Howdy!
I’m Mac, a user experience designer based in Durham, North Carolina.
I’m a visual storyteller and problem-solver who’s fascinated by the ways thoughtful design can improve lives and affect emotions. I’m UX-certified by NN/g and I approach my work with curiosity, empathy, and an aspiration to make digital experiences more intuitive, accessible, and delightful.
I’m currently a Senior User Experience Architect at Mobiquity, an international consultancy where I’ve had the fortune of contributing to a variety projects across numerous industries for brands like Wawa, NBH/2UFi, Vanguard, Prometric, Kum & Go, Morningstar, among lots of others.
What I do
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![A screenshot of an affinity map from an interview I conducted and synthesized.]()
User Research & Synthesis
Before pushing a single pixel, I want to know who my users are and what pain points they’re experiencing.
My tool belt for research and synthesis includes user and stakeholder interviews, affinity mapping, usability studies, card sorting, competitive/heuristic analyses, and more.
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![A service blueprint/journey map hybrid I created for a client to document complex internal processes.]()
Maps, Flows, and Blueprints
The most intuitive and organic experiences are built upon a strong, carefully-considered narrative backbone.
I create journey maps, user flows, and service blueprints to directly inject stakeholders (and myself and team) into the story a digital experience is telling, for both user-facing products or internal tools and processes.
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![Two wireframes I created for a fintech client project.]()
Wireframes
After user insights are gathered and an experience narrative has been crafted, I put pens/pixels to paper/screen and begin to visualize digital experiences at a more detailed level.
I create wireframes (at all levels of fidelity) to establish the information architecture, interaction design, and surprise and delight moments in the product I’m building.
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![A screenshot showing the inner workings of a prototype I made.]()
Rapid Prototyping
Rapid prototyping allows me to go a level deeper in making an experience feel natural, seamless, and intuitive.
Prototyping and subsequent testing exposes bad patterns and highlights moments that matter. I find valuable insights at all levels of fidelity, from the quick-and-dirty to the highly polished.
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![A screen shot of stickie notes displaying varying needs of different stakeholders.]()
Collaboration
At its core, being a thoughtful UX practitioner comes down to honest, direct, and empathetic communication.
From aligning on business directives with an executive team to hashing out the subtleties of a micro-interaction with a dev squad, I aim to foster great relationships with the folks I’m working beside.
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![A screenshot from a competitive analysis done on the digital banking landscape.]()
UX Strategy
Amazing experiences don’t take form without a meticulous strategy backing things up.
I aim to craft the vision, goals, and plan for an experience by defining differentiators through comparative research, setting specific design goals, establishing design principles, and always staying user-centered.
More about me
Outside of all this work stuff I try to keep myself busy. I’m a passionate home cook, avid traveller, fledgling bassist, sorta-ok fisherman, getting-better gardener, and voracious reader who loves lots of other things, too.
Some fun facts about me include…
I have a two year old Great Pyrenees mix named Wilma the Wizard and she is the single greatest dog on the planet and you can’t tell me otherwise :)
I’ve held a number of interesting jobs before falling into UX, including documentary photographer and filmmaker, juvenile sea turtle care assistant, and bartender at a James Beard Award-winning sushi restaurant.
I’m lucky to have lived in seven US states (FL, MA, MI, NC, OR, TX, and VT).
As a treat for making it all the way to the bottom, here is Wilma the Wizard.