Monika is available for hire
Hire MonikaMonika Charlebois
Verified Expert in Design
Designer
Location
Victoria, BC, Canada
Toptal Member Since
June 22, 2018
With over 14 years of experience in B2B, SaaS, and enterprise design Monika has led product teams in the ideation, development, and deployment of user-centric solutions. Monika relies strongly on design thinking, applying its principles throughout the project lifecycle, and believes that identifying and designing for human experiences is crucial to its success. She works in Agile delivery and is happy collaborating with teams big or small.
Work Experience
Senior User Experience Designer
2015 - 2018
Internet of Things, IBM Canada
- Co-led design thinking workshops in large multidisciplinary teams to ideate and develop new business opportunities for well-recognized industry leaders.
- Conceptualized new ideas into a fully prototyped business solution leveraging various IoT technologies.
- Conducted industry research and persona empathy mapping and investigated "as-is" scenarios to fully understand and obtain knowledge about the client/industry and solutions.
- Created experience maps, wrote scenarios, and delivered storyboards for "to-be" solutions, which is ultimately for the creation of outcome goals (Hills) to form the best product solutions.
- Designed, prototyped, and delivered product solutions through high-fidelity design mockups, prototype files, and design presentations to development, offering, marketing, and management teams.
Technologies: Adobe Illustrator, InVision, Adobe Photoshop, Sketch
Lead User Experience Designer
2016 - 2017
TRIRIGA, IBM Canada
- Led design strategy on several new light-weight product applications to succeed large, complex, legacy software, allowing access to more users with faster productivity.
- Applied design thinking activities within the team to align product direction, outline new user experience goal statements, and refocus design and development efforts to satisfy our goal statements.
- Worked with users (groups) throughout the development cycle to understand our users' needs and opportunities and to validate our goals and design prototypes.
- Designed scenarios, storyboards, and final high-fidelity mockups and prototypes for implementation.
- Created a design style guide for common UI components, interaction patterns, and graphical elements.
- Validated completed designs with users and our own product team.
- Provided functional and performance testing of product applications to ensure their highest quality for final release.
Technologies: Sketch, Adobe Experience Design (XD), Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
UX/UI Designer
2010 - 2014
Rational, IBM Canada
- Designed web and desktop applications from their initial creation and launch to established and trusted products of over six major releases.
- Provided high-fidelity design mockups, blueprints, and design interaction patterns from an evolution of initial sketches derived from customer focus groups, storyboard images, and low- to medium-fidelity design mockups and prototypes.
- Provided direction and final design for all aspects of the product through continuous and open collaboration with the product development team and customers.
- Contributed to a common style and interaction guide for our platform product onto which four fully integrated applications were built.
Technologies: Axialis IconWorkshop, Balsamiq, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
User Interface Designer
2010 - 2010
Freelance
- Provided freelance UI and graphic design services for various projects, such as branding, website design, and business marketing materials.
Technologies: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Sketch
Education
1999 - 2004
Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Design
Carleton University - Ottawa, Ontario
Certifications
JANUARY 2017 - PRESENT
Enterprise Design Thinking Co-Creator
IBM
JANUARY 2017 - PRESENT
Design Thinking Co-Creator
IBM
JANUARY 2017 - PRESENT
Design Thinking Practitioner
IBM