About

I am a Sr. User Expe­ri­ence Researcher for lynda.com, and I con­duct usabil­ity stud­ies, cus­tomer inter­views, and gather cus­tomer feed­back that helps inform prod­uct design deci­sions. I’m also an avid run­ner, and recently dis­cov­ered a pas­sion for run­ning marathons and half marathons. I write to share my thoughts on prod­uct devel­op­ment, run­ning, and the con­ver­gence of these two passions.

How did you get into the User Expe­ri­ence (UX) field?

I grad­u­ated from UCLA in Los Ange­les with a Mas­ters in Library and Infor­ma­tion Stud­ies, with an empha­sis in Infor­mat­ics. It was there that I dis­cov­ered my pas­sion for User Expe­ri­ence, Human Com­puter Inter­ac­tion, and Infor­ma­tion Archi­tec­ture. After enrolling in grad­u­ate school at UCLA’s School for Infor­ma­tion Stud­ies, I quickly learned that I wanted to help design great user expe­ri­ences. I started intern­ing for Cit­rix Online, and was hired as a User Expe­ri­ence Researcher. I recently started work­ing at Lynda.com, and am thrilled to work with the Web Prod­uct team. More updates to come! I’m really enjoy­ing it!

What is some­thing most peo­ple don’t know about you?

I’m nuts about Broad­way musi­cals… Grow­ing up, I per­formed in children’s the­ater for 10 years. I had mostly cho­rus roles, but did get to play the parts of Annie and Tessie in the musi­cal Annie.

What is your run­ning his­tory?…

…started run­ning in high school, doing track and cross coun­try…
…tried out for the cross coun­try team at UCSB, but didn’t make the cut…
…met my hus­band on a run along the bluffs in Goleta, CA…
…and the rest his history…

Per­sonal Records
Half Marathon: 1:36:07 (2009 Santa Bar­bara News­press Half Marathon)
Marathon: 3:27:57 (2010 Santa Bar­bara Inter­na­tional Marathon)
5K: 21:45 (Mount San Anto­nio Col­lege, 1999 CIF Tri­als)
Mile: 6:02 (UCSB, Track & Field Try-outs)
3 Mile: 20:30 (1999 Olympic League Finals)
4 Mile: 28:35 (UCSB, Romeo 4-Miler, 2011)
5 Mile: 41:41 (UCSB Sham­rock 5Miler, 2011)
10K: 48:45 (UCSB Gau­cho Gal­lop, 2011)

What are your interests?

I have many! Here are some of my cur­rent inter­ests: marathon run­ning, yoga, puppy train­ing, user expe­ri­ence research, iter­a­tive test­ing, un-moderated usabil­ity test­ing, remote research, Rapid Iter­a­tive Test­ing and Eval­u­a­tion (RITE), mobile design, con­tent strat­egy, social media, ser­vice design to deliver great end-to-end expe­ri­ences, affin­ity dia­gram­ming, usabil­ity test­ing, gen­er­a­tive research, ethnog­ra­phy, con­tex­tual inquires, etc.