In this role, I hope to positively impact the world around me by combining my skills in strategic design thinking, technology, and empathy. I'm really looking forward to learning new things every day from the people we are designing with.

In this role, I work on the Digital and Enablement Team, where we enable services that were once reserved for in-branch banking onto clients' digital devices. I champion human-centred design in our digital banking experiences by strategically designing improvements for the digital application process for new accounts and services. I have created functional prototypes which would enable clients to easily complete the end-to-end application and set up of a deposit or credit account from their homes without the assistance of a banking centre; an especially crucial project during Covid-19 as people opt to stay home and are still in need of simple, secure, and accessible banking services.

The Habit Factory Space, developed by two former OCAD University students, offers a two-week immersive online program that helps individuals in creative professions to develop their design portfolio with live feedback from a supportive, intimate community of like-minded creatives through daily exercises and habit building. Upon attending a Habit Factory session while I was a student, the founders of this amazing initiative recognized my commitment to community development and hired me on as their first Creative Consultant. In this role, I support up to twenty creative professionals (per two-week session) on their career development by offering individualized feedback, advice, and support on their design work and personal website.

After my time at eCampusOntario as a Student Experience Designer, I was asked to return for a new and exciting project; the development of an audit marketplace for post-secondary schools in the province. In this role, I will be thoroughly reviewing, testing, and evaluating emerging tools and technologies in the education sector, as well as helping to refine the audit platform model. My evaluation of these tools and technologies are specifically from a design perspective, where this information and the information gathered from other consultants will be shared with the province’s post-secondary schools in order to help each institution to determine which tools they may be interested in applying to their virtual learning model.

I worked with eCampusOntario’s SXD Lab through a number of projects which would inform the development of a system-wide strategy for a robust online learning wrap-around support; an exciting time to be working on eLearning services, shortly after thousands of students and educators took to online classrooms during the pandemic. On a team of multi-disciplinary student researchers, we collaborated with the Director of Product at Riipen to optimize the structure, format, and scope of Riipen’s experiential learning templates for accessibility and outreach purposes. In addition, I facilitated user research interviews and attended focus groups with post-secondary students and educators to hear about their online learning experiences. This research was used to understand what works, what doesn’t work, and what could be better with remote teaching and learning across the province.

The CEAD develops, implements, and coordinates a dynamic and responsive suite of programs and services to enhance the early career success of OCAD U students and recent graduates. I assisted with the creation of informational material for a number of University-wide career-related events, such as the annual Design Career Fair and Cultural Community Expo, which engage with a variety of employers, community agencies, and other partners to structure employment and exhibition opportunities based on reciprocal needs of students, partners, and OCAD U. All informational material had to be created using multiple formats to accommodate for a variety of communication methods in the virtual learning environment, resulting in the use of Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign for the majority of design projects. In addition, I assisted the CEAD with updating its external resources website as well as the design and development of a robust, accessible guide to pricing work as an emerging designer, based on insights gathered at an industry panel event as part of Design Career Fair.

I worked in the Library’s Learning Zone, an alternative library space for students and faculty offering a range of equipment and resources, for two years prior to the pandemic. In an effort to utilize student monitors’ skillsets in an online environment, the Learning Zone pivoted to OCAD U’s first ever Remote 1-on-1 Software Support Service. Students could book an appointment with myself or other student staff members to get help using software taught at OCAD U. In this role, I offered support and tutorials for design software including but not limited to: Adobe Creative Suite programs such as Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and 3D modeling software such as Sketchup and Rhino.

In order to connect incoming students to the campus community and their peers during an entirely virtual school year, OCAD University’s Centre for Emerging Artists and Designers selected 34 dedicated upper-year students to each support a small group of new students. In this role, I developed and facilitated a range of relevant experiences and activities for up to 37 Industrial Design students each week during the Fall 2020 Semester, entirely delivered using Microsoft Teams. In addition, I offered individual and group sessions with students in order to offer guidance and assistance on design assignments that had been adapted to the eLearning environment.

In this role, I assisted Process, an urban planning firm, in conducting user experience (UX) research for the City of Toronto’s Centennial Park 2008 Master Plan Review. Though my time at Process was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I visited the park multiple times a week for the duration of this role in order to conduct UX research with key stakeholders to inform design recommendations in the plan; this included surveying park goers, facilitating a community focus group session, and organizing and analyzing data findings to determine trends in what stakeholders wanted to see happen in the park. As a result of Process’s thorough UX research, the 2008 Master Plan took into consideration the diverse perspectives of stakeholders, permit holders and the publics’, which will guide changes in the park over the next 20 years. I also assisted with conducting similar UX research methods on other projects, when needed.

After our undergraduate thesis was held entirely online, most of my peers were upset that they would not get to showcase their hard work to others. After making some calls to the 2020 graduates, who also graduating virtually, I led a team of 11 peers in designing and executing our own Undergraduate Showcase. We created a website featuring the work of 42 students (ocaduid.format.com), designed a cohesive brand language, planned and hosted a live virtual opening reception featuring a panel of OCADU Alumni and Faculty which garnered 200+guests, and are currently working to make our website WCAG AAA web accessible.

Part of a Design Abroad course in Quepos, Costa Rica, I led the design of a children’s education plan as part of an inaugural, comprehensive waste management system, co-designed with local partners, key community members, and a multi-disciplinary team of 16 designers; leveraged active communication skills and design research competencies to develop a multi-faceted, robust solution that could be sustained by community members for years to come.

After being a peer mentee in my first year, I wanted to give other first year students that same kind of insight and friendship at a time that can be pretty intimidating and lonely for a lot of folks. I mentored first-year students transitioning into university for three years, where I was happy to help my mentees with their adjustment to starting out at OCAD University. Sometimes this involved holding one-on-one meetings to review design work, other times it involved showing students the best spots around the City of Toronto; I helped answer any concerns regarding design and school related topics whenever needed.

At the centre of Industrial Design lies the relation between makers, users, and designers. In this program, I defined and applied design processes and methods in all stages of various design projects, used qualitative design research methods and synthesis tools to iteratively design results with and for end users, understood the systems of which my products are a part of in order to elicit and integrate business requirements into my design process, and designed meaningful and satisfying interactions for interactive products, services and systems. The biggest take away from my degree was learning what good design is all about, and it gave me the knowledge and skills to excel as a design thinker, experience strategist, and a UI/UX designer.

My ultimate goal as a designer is to design interventions that genuinely better the lives of others; this is achieved through meticulous research, creative problem solving, and rigorous feedback from the users I am designing for. I want to deeply understand how to create the things I propose as a design intervention in order to produce the best possible outcomes for users. Despite being formally trained in Industrial and Product Design, my training in UI Design had just begun to scratch the surface when the Covid-19 global pandemic hit, which heightened the need for digital solutions. As a result, it was important to me that I be trained in a strictly UI Design focused environment, specifically by folks in the industry that have witnessed and adapted to these changes. From this course I have further developed skills in UI Design Tools such as Figma and InVision in order to enhance my user interface design skills for websites and iOS/Android applications.

As part of my time as a freelance Student Experience Design Researcher, I earned a micro-certificate in Design Elements as a result of my proven competencies in problem definition, user research, synthesis and analysis, ideation, and prototyping. One of eCampusOntario’s major focusses is towards an education system that is flexible, accessible, and future-proof, so it only makes sense that they would recognize their student experience design researchers for the skills they displayed in their roles with a micro-certificate. Micro-certificates enable rapid retraining and augment traditional education; these efforts aim to closer align education and industry by teaching in-demand skills and competencies within a nimble recognition system.

I would be remiss to not talk about my life before pursuing a design education and career as it is what led me to where I am today. Before I started pursuing design, I studied Performing Arts and Musical Theatre. I deeply enjoyed observing, exploring and understanding a character’s emotions and motivations, and loved the spirit of play that comes with performing; I believe these are all fundamental qualities when designing a great user experience and still employ these learnings in my design process today. I eventually fell into doubling as a prop designer for a few shows I was involved with where I deeply enjoyed the “aha” moments of designing objects to meet the needs of a production, so much so that I took a leap of faith and pursued a design education in post-secondary. I have fully transitioned from productions to clients, actors to users, and props to experiences and have no regrets on making this transition into design, but remain thankful to my mentors and peers for all that they taught me during my time in the performing arts.