Hello! Thank you for taking the time to learn a little more about me.
My interest in computing started at an early age. I discovered a world of new games, tools and possibilities when my Dad brought home a Commodore 64 computer.
I started my career after graduate school where I was working on my PhD in Experimental Psychology - specifically human memory processes. I had the opportunity to work as a usability researcher at Oracle and this is when I fell in love with research, design, and software development.
Over the years I have had the opportunity to accomplish some amazing things including:
promoted to the first female UX Principal Engineer at Intel Security
design and build the first usability lab on a cart for mobile user testing
taken 25 year old applications and redesigned them for the cloud with the newest technology
worked with site architects with a 1M budget to design physical workspaces to improve team collaboration
designed and worked with a building construction team to create a set of 6 state of the art usability labs with a $5M budget - which are still in use to this day
designed and led custom workshops on design thinking and innovation
developed a UX advocate program to educate engineering, product management and marketing teams on the role of UX within an organization
designed and ran the first Designovation - a design focused hackathon for students in UX programs
About Me
Young Nicole with computer - and little sisterWomen in Technology
As part of my career, I have spent extra time to work on employee resource groups to promote women in technology. I have created Women in Technology groups for FICO and Jumio that work with guest speakers, Women’s organizations and career building programs like AWE and Women in Technology.
Each year I would work with the group to pick themes that were of the most interest to the ogranization. We had themes such as Personal Branding, Resiliency and Managing up. The programs that I have led received NPS scores of over 70!
I have been a mentor to a number of women not only in the UX profession, but also in engineering and marketing groups. I feel that as a female leader, I have a responsibility to support the next generation of women leaders in technology in the same way that I have been supported.
Promoting Innovation
A large part of what I bring to organizations is my passion for teaching design thinking to teams. Over my career, I have developed a program called UX Advocate that has been designed to teach the design fundamentals, design process, the function of UX teams in an organization and design empowerment to teams across organizations. Team members who have taken the UX Advocate program rate the program as extremely helpful and provides them with new ways to think about their own work.
When I was with McAfee, I developed a Hackathon that was designed specifically for design students. This program provided opportunities to students enrolled in local Bay Area design programs to solve a design problem within 24 hours in an onsite facility. This program ran for multiple years and promoted McAfee as a design centered organization and provided my UX team with extremely talented interns.
As part of my experience, I have run innovation workshops to facilitate the design of new products and features. Before a large project begins, I design and lead workshops that bring together stakeholders from design, product management, architecture and engineering, professional services, data scientists, marketing and customer support. The workshops focus the teams on the target customers, market, and key pain points by using empathy to understand the users and problems, ideation and rapid prototyping and testing. These workshops provide an opportunity for teams to work together using a shared understanding of the customers and develop a backlog of innovative ideas for new products.
Coder Dojo program for kids
As part of my volunteer work at McAfee, I led a 2 year program called McAfee Coder Dojo. The Coder Dojo programs have been in place for a number of years and I used the framework to create a learning program for children of McAfee employees and their friends and family to learn the basics of coding. I encouraged the employees in the Santa Clara office to bring their daughters - start the pipeline of future technologists early.
In addition to the coding, I also added activities around design thinking and the basics of UX design; visual design to make images for their games, usability to test their games and the process of iterating and making their games better.
This program was extremely popular with the employees and was requested to have more sessions year round.
Corporate Sponsorship with San Jose State University
The past 5 years I have volunteered as a corporate partner in the San Jose State University M.S. in Human Factors and Ergonomic program. As part of this partnership, I provide the class with a design brief and data set to design experiences. I have worked with the Data Visualization and Gamification classes to answer questions and provide feedback on their final projects.
This partnership is a benefit to the companies that I work for by having a direct pipeline to UX talent as well as promoting the company within the UX industry as a UX focused company.
