As a UX Architect, I oversee the entire UX process to ensure what we're building meets user needs.

Because life's too short to build products nobody wants.

I bring over 20 years of experience with web and mobile design. As a web designer, I was deep in the trenches during the first dot-com boom, bending the nascent technology to produce what were then cutting-edge web sites and online environments.

Back in 2010, I took over the UX design role which was starting to become a big deal, and began applying the analytical and data-driven aspects to our clients' web and mobile applications. Rather than focus on colors and shapes, I aimed to design products that made good on technology's promise: to improve lives.

That is how my role as a UX Architect began to develop. And as the projects rolled on, I realized that having someone work with stakeholders, researchers, designers and developers, all to ensure that the final product would address the needs of our target users, was crucial. While other stakeholders would determine the ROI of provding Function X to User Y, my focus was on how that user performs that function on a phone, on a tablet, on a large-screen display, in a way that made them grateful for the experience. I am concerned with the simplest way to provide Function X so that we can quickly discover if the product we're building is something users want.

The purpose of User Experience Design is to make lives easier, delightful, more productive. While this may not always wind up saving the world, devising ways to simplify the noise of modern life into simple and harmonious products is an inspiring mission.