Curtis Christman

ac7bzj@r.postjobfree.com

425-***-****

SUMMARY

Award Winning User Experience Architect, Designer, Researcher

Avanade Group Manager/Creative Lead providing creative direction for presales and sales materials for 12 market units with multiple offerings per unit. Interview and present to clients. Direct offshore design teams. Provide IA and UX for sites and applications. Media includes video, presentation decks, applications, brochures, leave behinds, and other messaging framework deliverables. Coverage includes intranet, internet, social, enterprise, mobility, and traditional. Microsoft Gold Star recipient for driving increase efficiencies through leadership, organization and technology. Developed and managed UX strategy for 3 organizations (11 teams). Broadened UX reach across disciplines by improving prototyping and user research ideas & tools. Increased user satisfaction and organizational efficiency through standardizing best practices and pattern re-use. Mentored UX designers and researchers. Patented Business Process and analytics design.

Lead clients on process and direction

Direct user focused design teams, both visual and experience

Manage User Centered Design broad level strategies

Create code-less rapid prototype tools

Innovate/design Enterprise Experience Framework

Create user domain architecture

Present to Customer, Business, & UX forums

Design scenarios, prototypes, solutions

Lead team & customers in UCD/HCI processes

Design style guides, interaction guides (UI functionality guides)

Mentor UX designers, interaction designers, managers, researchers, business analysts

Fluent in Adobe Creative Suite, Axure, InVision, XD

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Avanade 2013 - Present

Group Manager, Creative Lead

Interview/bring internal executive clients along on design direction, storytelling, and overall feel for sales materials.

Influence brand direction. Drive illustration to align with new company wide brand direction. Influence brand director on sales material integration with new brand design.

Negotiate change to integrate marketing needs into sales material look and feel.

Direct design team of 10 for presales and sales including presentations, video, campaign materials, and UX.

Define UX strategy through User Centered Design methods.

Lead UX project direction. Create Scenarios, information architecture, and wireframes. Direct UX offshore development centers on solutions. Present UX direction to executive staff. Present UX in customer/user design & feedback sessions. Drive UX process into scalable lean environment.

Vertafore 2010 - 2013

Sr. UX Designer

Sr. UX Designer on V1 product development. Work with VP’s of Development, VP of Product Management, VP of Product Sales, director of Product management. Product Managers and Owners, Development team and QA team to produce an Enterprise ready offering for high end commercial & personal lines insurance submissions.

Integrated SASS app with existing desktop solution, integrated user/customer feedback as scenario driven process into an agile implementation process.

Work with a contracted researcher for onsite research and design/product reviews. Developed information and flow structures that fit users needs and match user mental models, resulting in a more intuitive application.

Working with 15-20 developers, 4-5 managers and a central UX team.

Driving both the VP of Developments vision and the Product Manager’s agenda on a complex product for million dollar & up insurance policies.

Hosted meetings to integrate both UX and documentation into an agile process across product teams.

Lead scenario creation and use classes for BA’s, UX Designers/Researchers, PM’s and PO’s, and Dev/Test disciplines. Updating content for each team discipline for specific needs including how to work these into planning and scrum cycles.

Lead creation of a UI pattern library.

Lead creation of a UI Guideline

BluWater Consulting /Sogetti Consulting 2009 - 2010

Senior UX Designer

Create/Lead user experience for administrative interfaces for a global web based emergency response platform. Provided design leadership from interaction vision to completion through developing Information structure and flow, site maps, scenario integration, interface patterns and visuals.

Created rebrand, interaction, and layout for Microsoft Marketing and Workflow of Ad Center Campaigns

Co-authored proposal for Ceridian Health Platform, the flagship product for a company of 8000 employees.

Designed & programmed an XML based, interactive Hero-Graphic for the home pages of a chain of hospitals and health services.

Microsoft 2008 - 2009

UX Strategy, Architecture, Design & Research

Senior User Experience Designer/Researcher, Microsoft Business Group Engineering

Introduced and led design strategy for multi-department MSIT team.

Provided leadership through increasing efficiencies on product life cycle development, user knowledge repository, scenario creation, rapid prototyping, heuristic reviews, and user validation.

Created UX strategy of division-wide global communication portal.

Led leadership, management, & engineering teams on developing UCD behavior models and prototypes for customer facing products.

Provided consultation across solution delivery teams on design improvements to current products.

Developed global team portal, increasing team organization and communication efficiency.

Introduced first UX Strategic Framework to business organization through key presentations.

Microsoft 2007 - 2008

Senior User Experience Designer/Researcher

World Wide Events: Gold Star Award

Directed design strategy across 5 product teams.

Created efficiencies for UI component reuse per user role, saving development costs.

Led scenario creation through developing aggregate scenarios across teams, building an overall web of user stories that unified multi-team direction.

Introduced UCD methodologies, scenario focused design, and design framework to 5 product teams, developed an inclusive atmosphere across stakeholders and developers.

Initiated & led UX strategy for Microsoft World Wide Events on Microsoft.com for first Silverlight release.

Developed a common UX architecture across 5 separate teams. Reduced development costs through best practice implementation and re-use of behavior pattern and design solutions.

Integrated marketing & architecture teams into UX strategy as user and customer representatives.

Delivered innovative UX solutions for the global events portal, improving customer satisfaction using scenario based design and customer focus group reviews.

Microsoft Customer Experience 2002 - 2007

Lead User Experience Designer

Oslo, Quadrant, BizTalk, SQL, Commerce Server

Promoted from contributing UX Designer to lead UX Designer/Researcher.

Implemented & improved UCD life cycle methods across a broad product suite using multiple personas.

Interacted with multiple organizations and drove cohesive UX practices across these organizations.

Innovated creation of enterprise UX framework.

Mentored staff in development & use of prototype kits, scenarios, rapid iterative testing & other tools.

Drove team development efficiencies through UCD based UI pattern methods.

Led Business Analyst and Architect persona development through primary & secondary research.

Designed natural language information architecture UI for network and hierarchy rules semantics.

Conducted division wide presentations and education on market and user trends.

Conducted interviews resulting in long term hires.

Microsoft 2000 - 2002

Graphic Designer

Art Director of 3 published books on Commerce Server, Host Integration Server and BizTalk Server.

Integrated Flash and text data sourcing in UI component design, reducing localization costs.

S&T Onsite 1997 - 2000

Lead 3D Animator At Microsoft Research

Modeled & animated human lip-synch for online personalization of video conferencing.

Modeled human musculature for an animation tool set.

Led both 2-D & 3-D art for Microsoft V-Worlds & V-Chat environments.

Directed and produced 3D-chat for Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.

Seattle Art Institute 1999 - 2003

Adjunct Professor – Animation, Storyboarding, Design

Developed curriculum and taught courses in 3D Animation, Modeling, Lighting, Textures, Design, and Storyboarding.

Managed students and evaluations. Created course content & direction.

Olympic College 1996 - 1997

Art History Instructor

Conducted lectures, discussions, developed course direction, managed course content and progress.

Apex Technology - Microsoft 1994 - 1996

Graphics Specialist, Interactive Programmer, Animator

Produced art and programmed control panels for a navy flight simulation training system.

Professor 1987-1992

As a post grad student, developed curriculum and provided instruction and assessment of students in: Color theory, 2D design, Life painting and Drawing, abstract painting and drawing, and media.

EDUCATION

MFA: University of Washington, Visual Art: Teaching Assistantship, “Art in Embassies” award.

Magna Cum Laude

MA: California State University, Sacramento, Visual Art: “All California” CSUS Long Beach exhibition award, Robinson-Witt Fellowship award, Albright invitation for scholarship.

BA: Central Washington University, Visual Art

Other: C++, Networking, ASP.NET, C#, Action Script, HTML, XML/XSLT, CSS, XAML, Precision Questioning, Negotiating Results, Negotiating Yes, Emotional IQ, MS Expression

SOFTWARE EXPERIENCE Adobe Suite, Microsoft Expression, SilverLight, 3DMax, Office, …

PATENTS & AWARDS

Microsoft Gold Star Recipient

CWU Distinguished Alumni

Patent: Business Activity System, 29 claims

Art in Embassies Program, Cote d’Ivoire

California State University Distinguish Artist

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