Rochelle Pennington
Verified Expert in Design
Designer
Seoul, South Korea
Toptal member since December 21, 2021
Rochelle is a design lead and digital product designer who uses human-centered design methods to solve complex problems. She has 13+ years of agency experience working with all sizes of clients, teams, and projects. Rochelle has worked with government, nonprofits, and startups–including Yamaha, U.S. Federal Student Aid, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and Ronald McDonald House Charities.
Portfolio
Work Experience
Principal Designer | Owner
Self-employed
- Provided digital strategy and design services to help companies tell their story in a compelling way, achieve their business objectives, and better serve their customers.
- Conducted the usability, content, analytics audits, and research activities such as stakeholder and user interviews.
- Developed the brand strategy and identity design, including brand guidelines documenting logo, color, and typography usage.
Senior Digital Product Designer
U.S. Digital Response
- Designed a high-fidelity prototype to show states how a modern claim management system can provide data-driven insights, process claims faster, and reduce fraud.
- Identified inefficiencies within the claimant experience and the U.S. Department of Labor’s back-end operations.
- Co-authored an identity validation white paper to help states spend less time and resources procuring vendors.
Visual Design Lead and User Experience Designer
Fjord / Accenture Federal Studio
- Led a team consisting of nine UX and visual designers on a 10-month, high-visibility website redesign project with Federal Student Aid.
- Planned and facilitated design sprints, design thinking workshops, stakeholder and user interviews, and usability testing.
- Engaged clients in design presentations and workshops to solicit meaningful insights and feedback.
- Cross-collaborated with the project leads across design, business, data, content, and engineering.
- Led the studio’s visual design recruiting and hiring efforts and coached designers on developing their skills.
Creative Director
Whereoware
- Provided design direction for web, product, and marketing projects–from concept to launch.
- Generated new business through proposal writing, strategy, crafting design concepts for sales pitches, and meeting with prospective clients.
- Kept the agency relevant by constantly evolving the design process and researching industry trends, best practices, and emerging technologies and tools.
Design Lead and Front-end Development Lead
Whereoware
- Collaborated with the internal stakeholders and team to plan, design, build, and test ideas and features for our in-house eCommerce platform.
- Modernized our workflow by introducing responsive web design, CSS preprocessing, web performance and accessibility best practices, and cloud-based cross-browser and device testing.
- Hired, trained, and managed a team of front-end developers and remote freelance designers.
Design Lead and Front-end Development Lead
Whereoware
- Elevated the agency’s brand by redesigning its identity, website, voice and tone, and internal marketing materials.
- Improved our design process by introducing user experience design methods and modern design deliverables, including style tiles, element collages, and style guides, which resulted in faster delivery and reduced revisions.
- Tested and optimized front-end website performance issues.
Front-end Developer and Designer
Whereoware
- Modified and reshaped ASPDotNetStorefront’s eCommerce platform to fit the needs of our business and the business of our clients. This became the sole eCommerce platform we used for building all client projects.
- Collected project requirements from clients, redesigned B2B eCommerce websites, led design presentations, and gave CMS training to clients.
- Developed custom WordPress themes for marketing websites and blogs.
Front-end Developer
Whereoware
- Built eCommerce and marketing websites using HTML, CSS, jQuery, C#, WordPress, and PHP.
- Collaborated with the in-house designers and clients on translating design to code.
- Created graphic design assets to support content editors and developers.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Information Science and Systems
Radford University - Radford, VA, USA
Skills
Tools
Sketch, Figma, InVision, Zeplin Design, Jira, Balsamiq, Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Confluence, UXPin, Mockups, Microsoft PowerPoint, Adobe Creative Suite Design, Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Visual Studio Development, AspDotNetStorefront
Languages
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP
Industry Expertise
Government
Platforms
WordPress Design, iOS Design, Android Design, Joomla
Other
Notion Development, Design Thinking, Human-centered Design, UX Design, UI Design, Product Design, Wireframing, Prototyping, Design Systems, Accessibility Development, Responsive Web Design, Web Design, Usability, Stakeholder Interviews, Design Workshops, Design Sprints, Usability Testing, E-commerce Website Design, Web Application, Team Leadership, UI Design, User Flow Design, User Validation Testing, Dashboard, Task Management, Creative Direction, UX Design, UI Design, Mobile App, Web App Design, Mobile App Design, Mobile App Design, SaaS Design, SaaS Design, Design Direction, UX Design, Interaction Design (IxD), Ideation, Dashboard Design, Mobile App Design, User Stories, SaaS Design, Mockups, Mobile App Design, Design Production, Digital Product Design, Mobile UX Design, MVP Design, Leadership, Prototype Design, Prototype Design, Agile Design, Landing Page Design, UX Design, UI Design, Responsive Web Development, Episerver, Service Design, UX Design, Brand Identity Design, Content Strategy, Information Architecture, Brand Design, Research, Mobile Apps, Graphic Design, Print Design, Communication Design, Marketing Design, Task Automation, Visual Design, Design Research, Automation, Front-end Development, Branding, Design Strategy, Mobile App Design, UX Research, User Research, Public Health, B2B Design, B2C, Heuristic Review, Heuristic Analysis, Heuristic Evaluation, UX Design, Competition Research, Analytics Development, Customer Research, Web Analytics, Fintech Development, User Journeys, Mobile UI Design, Inventory Management, .NET, jQuery
Experience
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