Hi, I'm Jon.
I'm a customer-obsessed designer who advocates for involving real customers in every aspect of desgining and developing digital products and solutions.
I love finding the intersection of business goals and customer needs to design meaningful solutions, and I don't like wasting time on assumptions without testing them.
My experience working with agencies, small businesses, startups, dev shops, non-profits, and enterprise companies, as well as running my own business, allows me to bring a broad understanding of various types of businesses, customers, and solutions to my design approach.
Principles and ideas I believe in
Collaboration is essential for solving problems.
No one solves a problem on their own. Input from a cross-functional team brings different perspectives to the table, and it allows everybody to contribute to a solution. Plus, it's just more fun when you solve problems as a team!
Design is more than aesthetic.
Many people know this, but our natural tendency is to polish something before we've come to understand or solve a problem. A good design facilitator will help people work to answer the hard questions first, while also ensure a design solution is aesthetically pleasing.
Learn cheaply.
There are a lot of tools at a designer's disposal. It's important not to get attached to a tool. Reach for the tool that helps you answer the question in front of you as cheaply as you can before going deeper or farther. Sometimes you can get the answer you need by sketching something quickly, or even by simply asking questions.
Designers don't have all the answers.
Being in the field of UX or Design does not mean having all the answers to design challenges. Many times, designers know how to facilitate bringing a group of people to a shared understanding of a problem, so everyone can agree on a solution to test next.
Leadership is about serving, and doesn't require a title.
You don't need a fancy title to bring your influence to a problem or a group of people. True leadership seeks to serve others, and and to equip others to lead.
Technology should improve lives.
Designing solutions for problems that improve people's lives in some way is something I can get behind. Not realizing the value of what you spend your time working on is only sustainable for so long before you burn out.
Work
Some recent projects I've gotten to be a part of
BUNN // VirtualTOUCH
Lead UX, UI design, and development of mobile web companion app to provide a touchless experience for dispensing a beverage.
BUNN // Asset Tracking Prototoype
Designed a prototype for an asset tracking mobile app that could be used to pull up information on equipment assets. My team quickly moved from low-fidelity prototype to a working mobile web app prototype that could be demostrated to customers.
BUNN // B2B & Retail E-Commerce Website
Lead re-platform effort and design of a new E-Commerce website that serves multiple B2B and B2C audiences.
BUNN // Design System
Establish and continuously build a new digital design system to create a library of common components and patterns.
Life & Health // Group Workshops
Lead product design and development of a custom online platform that allows organizations to offer group workshops to their communities.
Lotfit // Automotive Logistics App
Product design and frontend development for a startup seeking to streamline the automotive logistics workflow of preparing used vehicles for sale.
CAT // QR Filter Reference Tool
UX/UI design and responsive web development for an online resource to help customers find a matching CAT filter when scanning a QR code.
Collaboration with Pudik
CAT // Filter Cross-reference Tool
UX/UI design and responsive web development for an online resource to help customers find the matching CAT filter when entering a competitor filter.
Collaboration with Pudik
SC CTSI // Website
UX Research and Design for a new website for the Southern California Clinical and Translational Science Institute, an organization that serves as a multifaceted resource for clinical and community-partnered translational research.
Collaboration with Cleafire
H.D. Smith // Company Website
UX/UI, frontend development and CMS development for pharmaceutical wholesale company website.
Collaboration with Spoke
H.D. Smith // B2B E-Commerce
Lead prototyping, UX/UI and frontend development for a new, responsive e-commerce B2B ordering platform.
Collaboration with Spoke
Pudik // Website
Design, frontend and CMS development for a strategy and design agency.
Collaboration with Pudik
Hypothetical Banking App
I sometimes use this hypothetical banking app to help demonstrate concepts such as prototyping and user testing when advocating for UX and customer-centered design approaches.
Tools & Approaches
Depending on the job, I reach for different tools. Here are some of the tools & approaches I reach for.
UX Approaches
- Journey Mapping and Experience Mapping to understand unique customer journeys and how they interact with business processes and sytems. Workshops using tools such as good ol' butcher paper and sticky notes or online tools like UXPressia.
- Virtual Whiteboarding with tools like Miro
- Persona development and/or Jobs To Be Done Framework for understanding customers and tasks
- Prototyping and User Testing with tools like Sketch, Invision, and Usertesting.com
- Card Sorting and Tree Testing with tools like Optimal Workshop
- Hotjar Funnels, Heatmaps, and Recordings
Prototyping and UI Tools
- Sketch
- Invision
- Adobe Creative Suite
- HTML & CSS
- Framer
Frameworks & Dev Tools
- HTML & CSS
- Javascript
- SASS / LESS
- Tailwind CSS
- Bootstrap
- Git
- Gulp
- Eleventy (Static Site Generator)
This site was built with Eleventy and Tailwind CSS. It's deployed and hosted from Github using Netlify.