Initial sketches of Ellsi interface adapting to AI technology of the timeInterface and interaction snapshot of a conversational Ellsi from 2016
Interface and interaction snapshot of a conversational Ellsi from 2016
Designing with the Body in Mind
Standard UI places CTAs in the bottom right, assuming right-handed efficiency. But our research revealed that this position strains the thumb’s natural arc. I designed a flexible, elliptical button that adapts to each user’s relaxed reach—left or right—making interaction feel intuitive, inclusive, and effortless.
Designing with the Body in Mind
Standard UI places CTAs in the bottom right, assuming right-handed efficiency. But our research revealed that this position strains the thumb’s natural arc. I designed a flexible, elliptical button that adapts to each user’s relaxed reach—left or right—making interaction feel intuitive, inclusive, and effortless.
Meeting the moment
The experience opens with a personalized “Moment” view—surface-level calm, deeply intentional. Based on user cues and contextual research, it highlights what matters most right now, offering three gentle prompts to encourage meaningful engagement.
Meeting the moment
The experience opens with a personalized “Moment” view—surface-level calm, deeply intentional. Based on user cues and contextual research, it highlights what matters most right now, offering three gentle prompts to encourage meaningful engagement.
Conversational by Design
At the core of the multimodal experience is conversation. We pair natural language understanding with best practices in conversational UX, card systems, and visual design—creating a seamless flow of dialogue, context, and action across both app and device.
Conversational by Design
At the core of the multimodal experience is conversation. We pair natural language understanding with best practices in conversational UX, card systems, and visual design—creating a seamless flow of dialogue, context, and action across both app and device.
Hands-Free, Built for Now
In mobile-first contexts, we previewed a voice-only interface with a universal hotword—designed for instant engagement without typing. The dialog flows illustrate how users can navigate key moments entirely hands-free.
Hands-Free, Built for Now
In mobile-first contexts, we previewed a voice-only interface with a universal hotword—designed for instant engagement without typing. The dialog flows illustrate how users can navigate key moments entirely hands-free.
Contextual Notifications, Made Clear
From conversation mode, users can access email and other alerts through two distinct views. Smart chips filter by type—like payments or packages—while badges verify sources, flag priorities, and surface followed threads, reinforcing trust and clarity at a glance.
Contextual Notifications, Made Clear
From conversation mode, users can access email and other alerts through two distinct views. Smart chips filter by type—like payments or packages—while badges verify sources, flag priorities, and surface followed threads, reinforcing trust and clarity at a glance.
Weather, on Your Terms
Expanding the introductory weather card opens the Today view, where users can scroll through the day, confirm or adjust preferences, and take action—all from a conversational, context-aware interface.
Weather, on Your Terms
Expanding the introductory weather card opens the Today view, where users can scroll through the day, confirm or adjust preferences, and take action—all from a conversational, context-aware interface.
Accessibility
Accessibility in High-Traffic Public Systems
Challenge
How do you build a high-traffic website for a regional airport that’s fast, on-brand, and fully inclusive—while overcoming skepticism about accessibility’s perceived complexity, cost, and impact on visual design?
Solution
I led the full accessibility strategy, UX design, and front-end development for the Bishop International Airport website, ensuring an equitable, efficient experience for all travelers.
End-to-End Accessibility Ownership: Directed accessibility-first development from ideation to launch—ensuring WCAG 2.1 compliance across visual, navigational, and interactive elements.
Intuitive, Keyboard-Friendly Navigation: Designed fully compliant menus using ARIA roles and keyboard/tab structures for travelers with assistive needs.
Accessible Navigation A fully keyboard and screen reader-friendly navigation system was built from the ground up, tested live with assistive technologies.Screen Reader & Keyboard Navigation Test A screen-recorded demo of the Bishop International Airport website in action—showcasing complex navigation made fully accessible. From arrow keys to ARIA descriptions, each element was structured to be operable, perceivable, and efficient for users navigating by assistive technology.
Cross-Functional Advocacy: Facilitated stakeholder buy-in through workshops, live demos, and strategy presentations that reframed accessibility as a business and human benefit.
Scalable, Performance-Oriented Design: Optimized for high traffic loads during peak travel, while maintaining high accessibility and cross-device consistency.
Conference Thought Leadership: Co-presented accessibility strategy at three regional design and tech conferences, helping shift industry norms toward inclusive development.
Design Philosophy
Accessibility isn’t a checkbox—it’s an invitation.
Lead with Empathy, Not Litigation: I overcame internal hesitation by reframing accessibility as a mutual value—where business goals align with human rights. Rather than leveraging fear of legal action, I inspired teams to see inclusion as a form of design excellence.
Accessibility as Systems Thinking: I designed the site to be operable, perceivable, and robust at every layer—from visual design to code structure—without creating silos between design and development.
Culture Through Craft: I didn’t just implement accessibility; I cultivated it. My work at Bishop transformed team culture—integrating accessibility into roadmaps, sprints, QA, and documentation, ensuring sustained impact beyond a single launch.
Creating an Inclusive Culture in Higher Education
Challenge
At a university with deeply entrenched legacy systems and resource constraints, how can accessibility become a shared practice—not just a checklist before launch—especially in emotionally and socially urgent spaces like Title IX?
Solution
As part of the Digital Content and Accessibility Team, I helped lead a cultural and systemic shift in how the university approaches inclusion, accessibility, and digital equity.
WCAG Reporting System Design: Built a Likert-scale based evaluation framework prioritizing barriers by harm to users vs. effort to fix—accelerating remediation and creating an objective, human-centered roadmap for accessibility.
Universal Design Advocacy: Ensured every tool (internal or procured) met high accessibility and usability standards. This helped influence key experiences including Admissions, Title IX, and the Scholarships portal.
High-Impact Accessible Redesigns: Designed and prototyped interface solutions for central university platforms, ensuring screen reader support, correct heading structures (e.g. site name as H2, page name as H1), and inclusive layout decisions.
From Digital Equity to Real-World Justice: Worked on the Title IX website redesign that directly enabled over 100 survivors of Larry Nassar’s abuse to begin filing claims—showing the tangible power of accessibility in the pursuit of justice.
Cross-Industry Impact: My work at MSU led to accessibility evaluation work for Fortune 500 clients and helped launch inclusive design strategy at a regional UX consultancy.
Design Philosophy
Accessibility isn’t about perfection. It’s about progress you can feel.
Design for Justice, Not Just Compliance: I approach accessibility as a vehicle for systemic equity—whether opening scholarship access, clarifying admissions workflows, or supporting survivors seeking justice.
Small Changes, Big Impacts: A single heading structure change (H1 for the page, H2 for the site title) can completely transform a screen reader user’s experience. My work focuses on subtle interventions that have exponential human value.
Build the Culture While Building the Product: Change doesn’t happen in documentation—it happens in trust. I gained buy-in from resistant stakeholders by mapping accessibility goals to shared human values, and creating approachable systems that met teams where they were.
Deliverables
Admissions Homepage A screenshot of the redesigned MSU Admissions homepage, featuring accessible navigation, clear heading structure, and tested usability—inviting all users to explore higher education equally.
Keyboard Navigation in Action This screenshot demonstrates proper focus indicators and visible tab order—a critical aspect of usability for screen reader and keyboard-only users.
Title IX Site Accessibility A glimpse of the redesigned MSU Title IX page. Our decision to structure the site title as an H2 and the page title as an H1 improved screen reader navigation—becoming a quiet, foundational detail in a system that enabled over 100 survivors to begin their pursuit of justice.
Stakeholder Engagement
Challenge
When I joined Consumers Energy/CMS Energy, Low and Moderate Income (LMI) customers faced barriers that went unseen, their experiences often misunderstood or neglected in product design. Internal teams operated in silos, each seeing only fragments of the full picture—blind to the complete lives our customers lived every day.Early whiteboarding to uncover systemic fragmentation through a decision tree that mapped with customer journey insights and enrollment flows set the stage for something bigger. A deeper transformation through a mindset map that paints a macro view of our customers' lives as everyday people.
Without aligning stakeholders around a agreed-upon human-centered vision, our products risked remaining disconnected, misaligned, and ultimately ineffective.
Solution
I decided we needed more than just data—we needed empathy. Real stories from real lives.
First, I led deeply empathetic interviews, immersing stakeholders in the practical—and emotional—realities of LMI customers across Michigan. We heard the fatigue of a ALICE customers (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) juggling bills, felt the frustration of excessively complicated enrollment red-tape, and recognized the quiet dignity of people striving to keep their families comfortable.Visualizing a Stakeholder’s Dream This storyboard transformed a stakeholder's abstract vision into an actionable cross-functional plan. By grounding big ideas in the everyday, we bridged strategic aspiration with practical empathy—shaping ambitious features to meet human problems.
Design Philosophy
Designing with stakeholders isn’t about aligning dislocated plans, it's about aligning hearts to create movement.
Stories as Connective Tissue: Facts inform, but stories transform. I strategically shift the narrative from silo to of all of the people involved, allowing teams to emotionally invest in the outcomes they're shaping.
Human-Centered Means Story-Centered: I believe the best way to create empathy isn't through personas alone, but by sharing the customers' stories in a way that advocates for the whole human they are. Stakeholders who resonate with stories are inspired to create solutions that truly benefit the people they serve.
Listening as a Radical Act: Through compassionate listening and authentic stories, I reframed the perception of our LMI customers—not as abstract segments, but as resilient as the individuals we would be privileged to positively impact.
Building Vision, Not Just Artifacts: Confidentiality may limit tangible deliverables, but storytelling creates something even more powerful—shared vision, lasting alignment, and a human understanding that guides every decision going forward.
Solution (cont.)
What surfaced through these stories reshaped the path ahead. They sparked a moment of clarity and momentum. I designed an interactive Journey Map Experience—a compelling visuals interwoven with authentic customer voices, revealing how our marketing and outreach either eased burdens or unintentionally created them.Discoverability Drives Engagement—Even Without Incentives Across the organization, many believed that highlighting premium features—even those offered for free to qualifying customers—would overwhelm systems or set unsustainable expectations. Some product teams hesitated to promote them altogether. But in this clip, a participant returns to the outreach and suddenly notices the mention of premium upgrades. Their reaction is immediate: they’re surprised, intrigued, and want to learn more—enroll even—not because they expect to receive the upgrade, but because the feature alone signals value. The insight was clear: withholding key features out of fear limits potential impact. When customers discover what’s possible, it builds trust. Clarity builds curiosity. People often want to engage when they feel part of the picture, not left out of it.Take Two: When Imagery Does Resonate Stakeholders assumed marketing imagery fell flat—that it reinforced perceptions of Consumers Energy as cold and transactional. But in this clip, customers offer a different story. When asked about outreach materials, they shared how specific imagery marketing emails shaped their mindset, make way for trust and prompt engagement or the exact opposite. This moment challenged prevailing internal beliefs. The insight reshaped MVP priorities—shifting focus toward outreach that feels timely, human, and aligned with how customers want to feel supported. It wasn’t just what the program offered—it was how it entered the customer’s life that mattered most.Framing the Experience: Opening and Closing Moments Designed not just to inform but to emotionally anchor, the beginning and end of the Journey Map Experience invite stakeholders into a space of reflection, insight, and alignement. These moments use delight, pacing, and ambiance to soften fragmented resistance and open the door for empathy—setting the stage for insight and leaving a long lasting impression after the stories end.Sound as Empathy Catalyst Full Video of Interactive Journey Map with Customer Feedback (~8 mins)
By layering customer audio clips directly into the visual journey, stakeholders could feel firsthand the gap between our intentions and customers' actual experiences in compelling narrative.
This moment was later highlighted in our internal culture publication as a turning point for breaking down silos and rebuilding shared vision:Breaking Silos Through Story and Sound This excerpt from a culture publication demonstrates how our audio-augmented journey map disrupted fragmented strategies and led to confidence in changing the product and its website. Though text-heavy, it reflects the lasting organizational change sparked by storytelling—not just in deliverables, but in mindset.
Engaging stakeholders through stories transformed internal perspectives. Silos began dissolving; teams started speaking a common language rooted in their own experience and the customers' as well. Stakeholders who once debated strategy in abstract terms now vividly saw—and heard—their impact on real people.
At the same time, we also ran hands-on workshops where we used storytelling methods to turn abstract strategy into something people could feel and build around."Real Voices, Real Reflection Built collaboratively in a live session, this full-scale journey map combined customer quotes (some real, some invented) with stakeholder expertise. By inviting teams to defeat assumption, we challenged bias, elevated unheard voices, and revealed gaps in collective understanding.Empathy Game Interaction Captured during a board game activity, this close-up shows a moment where stakeholders stepped into the shoes of LMI customers—making real choices under imagined constraints. This play-based method fostered emotional connection and deliverable insight beyond traditional research readouts.
Through these sessions, product owners, executives, and frontline teams collectively envisioned old and new products through the lens of customer lives, not just organizational metrics.Workshop Journey Map Stakeholders debated two competing visions for the LMI MVP. Through guided facilitation and live synthesis, we aligned diverse perspectives—clarifying assumptions and surfacing shared priorities.LMI Product Navigation This workshop journey map detailed how LMI customers engaged with layered systems across multiple products. Though product-specific, it uncovered unmet needs and misaligned expectations that hindered broader service strategy.
Storytelling allows me to establish trust and promote collaboration, culminating in an organizational shift—towards proactive, empathetic product development designed for human outcomes first, business outcomes second.
Physical UX
Challenge
How can smaller museums create meaningful, engaging experiences without major construction or funding—especially when competing with the expectations of modern audiences surrounded by the digital world?
Solution
We designed an overhaul of a hybrid physical-digital exhibit experience for the Hall of Evolution at MSU’s Museum, transforming a static display into an interactive, educational journey through space, time, and impact.
Stakeholder-Centered Research: Conducted field visits, floor plan assessments, and in-person interviews with both museum staff and visitors to understand spatial limitations, learning goals, and the potential for what the exhibit could really be.
Interactive Floor Plan Redesign: Reorganized the existing exhibit layout to introduce multi-touch interactive displays and spatial storytelling while avoiding structural renovation.
Redesigned Exhibit Floor Plan This simplified static diagram shows how we reoriented foot traffic, visual focus, and interactive panels—without touching the building’s architecture.
Augmented + Virtual Reality Prototyping:Interactive Panel Prototype This video prototype allowed visitors—especially younger ones—to learn genetics through a physical-digital Punnett square. It was designed to feel intuitive, tactile, and age-appropriate, while requiring no app or phone.
Designed an AR experience layered into physical space using large gaps between static displays.
Prototyped a 3D parallax-based VR environment using JavaScript—allowing users to explore life across Earth’s evolutionary timeline through motion and interaction. An entire planet in a small space.
Environmental Storytelling: Created touchpoints where guests could experience with different eras of the Earth’s history, learning how humans have shaped the planet—and how we might shape it differently.
Design Philosophy
Designing for physical experience is about designing for memory.
Meet People Where They Are—Literally: We didn’t try to force a tech-first solution. Instead, we worked with the physical limitations of the space—transforming “dead space” between static displays into engagement zones using AR, interactive panels, and ambient storytelling.
Technology as a Companion, Not a Distraction: Our Virtual Reality and interactive panels didn’t compete with the exhibit—they deepened it. By embedding context-sensitive interactions, we opened the door for guests to move from passive indifference to active learning.
From Static to Immersive: Museums are no longer just about preservation; they’re about participation. This project showed how interaction design principles—like affordances, feedback, and discovery—can bring mundane scientific lessons to illustrative activities, even with minimal budget or footprint.
Design for Emotional Arc, Not Just Information: By letting visitors move through space and time—from ancient organisms to modern impact—we created an emotional narrative that encourages seeing clearly, caring deeply, doing something about it. The goal wasn’t just education—it was transformation.
Deliverables
Jurassic Wall Redesign This updated display transforms a static fossil case into a contextual, immersive scene. By layering illustrated backdrops with bold educational panels, we moved from artifact curation to narrative storytelling—turning glances into moments where people forget that they are learning.
Mesozoic Entry Experience We designed the transitional space as an emotional entry point. Using ambient graphics and visual cues like dino tracks and vibrant colorways, the exhibit now begins before the visitor even reaches a display—anchoring the experience in movement, presence, and anticipation.
Outcomes
AI & Voice UX
Innovative Multi-Modal AI Assistant: Prototyped a pioneering AI assistant integrating empathetic conversational/dialog flows and interactive notifications, making way for emotional intelligence in digital interactions.
Voice Interaction Leadership: Led conversational UX design across a variety of platforms, shaping early voice prototypes, significantly advancing user-centric AI systems.
Transformative Accessibility Strategies: Elevated accessibility from compliance to care at Michigan State University and Bishop International Airport through comprehensive WCAG audits, inclusive design training, and cross-functional stakeholder workshops.
Increased Operational Efficiency: Achieved 40% reduction in accessibility remediation time for major e-learning platforms through scalable strategies that transformed and improved developer workflows.
High-Impact Project Leadership: Conducted accessibility evaluations and redesigns for high-stakes websites (Title IX, Admissions), significantly enhancing digital inclusivity for thousands of users.
Cross-Functional Alignment: Facilitated alignment of organization-wide stakeholders through interactive journey mapping, storytelling, and prototyping, translating complex service realities into actionable, user-centered strategies.
Strategic Workshops: Led inclusive design sprints and workshops to make way for a shared understanding of customer experiences that directly informed strategic decision-making and executive presentations—including to the board of directors.
Enhanced Organizational Culture: Transitioned organizational approaches from fragmented, silosed product strategies to a unified, human-centric cross-functional collaboration, driving a roadmap of sustained improvements that are evidenced backed and further create stakeholder buy-in.
Interactive Museum Exhibit: Designed and prototyped a multi-sensory, hands-on museum exhibit translating complex evolutionary concepts into novel, interactive, and engaging visitor experiences, significantly increasing user interaction and educational retention.
User-Centric Prototyping: Leveraged iterative physical prototyping to ensure exhibits provided meaningful and accessible experiences to visitors of all types and design inefficiences and errors were discovered and rooted out early on.
Creative Public Engagement: Successfully translated abstract scientific information into playful, immersive interactions, fostering curiosity and delivering on the educational impact a digitally augmented experience can have in high-traffic public environments.