I am a Group Director of Experience Design at VMLY&R, where I manage a team of talented UX designers who are transforming a large enterprise customer experience platform. Prior to this I was the Chief Product Officer at Jaspr Health, and over the last two decades I have worked in Program Management at Microsoft and UX Design at Deloitte Digital.

I have been fortunate to manage a team working on the world’s first digital therapeutic for suicide prevention, and to work for clients such as Kaiser Permanente, Aetna, Eli Lilly, Cisco Systems, Southwest Airlines, and the Ford Motor Company. I am based in Toronto, Canada.

Writing

My Design Philosophy

I’m very interested in the idea of design being useful and minimal: it should be helpful, and then leave you to your day. Cal Newport has done some excellent work on this subject in Digital Minimalism, and I’ve adapted some of his ideas into my current design philosophy.

1

GOOD DESIGN SERVES USER VALUEs

Good design serves something that a user values deeply. Merely offering some benefit is not enough.

2

good design PROVIDES AN OPTIMAL solution

As designers, we must aspire to create systems that are the best way to serve a particular value. If it is not the best option, we must continually work to improve it until it is.

3

good design has self-imposed constraints

Good design does not try to do everything. It should be the best possible solution only within a given context.