.
- Contributed to the seismic shift in the development approach to user-centered design for a global SaaS firm that owns the second most widely deployed applicant tracking system.
- Shepherded a team through product design, prototyping, and startup activities.
Executive Director – Co-working Tenant Incubator and Digital Strategy
Bell Works
- Applied design thinking while spearheading, steering, and launching a renewal venture within two million square feet of iconic vacant industrial space. To ensure project success, I conferred with and enlisted help from many experts.
- Fostered an entrepreneurial ecosystem of startups, universities, investors, established enterprises, and community groups focused on health and wellness, fintech, blockchain, smart contracts, infosec, and AI/machine learning.
- Magnified community-and-business awareness throughout the state by leading tours, networking with university students, and garnering media and press coverage from the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, The Real Deal, and local NJ outlets.
- Organized a networking group of 1,500 by hosting distinguished thought leaders at numerous Meetup events.
- Recruited cutting-edge companies in Monmouth County by working closely with first tenant pilot program businesses, and coached and advised startups and others in growing their businesses.
- Championed the design of a new website by articulating and conveying content strategy and messaging for all social channels, email, and blog.
- Oversaw and rallied a team of high-performance freelancers along with managing vendors.
Senior User Experience (UX) Consultant
Independent Consulting Engagements
- Contributed to strategic design activities—structuring content and modeling documents and charting user flows and sitemaps.
- Constructed wireframes and prototypes and specified product and service elements.
- Worked with clients including Tribal DDB (EarthLink), EMC Digital (Merrill Lynch/Bank of America), McGraw-Hill Construction (Dodge Report), VML (Hershey's Company), Bertelsmann Direct NA (BMG, Columbia House), and OgilvyAction (Delivery.com).
- Worked for G2 Worldwide on several projects: Smucker’s, CoverGirl, Pillsbury, Hertz Car Sales, Campbell’s, Eli Lilly, Latisse, Pfizer, Crisco, and Adams' Natural Peanut Butter.
- Fueled a decade of client acquisition and business growth by collaborating in crafting a persona-centered navigation scheme that yielded an engaging, intuitive interface empowered with improved conversion tracking analytics (client: Hertz Car Sales).
Education
Bachelor of Applied Arts and Sciences Degree in Graphic Design, Technical Communication, and eBusiness Strategy
Rochester Institute of Technology - Rochester, NY, United States
Skills
Tools
Adobe CC, Adobe Experience Design (XD), InVision, OmniGraffle, Google Workspace, Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite, Visio
Platforms
Figma, Mobile, Web, Axure, WordPress
Industry Expertise
Education Technology (Edtech)
Other
UX Strategy, Mobile UX, UX Design, User Flows, Product Design, Project Estimation, Heuristic Evaluation, UX Audits, UX Prototyping, Design Leadership, Empathy Mapping, Ethnographic Interviews, Prototyping, Mobile Apps, UX Flows, Information Architecture (IA), Design Research, Design Thinking, Web App Design, User Experience (UX), Wireframing, User Research, UX Leadership, Web Design, Product Discovery, Low-fidelity Prototypes, Design Documentation, Design Systems, Mobile App Design, Web App UX, Web App UI, Edtech Design, Mobile Design, User Interface (UI), UI Design, Personas, Office 365, Agile, Blockchain, Product Strategy, Design Strategy, Workshop Facilitation, Qualitative Research, Survey Design, Journey Mapping, Discovery Workshops, Game Design, Search, Search Engines, Workshops, Product Vision, Design Workshops, Strategic Design, UX Research, Leadership, Cryptocurrency, Workflow Diagrams, Startups, Ethnography, B2B, UX Mentoring, User Journey Maps, User Engagement, B2C, Consumer Behavior, User Journeys, Fintech, Extreme Sports, Dating Apps, Administration, Comics, Cryptocurrency Wallets, Graphic Design, Visual Design
Experience
- Wireframing - 20 years
- User Interface (UI) - 20 years
- UX Leadership - 15 years
- User Research - 15 years
- UX Strategy - 10 years
- UX Prototyping - 10 years
- Mobile UX - 8 years
- Figma - 3 years
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