About Me

My areas of specialty are Ideation Facilitation, UX Research, and Information Architecture, but I've worn all the design hats at some point.

Communication is vitally important in design roles and I've worked in many of the roles in technology, so I understand how to communicate across teams.

Below you will find a few things that have shaped me over the years as I've learned more about myself and what I like to do.

Personality Assessments

I love understanding how people work, myself included. I found two assessments, which have helped me understand myself better and why design management is a perfect fit for me.

1121 Profile - HBDI

"Occupations with this profile would be those requiring a combination of logical and analytical problem solving coupled with imaginative and innovative thinking along with administrative and managerial duties. Such occupations would include technical positions such as design engineers, researchers and those making both conceptual and quantitative decisions. Work that is considered a 'Turn- On' would include: analyzing data, making things work, building things, establishing order, bringing about change, and inventing solutions."

Coordinating Observer - Discovery Insights

"David is precise, cautious, disciplined, painstaking and conscientious in his work, yet prepared to try anything once. He can be a veritable storehouse of information on the things he knows well and understands. He is driven by a high sense of allegiance and obligation, resulting in a commitment to serve his partner, organization and humanity in general. He is most content in work that is of practical service to the organization and others. David has a gift for seeing the important facts of a situation. David is patient, flexible and usually easy to get along with, having little personal desire to dominate and control others. He can be a great 'designer' of systems which he prefers to leave to others to build."

Leadership Style

I'm proud to have hired teams from different countries, backgrounds, and career paths because a diverse group with different skills and experiences is vital to a high-performing design team. I've had the opportunity to manage UX Designers, Visual Designers, UX Researchers, QA Engineers, and Risk Engineers. While each person and role is unique in what they need to be successful, there are also common things that I ask of each of my team members:

  • Add to the culture of the team - We each have our own experiences personally and professionally. Bring an idea and put into practice something that can make our team better.

  • Teach something - What's a hobby or work skill that you could teach others on the team? You will grow significantly through the process of teaching.

  • Specialize when you are ready - There are so many facets to technology roles. As someone grows in their career, I ask them to start to focus in an area that they can lead and mentor others.

  • Own your career - I hired you because I believe in you. Show up to your job prepared to participate. Think about where you want to go next and I will help you get there.

  • Don't get quietly stuck - I'm not a micro-manager. I'm going to treat you like an adult. You should have questions and need help along the way. Asking questions is not something to avoid. It is the best thing you can do in your job.

My preferred design process for UX Design and Research is embedded in scrum teams running dual-track agile, where in collaboration with product management and engineers the designers are out ahead of the team creating mocks and testing them with customers, so the designs are ready when the team gets to backlog refinement.

Volunteering and Speaking Events

I really enjoy the opportunity to serve and share some of the things I've learned over the years. Here are some of the things I've been involved in recently:

Speaking

  • Shared the Design Thinking framework with the 170 technology college interns at Northwestern Mutual, before they started their hackathon project at the end of their summer 2022 internship.

  • Spoke at THAT Conference and the internal Northwestern Mutual tech conference, Revel in Tech, in 2021 about my custom recipe for design sprint ideation sessions.

  • Talked with a group of technology students in 2022 at Milwaukee Area Technical College about the world of design and my path to working in the design field.

  • Participated in a panel discussion for the Milwaukee Tech Hub Coalition about technology careers that don't require coding and how to start those careers.

Volunteering

  • Served at an event for high school students at Milwaukee School of Engineering to learn about UX through designing for a fictitious alien that they interviewed over chat

  • Volunteered at the High school Minicamp at Northwestern Mutual, where high school students learn to code and are then offered internships in technology roles at the company.

  • Mentored at University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee's nonprof-IT class as students partnered with a local nonprofit over the semester to help them with their marketing and website needs.

  • Voted onto the board at my local church, overseeing its direction and finances.

What I'm Reading

Sprint

My career changed forever when I found this book. It started me down the path of facilitating ideation sessions that helped teams assemble around a problem and gave each person a voice before quickly testing the solution in the market. Since reading the book, I have facilitated around 30 of these sessions, received an award at work for the modified process I created, and spoken at multiple conferences on my own unique recipe for how to structure these events.

The Four Tendencies

Reading this book helped me to not only understand myself better, but learn how to manage the individual needs of my team. People who ask lots of probing question need that information to buy into the project. It can be tempting to spend less time on team members who are always agreeable to accepting work, but they need to hear your appreciation for their work and have help saying no.

The Manual of Design Fiction

This is next up on my reading list. I'm excited to read about "the practice of creating tangible and evocative prototypes from possible near futures, to help discover and represent the consequences of decision making."