Professional experience

UX Lead and Product Designer

May 2023 – Present
4Subsea
Asker, Norway

I am responsible for all aspects of UX for our digital solutions platform, including the consistency of the products within it and for the design of some of those products themselves.

My daily work includes design activities from component-level to platform, as well as managing the competing demands of user needs, business objectives, and development constraints. Weekly and monthly tasks involve working with different teams on user research and working on strategy with product owners.

My time here has seen the adoption and refinement of the company’s first design system, a redesign of our digital platform focused on better usability, and an increase in user research across teams. Those efforts, combined with other team initiatives, have led to a rising number of users.

 

My work here falls covers a number of roles, all relating to and a result of the company's digital transformation.

  • UX evangelism: Much of my early efforts involved the evangelization both of UX and of innovation strategies across a company that was becoming newly user-centric.

  • Innovation and strategy: I participated in the development of the company-wide innovation process, and I have helped guide many teams through it. My focus was on the early stages, where I helped teams with new ideas to structure, refine, visualize, and evaluate what they had in mind.

  • Data visualization: I became a company resource for teams in need of presenting complex data and concepts. For teams exploring new opportunities arising from advances in data collection, I created or improved information dashboards based on principles of cognitive psychology and design best practices. (I did this either directly in PowerBI or in some design program, depending on the project).
    For teams wanting to present complex concepts and information in a manner more more easily accessible to general audiences, I created infographics, visuals, and presentations that distilled and illustrated those concepts. That work was also based both on an understanding of how people think and on visualization best practices.

  • UX research and design: I helped various teams in different stages of the UX process. For teams doing early exploration of an idea (e.g., innovation projects), I helped with strategizing, user research, rapid prototyping, and concept testing. For teams in middle and later stages (e.g., released products, intranet redesign), the work involved more in the way of architecture and UI design. I also participated in revising the company's design system.

UX Lead

Sept 2019 – Apr 2023
DNVGL
Oslo, Norway

 

My work here involves UX research and design on a variety of digital support tools for precision farming, with media for those tools including augmented reality devices (such as the Microsoft Hololens), mobile apps, websites, and chatbots. For most of those tools, I use Axure to create interactive prototypes for both discussion and testing.

As the company undergoes a digital transformation, my role has also partially evolved into that of a UX evangelist, in which I push for the development of an experience design strategy that involves (1) aligning user needs and business goals, (2) innovating through experimentation, and (3) setting specific, observable metrics to determine both value and progress on everything we do.

Experience Designer

Aug 2016 – Aug 2019
Yara International
Oslo, Norway

 

Experimentation Lead

May 2015 – June 2016
Nordea Bank AB
Oslo, Norway

Performed qualitative and quantitative marketing and UX research. Designed fast and frugal experiments within an agile environment to assess the market potential of new product concepts (and alternatives) before the products are developed or released. Worked with product owners to refine and specify both the questions they need to answer and the success criteria. Collected, analyzed, and summarized data.

Developed and evaluated strategies to promote and improve the bank’s internal culture of innovation, with a focus on methods to support knowledge sharing, idea exchange, and inter-departmental collaboration. That involved establishing specific goals and success criteria.

Provided UX consulting for different teams when needed.

Worked with the Norwegian (and Scandinavian) startup ecosystem to expose Nordea to external innovation activities, and to provide startups with mentoring and a potential product testbed.

 

HCI Research Scientist

Feb 2008 – April 2015
SINTEF ICT
Oslo, Norway

Responsibilities ranged from business development to HCI research, with time for design (both UX and UI) in between.

Led the establishment of a new research area in SINTEF: "decision support in complex environments".

Brought in two major, EU-funded projects focused on decision support and distributed collaboration in crisis management. Laid the UI design foundations for one and led the UI design effort for the other. Both involved user research to determine user requirements, as well as collaboration and coordination within multi-company teams to ensure implementation of the highest priority requirements.

Led the successful proposal effort for SINTEF's role in the EU's SESAR programme, which will develop Europe's next-generation air traffic management system.

Analyzed the uses and users of various social media tools, including the specific use of Twitter and Facebook in crisis situations, and the general use of digital photosharing and instant messaging tools in everyday situations.

 

UX Consultant

Oct 2012 – Dec 2013
Threadbare Games
San Francisco, CA

Contributed to the UX design of mobile games in this agile development studio.

Produced UI wireframes and mockups for iPad games, using Google Docs as a design tool because of its collaborative features.

Prioritized UX requirements. Continually compromised with developers to ensure that the critical requirements got on the development schedule.

Incorporated findings from the research literature on “fun” into game designs.

 

Senior Usability Engineer

Nov 2005 – Jan 2008
Oracle Corp.
Redwood Shores, CA

Conducted monthly usability tests on enterprise software, focusing on smaller, fast, iterative studies mixed with the occasional larger summative test.

Recommended and designed solutions to identified usability issues. Collaborated with developers and product managers to identify which design solutions to pursue, balancing benefit to users against available development resources.

Performed task analyses on subject matter experts to derive user requirements for enterprise software.

Designed widgets to solve usability issues in different products; one was patented, another has a patent pending, and a third was shared across the organization for use in other products.

 

Human-Systems Engineer

July 2003 – Aug 2005
CHI Systems Inc.
Orlando, FL, USA

Designed UIs for proposed military systems for distributed collaboration, distributed training, and decision support. Work involved performing cognitive task analyses on military specialists; observing both large- and small-scale training exercises; and building workflows of the processes, interactions, and actors involved in a given activity.

Co-led multi-company projects examining the use of videogames in military training, focusing on (1) evaluations of the training effectiveness of such games, and (2) the development of training requirements that the games must satisfy. Work was based partly on task analyses of military personnel.

 

Internships

Naval Research Intern
Space and Naval Warfare
Systems Command
May 2002 – July 2002
San Diego, CA, USA

Human-Factors Intern
SBC Laboratories
(telecommunications)
May 2000 – Dec 2000
Austin, TX, USA

Human-Factors Intern
Air Force Office of
Scientific Research
June 1998 – Aug 1998
San Antonio, TX, USA

 

Education and accomplishments

Education

Doctor of Philosophy
Cognitive Psychology
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX
August 2003

Master of Science
Cognitive Psychology
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR
December 1998

Bachelor of Arts
Psychology
Purdue University
West Lafayette, IN
May 1992

 

Awards

NASA Graduate Student Researchers Program Fellowship
Marshall Space Flight Center
August 2002 – August 2003

Air Force Office of Scientific Research Graduate Fellowship Program
Brooks Air Force Base
June 1998 – August 1998

 

Patents

A Graphical Tool for Defining a Set of Ranges
U.S. Patent Application 20080120565
Filed 2008-05-22

Navigational Tools for Large Trees
U.S. Patent 7,979,808
Published 2011-07-12