"Hello, World!"
I am a user experience / user interaction designer, but first I am a mom. So my camera roll is filled with lively pictures of my family in all the wonderful experiences together in nature, bowling, at church activities, and just spending time together. I've added a few of our memories below (all taken with my iPhone camera, and all from trips to visit our friends in Chattanooga, Tennessee)...
I was born and raised in Orlando, Florida with the humidity and the alligators. My high school choir was fortunate to sing at Disney World's Candlelight Processional (it's at Epcot every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas if you want to plan your trip). My percussion ensemble received first place in state technique evaluations. Music is a big part of my life, from piano to singing, from percussion to ukulele, and I've even written a few pieces.
My first year of college was in the Chattanooga, TN area in a little town called Collegedale where the Little Debbie headquarters are located. I remember smelling brownies walking between classes. I fell in love with the mountains, and the music, and the people, and it's been my life-long quest to find a way to be there. That is my forever "home" regardless where I actually live, and I've been fortunate to live there on and off over the past ten years, but have always had to move away for work.
I started building websites using Notepad in 1995 when we had 14k dial up internet, and to have an online service was to be part of an online community. I cried when Prodigy took away the community and made it internet that was straight to a web browser. I created a webpage for my classmates to stay in touch, and later we went to MySpace, and finally Facebook where most everyone is today. When I went to college, I knew I wanted to design websites but there was no formal web design program so I settled for Graphic Design and took electives in experimental classes such as digital media. Almost every student job I took in college was working on websites for different departments (I had a few food service jobs as well, as every college kid should).
I've attended the "university of hard knocks" a few times in my life. I've moved to Washington D.C. for work (outside the beltway), and learned the cost of living was high, the traffic is dense, and it takes 45 minutes to go 5 miles. This was an amazing learning opportunity for my family as they took school pictures on the National Mall and had field trips to the Smithsonian. I've also moved to Northwest Arkansas for work and found the cities to be almost non-existent, the cows and chickens to be everywhere, and people farming goats and llamas at their private residences. The traffic is awesome... I can drive 27 miles in 30-45 minutes, mostly on a 2-lane road, but you basically have to go 45 minutes away to do anything (at least from where I am). Nothing quite compares to Southeast Tennessee with the music, southern hospitality, being in a suburb with the mountains, the nature trails, and best of all -- our musically inclined best friends we currently drive 12 hours to see on every school break we can afford the trip. Did I mention that Chattanooga has awesome internet speeds with their fiber optic network?
As for work, I've been in a variety of positions, ranging from a hybrid webmaster type role for all and sundry to do with the website (policies, designing advertisements, analytics, fixing stuff, adding pages), to focused roles (go build the HTML & CSS for this page; and go do design only for this product). I've even been fortunate to get into adjunct teaching online classes, which I absolutely love! I've been in a traditional 8-5 office environment, but since being at my current role, we have a flexible schedule culture and I've grown to love this because my family is important to me. I value that I can flex my time around my family's events (such as parent-teacher conferences) and even work from home at times (for things like school holidays) without worrying about a traditional in-office attendance policy. Work-life balance has always been a challenge, and I appreciate the flexible schedule company culture.
Thank you for listening to my story, and getting to know me a bit better. I hope you enjoy my projects listed here, as the past few years all my work has been proprietary, so I am limited to what I can share.