Carol Bales User Experience Strategist & Designer |
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Creating compelling interactive experiences. |
Resume & Experience Project Portfolio Academic Work Home |
Professional Goals
Help companies develop best-in-class Web and mobile applications leveraging user experience methods. Craft actionable strategies for research design and development to satisfy business goals and delight customers. Lead UX teams in research, analysis, design and prototyping. Help companies extend their brands and craft experiences in a cross-media environment. Qualifications
Leadership: Manager of a services group producing web applications and executive presentations. Project Manager and Interactive Producer supporting design and development of interactive applications for the health, telecommunications, utility and media sectors. Lead Interaction Designer of brand-essential e-commerce applications and Web sites for multiple sectors including transportation, hospitality, manufacturing and consumer packaged goods sectors. Educator: Member of the Web Design & Interactive Media department at the Art Institute of Atlanta, focusing upon teaching user experience design best practices. Research: User research and usability testing in academic and business environments. Defining research needs, conducting research, analyzing findings and compiling recommendations. Design: Fluent in definition of requirements and constraints and designing to those constraints. Skilled at facilitating design activities including brainstorming, card-sorting, cluster analysis, modeling, wireframes, interaction flows, prototyping and evaluation. Documentation: Project documentation includes proposals, estimates, timelines, requirements definition. Research documents include test protocols, research findings, task flows and personas. Design documents include wireframes, interactive flows, site maps and prototypes. ExperienceUser Experience Professional – Consultant1997 – present The User Experience Professional leads activities to design user friendly Web and mobile applications. Interaction design activities can include heuristic evaluation, requirements gathering, persona development, flow charts and wireframes, prototypes and usability testing. Highlights Brookdale Senior LivingUser experience design and usability testing of a prototype for a proposed sales tool to assist people searching for a senior living solution. InCommUser experience design of Web and mobile functionality for management of reloadable Visa cards. FiservResponsible for designing user interfaces for call center and bill pay applications. Developed a growth strategy for using UX methods to research, measure and design better applications, improving the quality of the user experience through enhanced usability and visual design. Introduced methods of user research and analysis to establish enhancements and measure success. iCare The iCare call center application was redesigned in order to improve usability. We performed task-based design to ensure that key information can be located within three clicks, and in most cases, two. Each interaction flow was assessed and designed for excellent performance and readability. User feedback confirms it is a vast improvement on the prior version. Cartoon Network Fusion Fall Performed user experience design for online account creation and management functions, and made usability enhancements to the in-game user interface controls. www.fusionfall.com InterContinental Hotels Group Refined map search features and redesigned individual hotel pages for this ecommerce Web site representing Intercontinental Hotels and Holiday Inn. We performed incremental enhancements designed to increase conversion revenue. www.ichotelsgroup.com Harrah’s (IBM Interactive Studios) The ecommerce Web site was redesigned to provide single interface for all Harrah’s properties, reservation capabilities, and rewards program account access. Lead an information design team of three to detail wireframes and create content management templates. The site was designated one of the “Top 10 Most Innovative Web Sites in Nevada” by the Internet Business Alliance of Nevada. www.harrahs.com (since redesigned) Prudential Financial (IBM Interactive Studios) During a digital branding engagement, our team developed a Web strategy for Prudential Financial. Our team developed a new strategy for the user interface to serve several lines of business, including a unified account access, trading and financial planning features. My contribution lead the design away from a simple categorization of existing lines of business to a establishing a single face to Prudential Financial. www.prufn.com (since redesigned, now www.prudential.com) Art Institute of Atlanta - Web Design and Interactive Media Department
2009 to 2013 As a faculty member of the Web Design and Interactive Media department, I taught courses in user experience design best practices including Web interface design, information architecture, mobile application design, internet marketing, narrative art, and usability.Education
Masters in Human-Computer Interaction, Georgia Institute of Technology Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art, University of Tennessee Publications
“Managing Information in a Creative Environment,” Carol Bales, Ellen Yi-Luen Do, ACM Creativity and Cognition, 2009 Affiliations
ACM, CHIA IXDA, UPA |
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Contact Me carol at silverspringinteractive dot com www.carolbales.com Download my resume LinkedIn Twitter |