I'm a Product Designer at Pantheon in San Francisco. I work on projects end-to-end, but am most excited about using user research and prototyping to discover ways to improve both the product and people's lives, through good design.

I am involved in projects from beginning to end, including early discovery, user research, strategy, designing the user experience and user interface, prototyping, and testing. I know just enough HTML and CSS to make me dangerous (and to have conversations with developers).

In my free time I draw with colored pencils, some of which I'll share on my Personal Art site, devour both fiction and non-fiction books (I read a lot), drink coffee, knit, eat ice cream, play my 3DS or Switch (usually a Legend of Zelda game).


More about me

Full Name:
Kimberly

Nickname:
Kim, Kimby, Kim Possible

Superhero alias:
Kim-azing

Why I design:
Ultimately I am fulfilled by improving people's lives through design.

Soundtrack to my day:
Mad Max (if I'm feeling epic); Studio Ghibli (if I'm feeling artsy); Legend of Korra (if I'm feeling mellow).

Favorite book series:
Harry Potter, the Stormlight Archive.

What surprises me about me:
The older I get, the earlier I wake up, and I am doubly surprised I am ok with this.

Inspiring reading material:
Swiss Miss, 24 Ways, Co.DesignA List ApartThe Pastry Box ProjectCorinne Reid, Design of the Picture Book, Gurney JourneyLines and Colors, Bryan Konietzko, Julie Zhuo, Mule Design.

Podcasts:
Stuff You Missed in History Class, Welcome to Nightvale, Hidden Brain, O'Reilly Design Podcast, Criminal, StartUp Podcast, Invisibilia, Serial, The Nudge, Heroine


Design work

Download a pdf of my resume.

Pantheon

May 2016 - Present

I'm currently a product designer at Pantheon, a website development platform that enables teams to build and launch websites.

  • Researched ways to increase usage of the Pantheon command line utility, and proposed an official manual containing easier-to-understand installation instructions and scenario-based examples to help users apply this tool to their work, resulting in a manual that is consistently the top-ranked page of the documentation
  • Planned, executed, and synthesized user research on the first time user experience to use for product improvements and A/B testing to increase retention.
  • Iteratively approached development of a new feature that enables users to customize the start state for their websites. Tested prototypes and early releases to clarify design criteria and prioritize value of backlog items, resulting in the squad delivering continuous improvements for users.
  • Identified points of friction and wasted effort in the design process. Took point on creating the Design Playbook and standardizing Design Ops, resulting in speedier testing and iteration cycles.

BinWise

Oct 2014 - Apr 2016

  • As BinWise’s first designer, I led the design for a beverage management SaaS product for restaurants. I started user research and user testing ideas, and developed design principles and personas to focus the product direction.
  • Led the effort to create a pattern library to form a cohesive UI that looks and functions as one unified experience, improving over existing inconsistent interactions and visuals and reducing tech and design time with reusable components.
  • Led the redesign of the inventory system, turning a 7-step process into a 3-step process that conveyed clear guidance, and presented an understandable visual design. These improvements reduced user frustration, the amount of time spent on this task, and the number of support tickets received.
  • Redesigned item barcode printing to add features to make process more efficient, such as file management, adding, editing, and removing items.
  • Led a concept design of a new dashboard section displaying the restaurants’ inventory and financial state.

Schell Games

Aug 2011 - Oct 2014

At Schell Games I was a UI Designer for educational desktop and mobile games, the art lead on several projects, advised other projects, and mentored junior artists and interns.

Selected projects:

  • UI Lead for S.E.C.R.E.T., an immersive location-based game for Children’s Museum of Houston, working with art director and producer to define milestones, communicate expectations to client, and develop UI art direction.
  • Led UI design for Lexica, a role-playing language arts game, and a series of Lexica minigames. Assisted art direction and management of 1-3 person art team for a series of tablet games to encourage language arts learning for pre-teens. Ensured visual consistency, on schedule delivery, and presented work to client. Established flow and visual treatments for all UI elements including multi-level inventory system, and player onboarding
  • Art lead for Inklings from beginning to end, establishing wireframe flow, iteration through playtesting, created and maintained style guide, created concept art and assets, implemented art for 34 levels and UI.  Game received Gold Medal Award, International Serious Play Awards in 2014.
  • UI Designer for Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood website and 6 games. Established site map, layout, visuals, UI for games, print content, all following branding guidelines from PBS. Worked with game designer on interactions that were entertaining for children aged 2-5 while remaining intuitive for guardians to navigate.

Graduate School

In graduate school I worked on a variety of projects including:

  • Art Lead for Collectible, an animated short film, leading visual development, production design, texturing and lighting.
  • Artist for an animation segment for an episode of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”.
  • A series of STEM games targeted for young girls in collaboration with the Carnegie Science Center.
  • Was the Teaching Assistant for 2d art for a Building Virtual Worlds class
  • Worked with CMU Graphics lab to explore direction for a crowd-sourced drug molecule matching game for mobile; and provided UI design and art following an established style for EteRNA, a puzzle game involving folding RNA molecules.

Volunteer

  • Technovation Mentor, 2017 - current
  • Game Developer's Conference volunteer, 2010-2012

Education

Carnegie Mellon University, Master of Entertainment Technology, 2011

St. Vincent College, Bachelor of Arts for a double major in Studio Art and Art History, 2007, graduated magna cum laude


Site Credits

Site designed and built on WordPress by me.