Hey, I'm Nick, a UX designer crafting strategy and interfaces for products and services remotely from Chicago.

Projects

Blue Cross Blue Shield

Implementing an application design system, instituting new DesignOps practices and training a design team of 30+, and designing a completely new product experience to bring 30+ years of legacy products under a single modernized platform.

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BenchPrep

Transforming a high-touch service experience into a powerful SaaS suite and developing new education features to grow and scale a leading provider of B2B and B2C learning experiences.

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Hyatt

Creating a new modular, responsive design for Hyatt hotel websites to support visitors across the hospitality journey for each of Hyatt's 12+ brands and 700+ global properties.

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Clarix Imaging

Product design for a startup medical imaging company providing innovative, embedded UIs within the operating room.

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GE Healthcare

Crafting new tools for clinicians to quickly scan patient history and access images and documents from the EHR.

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experience

GitLab
Senior Product Designer
Apr 2022 — present
  • Lead product design for all product feature areas related to the Project Management feature group
  • Design, validate, and review implementation of workflows from minor UI tweaks through major product changes
  • Work alongside product management and UX research to continuously understand value in our product area and ways to improve the product to increase value to users and drive growth and retention
  • Collaborate with engineering to communicate design decisions, consider tradeoffs, and review work as it's built, as well as contributing frontend code myself
Fuzzy Math
Director, UX Lead
Feb 2021 — Mar 2022
UX Design Lead
Sept 2015 — Feb 2021
UX Designer
Mar 2011 — Sept 2015
  • Lead project teams for client engagements across industries, both practicing design and guiding designers within the team to produce work that furthers project goals
  • Lead internal DesignOps, codifying existing best practices and supporting designers in exploring and implementing new approaches
  • Helped build design team from 1 to 13+, including hiring as well as developing internal initiatives to support team scaling and foster designer growth
  • Conducted quantitative and qualitative research, defined information architecture, and designed products for the web, mobile, and embedded interfaces
  • Notable clients include Hyatt, Allstate, SAP Fieldglass, GE Healthcare, Clearcover, Chicago Architecture Foundation, TaxSlayer, and SRAM 
    ‍(Linked clients open case studies on fuzzymath.com)

Design Focus

My design work is interdisciplinary, with a focus on research, strategy, and user workflows, in particular for complex interactive products.
‍
I have experience leading teams of designers with different focuses — while working alongside stakeholders to ensure business alignment — and utilize my technology background to guide collaboration with engineering.

Sliced Bread
UX Designer
Oct 2010 — Mar 2011
University of Missouri
School of Medicine
Programmer Analyst
Jun 2008 — Jul 2009
Columbia Missourian
Web Developer
Aug 2006 — Jun 2007

Education

MS, Human-Computer Interaction
Carnegie Mellon University
BJ, Journalism
BS, Information Technology
University of Missouri-Columbia
© Nick Leonard. Built in webflow.
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