Human-centered UX design, research, & strategy

About

Chelsea is a Senior UX Designer dedicated to co-creating meaningful, intentional solutions in complex problem spaces through human-centered design. She brings 8+ years of experience collaborating on global, cross-functional teams in B2B SaaS tech. She’s designed products and services for HealthCare.gov, the City of Seattle, Starbucks, The Obama Foundation, and more amazing clients with important missions.

She values working on diverse teams, building culturally responsive and inclusive technology, and mentoring UX designers in tech from non-traditional backgrounds.

Outside of work she’s usually playing with her dog, reading a psychology book, or exploring the vast and beautiful world.

Design Principles

  • A final product experience is a reflection of the people and processes involved during development. Trust is the foundation for effective working relationships. Thus, designers must work to build trust with their cross-functional peers and stakeholders in order to collectively design effective and sustainable experiences.

  • Designers must take care to assess their own biases and assumptions in their work. Co-creation is key: design with users, not just for. Ask yourself: How are my lived experiences different than my user’s? What privilege do I have that may affect how I approach a given design problem? Use research to guide design decisions, and bring an inclusive lens to the research process.

  • Spinning endlessly in cycles of research and discovery can prevent teams from delivering incremental value, thus delaying even minor but necessary improved user experiences. Define “good enough” and design the minimum delightful thing. Ship. Learn.

  • Designers have both a gift and duty to ask good questions, not just at the user-level but at the system-level too. Why are we working on a given initiative? What business outcome are we after, or what unmet user need are we aiming to address? Is a quick round of research needed to validate our assumed solution? Are we solving the right problem in the right way? Can we further refine the requirements? As a designer, be a strategic asset to the team and help ensure we’re moving with intent.

Data reporting homepage re-design

Amex GBT Egencia is a global business travel platform with data reporting capabilities, helping travel managers analyze their team’s travel program performance and monitor key metrics.

This project called for a re-design of the data reporting homepage in order to improve usability and visibility of key data reporting features. The MVP design aligned with brand standards, improved usability, and included new features to address unmet user needs, designed to delight.

Simplifying user permissions

Civis Platform is a single, integrated data platform for data teams complete with data warehousing, ELT & data ingestion capabilities, identity resolution, and more.

This project involved untangling the technically complex product area of user permissions on Civis Platform and resulted in the socializing of the Admin user persona and a simplified front and back-end experience for handling user permissions.

Survey science toolkit discovery

This project involved design discovery for a new product idea leveraging user interviews and competitor analysis, and the providing of discovery findings to the C-suite which informed the company’s overall business strategy.