👨👩👧 I'm a family man and enjoy hanging out with my lady and daughter. 🎥 My first passion is film and media so you can catch me at the cinema quite a bit. Getting lost in story is a great pleasure and way to silence the stresses of normal life. 🎵 Music is another passion that I can't get enough of regardless of genre. I have been buying records for over 20 years and have a pretty massive collection of everything from punk, techno and metal. 💪 I'm also interested in health so I do a lot of workouts and hiking to keep fit. 🐈 I appreciate the calming nature of cats and have one named Harold who is a finicky but lovable. 🎮 I'm a devout video gamer who loves a good platformer, strategy or RPG game. 🎢 My family and I love rollercoasters and will go on any one you throw at us whether at Cedar Point or beyond.

There is a lot of discussion around the need for UX designers to make a portfolio showcasing their work. For me personally, it is about consolidating a handful of UX projects into an easy-to-understand format. This hopefully helps people understand my strengths as a designer and also helps me keep perspective of my career and evolution as a designer.

I've iterated on the most impactful way to write case studies for years. It has been great practice and the one conclusion which has become clear to me is that 'less is more'. I lean into simplicity because every time I create an exhaustive case study my eyes glaze over when I try to read it. If you are reading a UX case study then you are probably well-versed in the daily trials that the UX team faces during each project and the drive it takes to overcome them. But if you zoom out of those details and look at the big picture - most projects typically follow a similar format. The minutiae certainly is different and requires different deliverables but the overall path tends to be similar. My strategy is to lay out the broad strokes of the case study in a simple format and fill in details, challenges and lessons when discussing or interviewing.

The world is complex and helping people out by simplifying their tools, systems and websites is massively rewarding. I think that UX gives the chance to work with people from a lot of differing backgrounds and allows collaboration with many important roles all working together to get a job done. I also really, really like interaction design and making things work seamlessly. The other bit is I really enjoy strategy and figuring out how to work under project constraints, with resource limitations and making something concrete from an ambiguous starting point. Something that I am learning more recently is how much I enjoy helping younger designers refine their skills.

The UX world is changing in 2023. It seems juniors are having a difficult time finding their way into jobs. The backlash against bootcamps is afoot and there are more questions than answers. For me, the best way to get my foot into the door was a low-paying internship at a local usability lab. This was an incredible way to surround myself with highly-skilled professionals who would graciously donate time helping me to learn. You get on-the-job experience and also have a safe space to fail. This is massively important and can give you a real advantage before you get into enterprise level UX.