UX Design

Before joining EVERFI to lead the Platform UX team, I was a principal designer with Gannett Product, where I worked for seven years. My focus was on design systems, which for me sat on a spectrum: At one end, the very micro: what three line-height proportions will cover all type needs a news site will ever have? At the other, the macro: how might we help a product team of 400 collaborate more effectively?

I have found my place at both of these ends. I love to solve these sorts of systems problems, where getting something right at the source will make everyone’s lives a tiny bit easier every day, adding up to a big difference over time. A colleague once said that I have “special glasses” that help me see these get-it-right-at-the-source opportunities. A few of my favorite projects are detailed below; for a tour of the arc my work took in seven years working very deeply in-house at Gannett during a time of immense industry change, I’ve shared some extra context here.

USA TODAY Desktop Redesign

Redesigning the USA TODAY website to be more respectful to users, more attractive to advertisers, and the fastest site in the industry.
Role: Design systems lead, 2019 – 2020

USA TODAY Network Design System

Creating (and maintaining) a design system that scales across 110 newspapers, serving the needs of our 3000 journalists and 100+ million monthly readers.
Role: Design systems lead, 2016 – 2018

Confluence Cleanup

Redesigning how our product division manages and shares knowledge. Almost everyone we worked with on this project said the same thing: “Thank you so much for doing this; we’ve needed this for a long time.” (Link to IAC 2019 poster)
Role: Project and information architecture lead, 2019

Best Crop

Fixing how images display on all of Gannett’s digital products. Design decisions made in 2012 had driven CMS and back-end data changes that unwittingly compromised the display of our photojournalists’ carefully-shot images. Righting the wrong took two years, but made me prouder than anything else I’ve done at Gannett. (Link to summary deck)
Role: Project lead and end-to-end system detective, in spurts 2016–2018

USA TODAY Content Architecture

Cleaning up the pathways we give our users to find content they’re interested in. This project involved synthesizing inputs from content strategy, business intelligence and user research to recommend a slimmer, simpler navigation. Spoiler: we cut the number of links in half!
Role: Collaborator, 2019