SAMUEL CUSTER
User Experience Designer – Raleigh, NC – - samcus.co

SUMMARY

A well-rounded UX Designer that passionately provides value through research, design, and development; making products easier to use and more enjoyable for end-users. Identifies and solves new problems in the evolving relationships between people and products. Effectively communicates to designers, developers, and stakeholders within both enterprise and government environments. Delivers user-centered experiences that are useful, usable, and desirable while remaining viable and true to business requirements and branding guidelines.

COMMON ACTIVITIES

Drafting Design Wireframes
Developing Interactive Prototypes / Creating Low & High-Fidelity Mockups
Project Plan Creation
Gathering Stakeholder Requirements / Analytics Evaluations
Front-End Development/Implementation / Specifying Interaction Design
Collaborating with Team Members / Agile SCRUM Methodologies
Conducting Heuristic Evaluations / Creating User Personas
Creating Visual Design Elements / Mapping User Flow Diagrams
Section 508 Accessibility Evaluations / Brand Adherence Evaluations
Visual Regression Testing / Interaction Unit Testing
SEO Accessibility Evaluations
Task Automation Scripting / Markup Validation & Script Linting
Quantitative Analytics Reporting

COMMON TECHNOLOGIES

HTML5, CSS3 / Sass (SCSS), Compass & Bourbon.io
Object Oriented JavaScript / JQuery, Ajax
NodeJS, NPM, GulpJS (Task Runner) / PHP, ExpressJS
SVN Version Control, Git / Atom/WebStrom/Adobe Dreamweaver
Balsamiq Mockups & Sketch 3 / Illustrator, Photoshop, Balsamiq, & Sketch
Microsoft Office 365 / UsabilityHub
JIRA Issue & Project Tracking / WordPress
Google, WebTrends, & Heap Analytics
SQL, MongoDB / QUnit (Unit Testing)
Optimizely, Google Experiments

EXPERIENCE

Consultant@ NETE Solutions
2015 – Present

Improved overall user experience of a suite of government websites and web applicationsthrough visual design, strategic design, and information architecture improvementsthrough heuristic analysis, quantitative & qualitativedata analysis, and requirements gathering through stakeholder meetings.

Increased stakeholder visibility of user engagement behaviors by compiling comprehensive quantitative analytics reports in WebTrends Enterprise Analytics. Suggestions for usability improvements were made based on the findings of these analytical reports.

Facilitated a smooth project approach by incorporating a phased design process. This phased process involved going from concept to code starting with interviews with stakeholders at the director level in the discovery phase, then drafting wireframes and high fidelity mockups in the design phase, front-end and back-end development in the build phase, testing and QA in the test phase, and analytics review and micro-changes/improvements in review phase.

Reduced unintended CSS cascades/leaks by implementing avisual regression system through BackstopJS and componentizing style-sheets based on specificity;implementeda large scale ITCSS meta-framework in SCSS.

Improved team workflows and quality of code by testing and integrating GulpJS task automation through NodeJS. This included Sass compiling, image compression, JavaScript minification, JavaScript concatenation, JavaScript linting, CSS linting, and HTML5 validation.

Helped increase team productivity by meeting daily with colleagues to discuss goals for the day and week, collaborated with colleagues when needed, worked independently on web content change edits and coding and reviewed others’ work & performed quality assurance in an Agile SCRUM environment. Also collaborated effectively with co-workers and project manager by using JIRA software and JIRA Confluence.

Web DesignDevelopment Consultant @ Freelance
2008 – Present

Created positive rapport with clients through consistent communication and providing deliverables by established deadlines. Always made sure the stakeholders were involved by providing a transparent design process. This ensured that my clients were happy with the results and happy to come back for more of my consulting services.

Saved time and money for my clients by designing low fidelity mockups and prototypes in software such as Balsamiq Mockups and Adobe Illustrator. This ensured that visual and interaction decisions were established before the development process.

Provided statistically-driven design suggestions based off of conducting usability A/B split testing and un-moderated testing methods including scroll tracking, mouse-tracking, and heat-mapping. This allowed for me to leverage design decisions when my clients didn’t personally like the designs. I wanted to ensure to my clients that my designs weren’t just my opinion, but that the design decisions were backed by measureable statistics that would align with improving the key performance indicators of my clients’ websites.

Established simple work-flows for project management, customer satisfaction, and file access management. This allowed my clients to view historical designs, comment on deliverables, forward assets to their respective departments, and request changes.

IT Specialist, SharePoint Administrator (Information Architecture) @ Department of Defense
2012 – 2015

Increased department efficiency and customer satisfaction by configuring auto-email responders for the department’s intranet trouble ticket system. This allowed for helpdesk personnel to focus more time on resolving end-user issues, and wasting less time on administrative tasks.

Increased the usability of an enterprise level Microsoft SharePoint Server with over 400 active users by utilizing best practices in Information Architecture, visual design principles, and removing duplicate content found in content audits.

Identified and reported information assurance security violations through information security audits. Gathered reports based off trending violations and requirements from the information owner that were then worked into monthly and semi-annual user training curriculum.

CERTIFICATION

CompTIA Network+
2013 – 2016
Demonstrates knowledge and skills necessary to manage, maintain, troubleshoot, install, operate, and configure basic network infrastructure, describe network topologies, basic design principles, and adhere to wiring standards and use testing tools.

SECURITY CLEARANCE & PUBLIC TRUST

Secret Security Clearance @ Department of Defense
2012 – 2022 (Active)

Moderate Background Investigation @ Department of Health and Human Services
2015 – 2020 (Active)