EAG Advertising & Marketing

‣ Planning, executing, and sharing experience research to drive analytical insights at one of Kansas City's leading marketing advisories and creative agencies.

‣ Leading human-centered design process integration, training staff in design practices, agile principles, and web accessibility, promoting innovation and collaboration.

‣ Managing client support requests, project kickoffs, workshops, stakeholder engagement, Human-Centered Design (HCD) advocacy, and service delivery enhancements.

Director of Research

USAA

‣ My main project was an independent contribution related to replacing the functionality of a Workday App discontinued in Workday 2023 Release 2 (September 9, 2023). 
 
‣ The app was frequently used (accessed over 1.1 million times since the start of 2023) and is used by all ≈ 37,000 USAA employees 2-3 times each year.  
 
‣ Used methods like contextual inquiry, stakeholder interviews, low-fidelity solution design, concept testing, and usability testing.

‣Presented findings to stakeholders and made recommendations for resource allocation prioritization.

Sr. UX Designer —  Workday Optimization Experience Design

Useagility

I previously lead research, strategy, and design at Useagility—where we shaped high-impact technology improvement projects. Our clients brought the challenges and subject matter experts. We brought a fresh perspective and project launch expertise. Together, we'll aligned their business objectives with project goals and organizational appetite for innovation and improvement.

Experience Design (Lead)

‣ Supported the UMB's marketing team thru a year-long discovery, evaluation, and planning process to prepare for a Q4 2023 / Q1 2024 CMS migration.

‣ Conducted card sorts and tree tests to help the team validate existing user frictions with navigation.

‣ Performed 120 hours of usability testing and heuristic evaluation which resulted in immediate revisions to UMB's existing design language system and the creation of a search- and-product-centric engagement strategy.

+ UMB Bank 

‣ Performed month-long research sprints focused on usability testing + mixed method research (including user interviews) to support the work of a client-side UI development manager working to support an e-commerce site with over 400K monthly sessions on StaplesPromo.com.

‣ Collaborated with conversion rate optimization manager to enrich the team understanding of existing analytics and translate those learnings into improved, customer-centric shopping and checkout workflows, which resulted in an increase of the site's conversion rate.

+ Staples

‣ Led efforts to centralize and prioritize customer learning across multiple listening channels (analytics, customer experience, user experience, customer support) to improve IPFS's ability to synthesize and take coordinated action on customer needs and opportunities.

‣ Increased use of UX research in business-case decision-making while helping to build a culture of iterative experimentation that informed product strategy, product road maps, and resource investment.

‣ Completed end-to-end design (discovery to prototype and testing) of two completely new insurance financing products.

+ Imperial Premium Finance

‣ Segmented and performed behavioral research with donors, business leaders, and community members for a three-year technology modernization project aimed at completely redesigning a donor management portal that connects 280K sponsors with their sponsored friends and has helped to distribute over $2 billion in funds to help families overcome the challenges of poverty.

‣ Completed final visual design of high-fidelity prototype in Figma for hand-off to development team.

+ Unbound

‣ Worked with technical project managers to define and document product requirements based on input from stakeholders across the business.

‣ Translated user need statements, storyboards, and workflows into MVPs of cybersecurity reporting dashboards and widgets using a previously established design language system.

+ Blue Lava

‣ Completed on-site mixed-method usability testing of Blockworks and WorkCenter systems including on-site, ergonomic evaluation of software used in 10K retail tax offices.

‣  Made recommendations that resulted in enterprise-level enhancements aimed at creating a 360° view of the client, identifying new service opportunities and improving retail office operational efficiencies.

+ H&R Block

‣ Led research and strategy activities (stakeholder research and contextual inquiry) to help build the business case for additional resources.

‣ Designed templates used in organization-wide deployment of training, and support documentation used by 6K employees to create custom dashboards, reports, workbooks, datasets, and data flows without involving an organization's BI and IT teams.

+ KC Southern Railroad

‣ Served as a third-party arbitrator between Bailey Lauerman and one of their institutional clients in higher education pertaining to website usability, accessibility compliance, content strategy, recruitment, form conversion strategies, and document storage.

+ Bailey Lauerman 

White Elephant XD

Maintained graphic design clients that included the player development office of three NFL teams, two NFL-associated 501c3 organizations, and a Grammy award-winning Jazz artist. Created brand identities and visual design documentation for early-stage businesses, including product package design. Performed 100+ hour learning-validation, customer, and product research consulting for launch and growth phase companies like Startup High Country, MountainDev, physical Product Design for Pushing Excellence, and a company that repurposed mobile escape room games for DEI education. Provided custom KPIs, design sprints, and cultural index measurement tools for organizations committed to quickly accelerating their commitment to workplace change initiatives.

Independent Contractor

William Jewell College

‣ Taught over 100 sections of interdisciplinary communication courses on topics from rhetoric to UX research.

‣ Worked with innovative students conducting research using lean methods, HCD design-thinking, service blueprinting, and guerrilla UX research. 

‣ Participated in thousands of hours of Diversity and Inclusion Faculty Steering Committee and other anti-racism work where we usually unsuccessfully agitated against college administration for better anti-oppressive college programming, core curriculum, student safety and HR policies.

‣ Advised incredible students, research projects, and debaters—successfully hosting dozens of thoughtfully planned anti-oppressive educational events that the administration tried to find reasons to cancel. 

‣ Implemented student-controlled active learning platforms and pedagogies which the administration (admittedly) didn't appreciate as much as any of us would have hoped. 🤣🤷🏻

Professor

Northwest Missouri State University

Public Speaking Professor 

Texas Tech University

Graduate Teaching Instructor 

📫 kyle.dennis@hey.com
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I specialize in listening to users and amplifying their voices, which allows me to present my team with evidence-backed arguments for immediately impactful design improvements that solve complex customer experience and interface challenges.

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