Product /User Experience/User Interface Designer

Brian Heston • UX/UI Designer • • fractalmouse.com/portfolio

Brian Heston

Product /User Experience/User Interface Designer

fractalmouse.com/portfolio• linkedin.com/in/brianheston

I believe that design is the challenge of solving problems - the problems you uncover when you really dig into and understand what your users are trying to accomplish. I recognize that great user-centered design requires taking the whole experience into account.

I make aconnection with my audience by forming the context for every interaction they have. I make this experience delightful by carefully balancing necessary functionality with ease of use. I focus on high-quality and consistency, where the details make the difference.

Throughout my career I have grown well-versed in a wide range of different aspects of design.

• experience designing numerous websites, apps, and games from the ground up
• workingat every level from collaborating on the concept to polishing for launch
• successful at analyzing product requirements and turning them into actionable ideas
• able to understand user needs and will always advocate for the customer
• incredibly detail-oriented, consistent, and organized
• creating sketches, flows, wireframes, mockups, comps, redlines, and prototypes
• communicating and articulating designs and alternatives to stakeholders
• designing a logical model, information architecture, and handling edge cases
• leading design teams and mentoring junior designers
• understanding technical considerations and communicating with engineers

Skills

Roles– UX/UI design, interaction design, information architecture, mobile game design, mobile app design, website design, requirements analysis

Industries –Gaming, entertainment, media, social, mobile devices, marketing, financial, health care, HR, expense management, software development, business intelligence

Tools and Programming – Adobe CS, Sketch, InVision, Framer, Proto.io, Axure, Office, Visio, HTML, CSS (LESS/SASS), JavaScript, C#, XAML, et al. I stay up to date and use what works for the team.

Education

BFA in Design, Minor in Art History, Boston University

Internship at Concise Media Group, London

Work Experience

TUNE2016 - Present

Sr. UX Designer

Currently working closely with the product and engineering teams to define new features and future vision for the HasOffers product. I work on both web and native mobile apps, as well as contribute to our in-house component library and style guide. My work is very data and customer driven. I use analytics data for existing features as well as detailed usage metrics across our wide range of networks to determine patterns. I am also heavily involved in field studies, interviewing, and user testing of prototypes with our customers. I’ve built out a symbol library in Sketch, enabling the design team to quickly iterate on ideas in higher fidelity and increase communication.

Simply Measured2015 - 2016

Sr. Product Designer

Worked on the product team to design the next generation web app. Designed an app to give marketers the complete picture of how their content is performing regarding customer engagement and sales conversions. Evaluated the distinctive needs of visualizationand exploration of data with many dimensions of input parameters and filters. Designed a cohesive navigation and control framework to provide context to the various visualizations the user may explore. Expanded the company into mobile through prototyping of responsive design.

Microsoft(Contract)2014 - 2015

Design Integrator

Brought a high level of polish and consistency to the Groove Music and Movies & TV apps in Windows 10 (desktop and mobile) by diving into the small details. Intimately familiar with the Windows 10 design guidelines for consistent apppresentation and functionality. Bridged the communication gap between design and engineering, identifying potential issues before they arose. Identified numerous consistency and usability issues and collaborated with multiple teams for resolution,to achieve the highest qualitythroughout the product family as a whole.

Microsoft(Contract)2013

UX Designer

Xbox Live – Saved hundreds of Xbox Live admins countless hours of time and frustration by designing a streamlined interface to replace a complicated back-end system for real-time permissions management. Determined the high-priority actions and relevant information users needed to make decisions. Increased accountability and reportability by integrating two systems.

IT – Enabled the corporation-wide rollout of two-factor authentication by designing the site used for registration and profile management. This feature gives employees secure external access to company resources, allowing them to be more productive from any device. This targeted more than 100,000 users andhad to be easy to use to incur minimal support costs. The adoption rate rose quickly and user feedback was very positive. Took on more work than I was hired for, allowing the project to cut resources, and was subsequently brought back for additional features.

Revived a backburner project that enables employees to reset their forgotten passwords, reducing thousands of helpdesk calls a month and drastically cutting associated costs.

Fractalmouse Games2011 - Present

Founder, UX Designer

I started Fractalmouse Games to design great casual games for mobile devices. For Looting I hand-crafted the visuals by researching famous ships and people of the time period. Maintained my detail-oriented focus throughout the process to preserve a high rating in the store, currently at 4.2. To standout from other options in the marketplace, I emphasized distinctive features like two-player online battle, simple registration, Facebook integration, real-time notifications, and superb usability. The game is free-to-play with an in-game purchase option to remove ads.

Designed a cloud service targeting game developers who need a back-end for managing player and game state. Created a simple interface to define their entities and custom game play rules and integrate the service with their game.

EC Wise1999 - 2012

Sr. UX Designer

EC Wise is a software consulting company based in the San Francisco bay area. In my many years at this company I collaborated on a broad spectrum of successful projects, including:

Trialogue – Reduced time to market and increased adoption by designing anew interface that made it ridiculously easy for marketers to define a complex marketing campaign, including filtering their customers and defining multiple in and out touch points. Eliminated the possibility of error-prone configuration with a flowchart metaphor using campaign elements with dynamic connections that ensured logical consistency.

A casino gaming suite – Increased host contact with guests at a casino through the design of a suite of mobile apps and websites. Guests then feel more like a whale and increase time and money spent at the property. The integrated suite includes a mobile app for casino hosts, a mobile app for guest self-service trip information, a gamified website for reward reservation booking, and a touch-based kiosk for events and digital signage.

Singulex – Enabled clinical advisors to focus on their patients by designing a quick and flexible interface for tracking medical history, medications, and exercise. Focused on allowing input of the information that was available and not blocking organic conversation flow or missing information, which would typically happen in face-to-face or phone conversations.

TransCentra– Enabled TransCentra to move away from one-off development efforts by designing the UI for a massive web-based printing and remittance processing system. This platform led to the onboardingof many new clients and quickly recovered costs. Kept the interface intuitive and learnable through my design ofa full-featured library of highly interactive UI components.

Micromega Systems– Exceeded customer expectations of what was possible in a web browser through my new UI design of a popular report building tool. Reduced trial and error and wasted report generation time through the design of a real-time preview.

A private media company – Consolidated large lists of various types of media from disparate sources through a streamlined information architecture and navigation system of a touch-based media explorer and entertainment app.

Business Objects – Facilitated user testing for a major update by designing quick iteration prototypes of advanced data filtering UI options.

Internal – Enabled team collaboration and efficiency through my design of a system to manage our development process and assets, including design documents and prototypes.

Internal – Enabled our consulting company to bill for all of our work with my design of a highly-customized time tracking, approval, reporting,and billing system.

Captura Software1998 - 1999

Software Developer

Enabled our clients to move to the web and save costs by writing 75% of the UI for the new version of our expense management system. Made major design contributions to our custom html framework, creating greater site consistency and increasing team productivity.