Level 11 Technology

Building Level 11 Technology, an Apprenticeship Agency. The agency will hire early-career digital technologists and pay them to get their first year of real world experience in a ‘teaching hospital’ format. Knowledge workers, like journeyman-level skilled tradespeople, need guidance, supervision and mentorship for their first year to gain the industry-recognized and valued experience needed to be effective employees.

Founder

The Maigen Thomas Experience

• Provide UX consulting and design services to small businesses and local government agencies, with a focus on usability, inclusive design and accessibility recommendations to align with Section 508 requirements and WCAG 2.0.
• Deliver hands-on usability and accessibility workshops at conferences and community events. 
• Manage multiple concurrent projects in various stages of UX research and design, supervising teams of 2-7 early-career designers in their rigorous application of best practices and methods while they gain real-world experience.
• Worked with small to mid-size companies to develop organizational UX maturity and create UX strategy.

Principal UX Consultant

Hireology

• Developed custom gamification strategy for mobile app to drive behavioral modification in core user group 
• Reducing median time to hire by 50% YoY across all major verticals
• Achieved conversion rate of 40% with new features

Sr. UX Designer

UC Berkeley Extension

• Deliver a high-energy, engaging student experience teaching a 24-week, 930+ hour immersive boot camp with a multidisciplinary approach to user experience design, user research, design thinking, product development, usability, accessibility and inclusive design practices. 
• Lead a team of TAs, career advisors and student engagement staff in providing support, mentorship and a competitive edge to 30+ students in each cohort.
• Provide mentorship, support and training to new instructors and TAs.
• Represent instructional staff and curriculum, and provide an in-depth, day-in-the-life overview of the bootcamp learning experience on quarterly marketing webinars delivering intro workshops that present the UX/UI bootcamp opportunity to 100’s of prospective students.

Instructor, UX/UI Bootcamp

Led the curriculum team in designing and developing blended UX/UI courses, ensuring high-quality course materials are created, and courses fulfill their objectives while providing a quality student experience.

• Research, write and develop multimodal curriculum for a skills-based, blended learning bootcamp product preparing students for high-growth careers in the UX and tech industries.
• Develop detailed lesson plans, grading rubrics and practical, hands-on learning experiences and activities based on real-world methods and industry best practices with a focus on inclusive design and designing for accessibility. 
• Collaborate with teams from Instructional Design, Graphic Design, Editorial and QA to provide subject matter expertise and contextual knowledge to integrate learning development.
• Evangelize UX across all business bootcamps, providing learning materials and support to teams incorporating design thinking and user research methods into curriculum.
• Deliver continuous integration of content updates to existing (legacy) curriculum during concurrent pilot testing of blended curriculum in multiple markets.

Lead Learning Innovation Analyst - UX/UI Bootcamps

Research and write curriculum, create and test activities, worksheets, design challenges and learning assessments.

UX/UI Bootcamp Curriculum Designer 

Syntellis Performance Solutions

• Provided UX research, design and testing as a shared service across multiple agile teams for six flagship products in the enterprise healthcare management space: Capital Planning, Capital Tracking, Purchasing, Contract Management, Rolling Forecasts and Treasury Cash Management.
• Developed user flow maps, conducted usability and accessibility testing, redefined and simplified complex workflows, rapidly developed wireframes and wireflows for new concepts, contributed to design system documentation, delivered presentations to executive stakeholders.

Lytics

• Conducted competitive analysis research, usability and accessibility assessments to prepare for designing a more efficient self-service onboarding experience to increase adoption and conversion rates while reducing support costs for mid-market customers.

Sr. UX Designer 

Evanta, a Gartner Company

• Combined industry best practices, user research and business requirements to design and implement a best-in-class web experience on Adobe Experience Manager that is optimized for lead capture and conversion, and aligns with parent company brand and experience. 
• Created user journey maps, site/system flows, site architecture diagrams, and interactive prototypes as part of the iterative product design process. 
• Presented design solutions to executive leadership team and other stakeholders, outlining design decisions, and incorporating feedback into an iterative cycle. 
• Led user research, usability validation and acceptance testing to define a modern user experience that enables the business to meet mission critical priorities and deliver a world-class executive product to the Fortune 1000.

Sr. UX/UI Designer

Complí

Compli was purchased by KPA, and my role was among those eliminated.

• Designed intuitive, human-centered user interfaces for enterprise white-label cloud-based flagship compliance and workforce process management product by leveraging design best practices that translate abstract concepts into intuitive and elegant experiences.
• Produced detailed and annotated wireframes, mockups, and interactive prototypes that effectively and efficiently communicated design solutions.
• Streamlined complex user experience flows and improved content design with contextual information to reduce users time-on-task.
• Conducted user research, interviews, and surveys to validate data-driven design decisions.
• Advocated for user needs while balancing development time constraints and web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG).
• Created conceptual look and feel options, building user interface components at an atomic level. 
• Documented design specifications in a detailed design system for development.
• Demonstrated creative approach to problem solving, innovation and issue resolution.
• Evangelized human-computer interaction best practices as part of a multi-disciplinary team.

UX Designer 

Unigo Group

As part coder and part designer, I worked on a hard-working Agile team to define, design and deliver on the company’s product vision. 

• Updated, redesigned and refreshed the UI to align with responsive web design best practices.
• Designed mobile-first for a seamless and efficient user experience, focusing on highest trafficked pages, while adhering to brand guidelines and standards.
• Revamped the review intake process by designing a fun and streamlined experience that combines slick quiz elements with an easy to understand star rating system.
• Transitioned many pages on the site from ASP.NET into C#/Umbraco, enabling the company to rapidly engage users with updated information.
• Designed a complex, personalized experience for primary user groups, developing an exciting and engaging center from which the user starts their journey.
• Developed a new responsive web UI for a blog from a bare framework. 
• Enhanced the user experience for mobile devices on a site receiving over 250,000 unique traffic hits per month.
• Optimized ad delivery and creation of unique content delivery based on user experience and data analysis.
• Increased website performance with mobile enhancements and responsive, optimized image rendering, contributing to 20% performance increase.
• Created detailed Photoshop and Illustrator mockups for non-technical staff to communicate design possibilities.

Front End Developer / UX Designer

I drive meaningful results for business objectives, measure and effectively communicate impact, and facilitate and execute the UX design process from discovery to delivery.

My design process: Understand the problem → Research existing solutions → Brainstorm ideas → Draw → Prototype → Usability Test → Release → Improve → Repeat

"A biased test kept thousands of Black people from getting a kidney transplant. It’s finally changing"

14,000 Black kidney transplant candidates have been moved up in priority on the transplant list after a biased race-correction factor was eliminated.

“At issue is a once widely used test that overestimated how well Black people’s kidneys were functioning, making them look healthier than they really were — all because of an automated formula that calculated results for Black and non-Black patients differently.”

Maigen Thomas

I drive meaningful results for business objectives, measure and effectively communicate impact, manage a team of UX/UI designers and facilitate and execute the UX design process from discovery to delivery.

My design process: Understand the problem → Research existing solutions → Brainstorm ideas → Draw → Prototype → Usability Test → Release → Improve → Repeat.

apnews.com • 6 min read

A biased test kept thousands of Black people from getting a kidney transplant. It's finally changing

Are you a UX Researcher in Washington or Oregon looking to contract on a meaningful project with a great WA-based team? Do you have about 5 years experience? Bloom has a 5 month contract position available to help increase access to behavioral health services. 

If you are outside of WA/OR, we also have contract opportunities conducting research to strengthen supports for foster youth, modernize government procurement processes, and improve disaster recovery services, to name a few. For some of these, you might even work with me ;-) If interested apply here:

boards.greenhouse.io • 2 min read

UX Researcher (5-month contract)

The all-new handcrafted Design Is A Job will bring you joy and sustenance in these times, whether or not you consider yourself a designer. Additional surprises in the package. Only $9!

(Also available as a PDF download and audiobook)

Today I want to gift one "Confident Intros" session to someone who has been on the job market for a while but isn't having luck. 

If the question "So tell us about yourself" makes you queasy, I'd love to support you! 

In just 60 minutes, we can:
𖦹 Uncover what makes you unique!
𖦹 Craft a compelling story that connects with your audience. ✨
𖦹 Start building your confidence in sharing your message.
Give me one hour, and let’s uncover your value proposition and start sharing that message with confidence. (And maybe even some enthusiasm!)

I'd love to gift this to someone who doesn't have the means to work with a coach otherwise. 

Please DM me saying that you're interested and I'll randomly pick a person on Monday! 

Feel free to share with your job huntin' buds. 

More details in the comments!

Sometimes I hear that I should write a book about my life. As enticing as that sounds, it wouldn't do justice to the amazing experiences I've had. Here's a fun #ThrowbackThursday photo that no one has ever seen before. 

It's from sometime in 2009 or 2010, I believe, with Jake Adelstein and Mochizuki-san, his ex-Yakuza-boss bodyguard and driver. If you've watched the show #TokyoVice, you might understand why I was asked not to share the photo online.  

Back when Twitter was still a little ecosystem of interesting people, I reached out to the author of my most-favorite recent book, which was given to me by a first-class passenger on a flight to Georgetown, Guyana. Tokyo Vice was (and continues to be!) an amazing read. So amazing, in fact, that on Twitter I "slid into his DMs" ... no, I just said hello to Jake and introduced myself. He happened to be in New York, I happened to live in New York, and he invited me to join him at a talk and then out to dinner. 

The rest of that story is for another time, but the trip to Tokyo was fun. I sure do miss those flight benefits. Free first class lie-flat beds from LAX-NRT is the way to go.

"You cannot remove struggle from life, but you can improve your ability to handle challenge."

Saw this from James Clear and really appreciated the reminder to stay tenacious.

First, who doesn’t love a giveaway? Second, the spinning rainbows got me 😂

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