Founder, Producer, Content Developer, and Instructor
2020 - PRESENTThe Business Design Studio- Helped new entrepreneurs design, test, learn, and change as they conduct research, validate their ideas, create their value propositions, and earn customers.
- Created eight learning modules shared over eight weeks.
- Facilitated two 120 minutes of online cohort meetings per week.
- Planned, designed, and implemented the permission marketing campaign.
Founder, Product Manager and Designer, Software Developer
2005 - PRESENTDr. Don Levan Consulting- Designed, managed, and developed internal and consumer-facing desktop, web, mobile, and voice UI projects for a diverse set of companies. Client industries included healthcare, IT, tax, legislative advocacy, media, nonprofit, and small business.
- Conducted product design and user experience training for product and engineering teams at companies in the Fortune 250 and the Fortune 50.
- Facilitated product and business planning design sprints for startups.
- Conducted interviews, group discovery workshops, document reviews, and ethnographic research to elicit and understand users' needs. Conceptualized and synthesized those needs into product vision and technical recommendations.
Director of Product Management
2018 - 2020Gerson Lehrman Group, Inc. (GLG)- Designed and managed the delivery of technologies to identify and mitigate fraud and compliance issues negatively impacting clients' trust and satisfaction, resulting in a significant decrease in the time required to identify and mitigate fraud.
- Created tools to aggregate risk signals to help the compliance team prioritize and focus their screening efforts.
- Implemented tools that significantly improved GLG's ability to screen council members.
Senior Solutions Architect (Technical Product Manager)
2015 - 2018Lifion, by ADP- Led a team of designers and two teams of engineers (in New York, Israel, and India—30 people in total) to implement Lifion’s first design system and a new suite of UI components. The year-long project was delivered on schedule with zero downtime.
- Architected and led the product vision, strategic direction, and implementation of the front-end UI components of ADP's new Global HCM platform.
- Established the foundation to support client branding and geographic theming.
- Partnered with Lifion by ADP's head of UX and UX leads.
- Facilitated the creation of close working relationships between teams of geographically, culturally, and organizationally separated engineers and designers.
Founder, Producer, Content Developer, and Instructor
2010 - 2018The Design Better Products Workshop- Developed, designed, and facilitated two and three-day intensive design studios which taught a formal design and product management process to software developers.
- Developed detailed case studies consisting of interviews with multiple user types, user journeys, and other qualitative and quantitative research artifacts.
- Designed experiential exercises, activities, and learning materials to accommodate different student learning styles.
User Experience Designer | Claris FileMaker Design Team
2012 - 2013Apple, Inc.- Re-designed the FileMaker platform's scripting editor to make it behave more like a text editor, while still supporting the macro-based language. This decreased learning time for novice builders and increased the productivity of advanced developers.
- Designed the new custom styles functionality. The new functionality enabled FileMaker builders to quickly design interfaces that are clean, polished, and consistent with end-user expectations.
- Created the FileMaker platform onboarding guide, which orients new users to the FileMaker platform and encourages established users to extend their development efforts to iOS and the browser.
- Wrote the interaction design guide for the FileMaker platform. The guide provides builders actionable steps to improve their solution design and a framework for reviewing solutions to ensure interaction design best practices.
Founder, Producer, and Speaker
2012 - 2012Experience & Style: The Design Conference for Software Developers- Developed and produced a design conference, helping software developers to improve their design process and technique.
- Planned the workshop schedule, secured the facilities, recruited the speakers, and presented multiple sessions.
- Planned, designed, and implemented marketing for the conference.
User Experience Designer and Custom Software Developer
2007 - 2010Tekserve- Designed and developed major areas of the custom application that managed the New York City's premiere Apple Reseller and Service provider’s inventory, rentals, sales, and service.
- Planned and executed the migration to a new software platform. This was a six-month project which involved three weeks of user acceptance and quality assurance testing. The final transition was made on a scheduled holiday with no additional downtime.
- Re-designed and rebuilt a series of outdated and brittle payment processes into a new modern, scalable, and flexible payment architecture.
Clinical Psychologist, User Experience Designer, and Software Developer
2002 - 2010YAI National Institute for People with Disabilities- Designed, developed, and maintained a clinical documentation and management system utilized by a staff of more than 200 clinicians and administrators for 10 years.
- Decreased the time required to maintain documentation and significantly reduced errors.
- Performed clinical, administrative, and supervisory work in this specialty medical clinic for people with developmental disabilities.
- Helped plan and executed the transition to an enterprise electronic health record.
Custom Software Developer and User Experience Designer
2005 - 2007Small Company- Designed and developed custom desktop and web applications for clients including Harvard University Press, New York University, the New York Public Library, and the Miami Ad School.
- Conducted interviews, document reviews, and ethnographic research to elicit and understand users' needs. Conceptualized and synthesized those needs into product vision.
- Translated product vision into actionable plans and shipped products.