Design Development
Resume:
Paweena Prachanronarong
Contact Brooklyn, NY
www.paweenap.com
********@*****.***
Dear Product Owner,
My name is Paweena Prachanronarong and I recently graduated from the MFA Design and Technology program at Parsons The New School for Design. I was immediately drawn to the UX Designer position because I am very interested in working within the edTech space. My grandfather, who was a principal at an engineering school in Thailand, always taught us that education is the most important tool in your life. I grew up with that belief, and I am now raising my 7-year-old son with the same belief.
My thesis, entitled Blockuits, was an exploration in construction sets for children of the 21st century. The goal of the product was to foster creativity and artistic expression, while introducing basic principles of magnetism and circuitry in a social/museum/informal learning space.
Blockuits was demonstrated at the international Interaction Design and Children conference in June and at Maker Faire in September. My thesis paper was published in the IDC ‘13 Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, pages 519 - 592. Feel free to download this article to review my writing.
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2485855&dl=ACM&coll=DL
Beyond education, I am also experienced in the product development lifecycle, from conceptualization to implementation. I spent much of last summer in Guatemala working with indigenous communities as a fellow for Open Society Foundations.While there, I led a group of students to develop a mobile medical inventory platform to aid remote populations across
the country. This product was developed from a user-centered design approach. I interviewed many community members in order to understand what they needed. I also conducted field tests in rural Guatemala and used feedback from the tests to improve and build upon the system.
This was a very challenging project because the problems the communities wanted me to solve were great – from lack of food, lack of nutrition, lack of medicine and health equipment, lack of doctors, lack of transportation, too much garbage,etc. Pretty much everything needed solving. There were many barriers I had to design for including language barriers
(although Spanish is a national language, Guatemala has 27 recognized Mayan languages), illiteracy, poverty (no designs for smartphones there), geographical barriers (terrible public transportation), etc. A problem this complex could only be solved with an appreciation and understanding of simplicity.
The single most rewarding moment of that fellowship was when the community leaders used the SMS platform for the first time and immediately saw their reports displayed on a map. This was the moment they realized that they didn’t need to ride a chicken bus for 9 hours to hand-deliver paper reports. They saw, in that moment, the positive impact technology can have on their communities.
These are the moments I strive for as a designer. As a UX Designer within your organization, I will take the complex and simplify it to create enjoyable, intuitive experiences that help people get their most important tool in life – education.
Samples of my work can be seen at http://paweenap.com/. I’d love to meet with you (in person) to learn more about the exciting job opportunity. Please feel free to contact me by email or by phone at 240-***-****.
Best,
Paweena
• interaction design
• experience design
• UX
• innovation
• research
• research-based design
• user-centered design
• design thinking
• ed tech
• toy/game design
• play-based experiences
• design for social good
WORK EXPERIENCE
Part-time Faculty at Parsons the New School for Design
August 2013 – Present
Planning and instruction of coursework for the Creative Computation Lab, a graduate-level foundation course introducing JavaScript, Arduino and openFrameworks.
New York, NY
Ms. Foundation for Women Fellow at Ms. Foundation and PETLab
June 2013 – September 2013
Field research, user experience design and development of tools and products that impact young women’s reproductive justice movement.
Albuquerque, NM and Brooklyn, NY
Public Health Program 2012 Research Fellow at Open Society Foundations and Parsons the New School for Design
May 2012 – January 2013
Ethnographic field research, concept development, interaction design, rapid prototyping, implementation and field-testing of reporting platform using open-source software that strengthen civil society-led advocacy needs around health issues.
Guatemala and New York, NY
Web/Interactive Designer at Delta Dental of California
August 2007 – June 2011
Design and front-end development of websites. Research, concept, visual design and development of web-based games. Rapid prototyping.
San Francisco, CA
Art Director at BCF
September 2006 – August 2007
Concept development and design of ads across various media and contexts including TV, print, packaging, ambient, exhibition and guerrilla.
Clients include: Virginia Tourism Authority, Tetra, Discovery Channel (Dirty Jobs, Meerkat Manor) and Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center.
Virginia Beach, VA
Art Director at Energy BBDO
September 2005 – December 2005
Concept development and design of ads across various media including TV, magazines and newspapers.
Clients include: Orbit Gum, Aleve and LaSalle Bank.
Chicago, IL
EDUCATION
Parsons the New School for Design
2011 – 2013
MFA, Design and Technology
New York, NY
Virginia Commonwealth University
1999 – 2003
BFA, Communication Arts and Design
Richmond, VA
AWARDS AND HONORS
Maker Faire
2013
Selected to exhibit project, Blockuits.
Interaction Design and Children Conference
2013
Selected to demonstrate project, Blockuits.
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
2013
Blockuits: Innovating Building Blocks published in IDC ‘13 Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, pages 519 - 592.
Parsons the New School for Design
2011 – 2013
Recipient, Graduate Dean’s Scholarship
Parsons the New School for Design
2011 – 2013
Recipient, University Scholar’s Award
TECHNOLOGY AND SKILLS
Proficiency in Arduino, HTML/CSS, JavaScript, Processing, ActionScript; complete Adobe CS line and related digital design and development technologies.
Contact this candidate