Hey there!
I'm Vi.

Product Designer | (Former) Front-end developer

My passions lie in creating delightful and engaging user experiences that solve user needs through grounded research and close collaboration with my peers. With over 6 years of experience in desktop and mobile UI design, user research, and design thinking workshop facilitation, I’m a jack of all trades who is always ready to jump in, ask the difficult questions, and champion the best user experience.

View Work

About

Work Experience

Software Developer Intern

May 2017 - July 2017

Bridge2 Solutions

At Bridge2, I improved my abilities to work in an Agile environment and contributed to company projects. Some of my responsibilities include:

Utilizing Spring framework, Spring Boot, Spring Data JPA, and Spring REST Template to create an Android shopping experience. I designed the user interface for the application using Adobe. Illustrator, and developed a majority of the front-end UI using XML
Taking on the role of Scrum Master to plan out project sprints and managing projects via Jira.
Creating wireframes for one of the nation’s top banking companies.
Collaborating in design sprints and creating concept sketches for proposed ideas.

UX/UI Design Intern

May 2016 - August 2016

Anthem Innovation Studio

At the Innovation Studio, I gained experience collaborating in an Agile environment. Some of my contributions include:

Designing screensavers, icons and email newsletters.
Creating wireframes and high-fidelity click-through prototypes for real company projects.
Prototyping user journeys within tight time constraints.

Graphic Design Intern

June 2012 - July 2012

Hodges Ward Elliott

As part of my high school Junior Capstone, I worked at HWE to design retail booklets, business cards, cover letters and logos.

UX Design Intern

June 2018 - August 2018

Verizon Connect

At Verizon Connect (VZC), I worked in a cross-functional agile team to increase user engagement within VZC's Hum product. The final solution was presented to the executive board of VZC. Some of my contributions include:

Creating hi-fidelity clickable prototypes with Sketch.
Developing the frontend in Android using Java and XML.
Conducting user testing using treejack and chalkmark.
Multi-tasking between the main internship project with various UI prototyping side projects.

UX Designer

June 2019 - April 2022

Verizon Connect

Worked in cross-functional agile teams across various projects to design end-to-end experiences on desktop, mobile and hardware devices. My responsibilities included defining problems via customer journey maps, service blueprints and various workshops, creating low to high-fidelity wireframes and prototypes using Figma, Sketch and InVision, and scripting/conducting user testing using usertesting.com. Some methods I used include surveys, and moderated/unmoderated interviews. Some of my achievements include:

Launching an in-house safety solution that saved the company $2 million dollars.
Creating a KYC experience that increased user participation from 1% to 44% and decreased the failure rate from 18% to 14%.
Building out two separate design systems based on Apple’s HIG and Google’s Material Design with responsive components, icons, typography and colors via Figma and Sketch.
Leading the exploration and refinement of two major initiatives that will be major revenue generators.

Senior UX Designer

April 2022 - Present

Hitachi Solutions

Consulted product discovery workshops, AI strategy, UI design and/or usability testing for 11 corporations, with a focus in manufacturing, financial, and medical industries. Some of my achievements include:

Defining the product strategy, UI design, interaction design and user testing plan for 3 AI-powered apps, two of which were vibe coded using Figma Make to demonstrate complex interactions like drag-and-drop task assignments, filtering and document comparisons.
Leading the design for a major manufacturing company’s customer portal overhaul, redesigning over 36 features and conducting over 15 moderated testing sessions to improve the System Usability Score of key features by 34%.
Creating over 100 backlog items across various projects, crafting user stories, acceptance criteria and tasks through cross-functional collaboration to ensure feasibility with engineering frameworks and alignment with business goals.
Spearheading the evolution of the team’s in-house design system to include design tokens, responsive design, etc.
Introducing new design team initiatives like weekly Figma tutorials, and lead wider “Advisory” practice-wide process improvements, employee engagement and retention strategies.

Skills

Design

Figma

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Figma Make

Sketch

InVision

Illustrator

Development

Javascript

HTML

CSS

Java

React

Python

Other

User Testing

In-depth Interviews

Workshop Facilitation

Illustrations

Hand Sketching

Office Suite

Education

Fall 2017 - Spring 2019

Master of Science in Digital Media

Georgia Institute of Technology | Atlanta, GA

Graduated highest honors in Georgia Tech's BS/MS program for Computational Media and Digital Media, which allowed me to graduate in five years with both my Bachelor's and Master's degree.