Fun Facts
  • I played soccer for 25 years. If my knees allowed I would still be playing. My new interest is bouldering. 
  • My favorite song is Into Dust by Mazzy Star. It’s hauntingly beautiful. 
  • I can wiggle my ears simultaneously and independently.
  • I listen to 417 or 528hz frequencies to calm my nerves and help me focus.
  • My comfort show is How I Met Your Mother. I’ve re-watched all 9 seasons 4 times.
  • I met Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson when I was 8 (I was a WWF fan. Don’t ask me why.) He signed my beanie baby. 
  • If you met me before the age of 22 I go by and refer to myself as Lizzie.
  • My ideal retirement plan is to own a ranch near the mountains where I rehabilitate and train dogs who have been abandoned or abused. 

5 Things I Learned at a Deep Tech Start-Up

In the last 18 months I’ve done design work for both the consultancy sector, helping customers design and build custom applications using our product, as well as internal product work, collaborating closely with our engineers to build a product to eventually self-serve our customers. While this setup of consultancy work financially funding the internal product work may not be unique for many start-ups, it does create a bit of polarity in my growth as a designer. Skills, methods and team structures in consultancy work do not always translate well for internal product work, and vice-a-versa. Regardless, the duality, and sometimes similarities, have laid some of the groundwork for my perspective and development as a designer.

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Does the Agile Methodology Make Sense for UX Designers?

As of this writing I’ve been with my company just shy of a year. And in that year it’s been nothing but crash courses in work culture, deep tech, startup life, UX-UI design, and – of course – understanding how to work with developers in agile workflows with the latter causing quite a few pain points.

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When Friction is a Good Thing in UX

It’s easy to get caught up in common UX dogma like “good UX is seamless, intuitive and frictionless”. And probably 95% of the time this works. But sometimes friction is a good thing because it forces us to slow down in the same way that being nervous heightens alertness. The behavior may not always be desired but it does have merit. And as designers we have a responsibility to consider the intentional and unintentional consequences of our designs.

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Design and Development: A Classic Tale of Chicken and Egg

You know the classic paradox: which came first – the chicken or the egg? It’s a philosophical question as old as time where individuals attempt to understand cause and effect of their surroundings and situations. While it may not be as obvious to some, I think the question is deeply connected to the design-development process when it comes to the product, software and services we create.

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Should You Include Unsolicited Re-designs in Your UX-UI Portfolio?

If you’re just starting out with your portfolio and have already done some preliminary research you might discover that some sites recommend unsolicited redesigns of existing products while others strongly discourage this. So what exactly should you do?

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Interior Design to UX-UI Design: Similarities and Differences Between the Professions

Back when I used to tell people I’m an interior designer their go-to response was usually something along the lines, oh that sounds…

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Designers Are Not Artists

Ask an artist about their work and you might get a response like this: My work explores the relationship between the tyranny of…

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