JOEL ​BASKIN

EDUCATION

Master of Human-Computer Interaction (MHCI)

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA

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Bachelor of Arts in Physics

Cornell University, Ithaca, NY​

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CORE COMPETENCIES 

• Role Definition and Flexibility  Has worked as a UX dev lead (Isilon), as a UX Architect or Principal (Ericsson, Capital One), as a one-person Design Team supporting several teams of developers (AbbVie, PlayNetwork, zulily, Isilon), and as a hybrid UX Program Manager/Designer (Microsoft, Vertafore); has worked for large, established companies (AbbVie, IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, T-Mobile, Alaska Air) and small or emerging companies (Rapid7, PlayNetwork, Verdiem, INRIX, Ampsight); as an FTE and a contractor. Successful at introducing companies and teams to UX Design best practices and Design Thinking.

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• Full Design Life-Cycle Capabilities - From Empathize and Ideate to Validate and Deliver  Ability to integrate at all phases of the design process;  from User Research, Product Definition, Ideation, Innovation, and Prioritization phases, through Design Validation, Implementation, Usability Testing, and Field Testing, to Delivery, Maintenance and beyond.

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• Design Methodologies  Design Thinking, User-Centered Design (UCD), Lean UX, Agile

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• User Research Methods - Quantitative, Qualitative and Informal  Contextual Inquiry, Ethnographic Research, Workshops, Heuristic Evaluation, Formal and Informal Usability Testing, Personas, User Journey Mapping, Storyboarding

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• Tools  Figma, Sketch, InVision, Abstract, Zeplin, UserTesting, Mural, Miro, CSS, HTML, JavaScript

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• Design Formats  Mobile (iOS, Android), Tablet (iPad, Surface), Desktop, Web Apps, Responsive Design, Gesture UX, Voice UX, Interactive, WYSIWYG, Devices, Angular, React

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PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

ABBVIE (Remote-Contract)

Lead UX Designer

June 2022-June 2024

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One person design team supporting the creation of an inhouse, enterprise procurement intake and process management application. Conducted user research on POC and recommended improvements for a wider rollout of V1. Created a design system within Figma, mocked up implementation-ready UI improvements with extended functionality. Set design schedules and sprint tasks with the Product Owner. Diagnosed UX issues for off-shore development team UX.

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AMAZON Alexa MLX (Hybrid-Contract)

Sr. UX Designer/Program Manager

Feb-May 2022

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Created the first journey maps of the onboarding process of Amazon builder tools and Alexa machine learning tools (Sketch and Bluescape). Discovered and collated existing documentation and processes across multiple groups. Tracked down and charted how Alexa ML tools map to data scientist project life-cycle workflows. Conducted user research that  identified the most frequent scenarios for day-to-day tasks and project-level strategies of Alexa data scientists.

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T-MOBILE  (Remote-Contract)

Sr. UX Designer

Dec 2021-Feb 2022

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Designer for internal T-Mobile customer service application, focusing on application frame, navigation, application-wide features. Special projects as needed on retail applications for iPads and tablets, using UXPIN.

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RAPID7 (Remote-Contract)

Sr. UX Designer

Mar 2021-Aug 2021

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Redesigning the in-product program management features for InsightVM. InsightVM, a leader in its Gartner Magic Quadrant for networked device vulnerability detection and remediation, has been knocked as being difficult to use. My task is to make the Goals and Projects features useful, guiding, and flexible to support and lead users at smaller companies as they mature their remediation processes as well as to adapt and align functionality to the complex organizational structures of large corporations. Using a modified Stanford Design Thinking model.

• Empathize and Define - conducting user research with customers and technical account support, building role and company personas, describing current practices, tasks, and pain points

• Ideate - mining issues databases for suggestions from active users, iterating on storyboards for improved task flows, circling back with users to hear how they want to operate their processes and how our product can help them do that

• Prototype - mapping entity relationships (Goals to subgoals, Goals to Projects and subprojects) to illustrate the user model of what will be delivered, working with Dev to build simplicity and scalability into the user and system models, currently wireframing in Figma using Rapid7’s design system

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ALASKA AIRLINES (Hybrid-Contract)

Lead UX Designer

Jan 2020-Oct 2020

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Defined, updated, combined, and innovated applications within Alaska’s Network Operation Center (NOC). The NOC manages and maintains airplane operations and schedules for the Alaska and Horizon fleets (300+ planes). The new design targets classes of user pain points, including the incomplete display of relevant data, inability to share updates quickly to users across the system, and restrictive task flows requiring fault-intolerant steps. The new design supports, streamlines, and augments user tasks through improved information display and architecture, complete and helpful design of tasks, and incorporating multiple supporting applications and reports into one coordinated and coherent UX.

• Identified ways to improve real-time communications between roles within the NOC. Observed and interviewed users across 11 roles. Mapped communication channels between roles. Traced pain points to root causes, including the incomplete information flow between users working in real-time on the same flight. Proposed both long-term and short-term solutions that were adopted for development.

• Defined user pain points within existing applications and gathered suggestions from users to seed the ideation of potential solutions. Interviewed 35+ users in 25+ sessions, categorized pain paints into major and minor categories, associated user suggestions to relevant categories, and validated both pain points and suggestions with users. 

• Initiated design process and delivered early designs for the development of new state-of-art airline operation software. Delivered map of proposed application and strategy for design and development. Created task flows, wireframes, and mockups in Sketch and Abstract. Designs covered logging in, viewing flight data within a grid and a Gantt chart, receiving and reacting to alerts and notifications, and drilling down into the details of a flight. Reviewed designs with Product Owner and Product team, within the UX Design team, with Airline Operations Management, and users in large and small groups. Tracked work in ADO using Agile methodologies.

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INRIX (Onsite-Contract)

Sr. Product Designer

2019​

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Designer for the first release of the Autonomous Vehicles Road Rules (AVRR) product. AVRR facilitates and structures the input of road rules, like speed limits and right-of-way, by municipalities and transportation authorities for use by autonomous vehicle manufacturers to provide continuous, accurate, authoritative, and up-to-date ground truth of expected road behaviors.

• Identified, documented and structured required and supported road rules for North American and international roadways for ease-of-use and extensibility. The resulting format decreases the need to provide additional development for corner cases in specific jurisdictions

• Used Sketch and InVision to design, mockup, and prototype user flows, mapping interactions, and layouts

• Interviewed transportation professionals and SMEs in state and city government to establish current use patterns, pain points, best practices, and future planning issues

• Posted versions daily to InVision to build transparency and inclusion on the remote team spread between Seattle, Santa Monica, Washington, D.C., and Tel Aviv

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CAPITAL ONE (Onsite-FTE)

Principal UX Designer

2017-2018

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Tackled special projects that defined the UX Design POV for a large multi-disciplinary UX team working on the next generation of consumer FinTech mobile apps (iOS and Android)

• Exposed gaps in features and supporting functionality in order to plot a 6-24 month working roadmap by identifying problem statements from user research, proposing UX solutions, then mapping them to current and needed services and APIs 

• Established the legal and risk compliance effort with stakeholders across the corporation, identified process hotspots and remediations, and educated the team on how to design for compliance for quicker reviews

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MICROSOFT AZURE (Onsite-Contract)

Sr. Product Designer

2017

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Designed features for the Azure Support Console used by internal Azure Customer Service engineers

• Uncovered, assessed, and prioritized feature gaps that were created or carried over when the legacy console application was replaced by conducting user research with senior service technicians

• Designed high-priority features within the UX standards and framework

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ERICSSON/T-MOBILE (Onsite-Contract)

UX Solution Architect

2016-2017

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Responsible for UX for Tier-2 Customer Service app used by T-Mobile engineers and specialists that integrated a dozen function-specific systems (Accounts, Plan Details, Billing, Telephony, Device Management)

• Defined layout and interaction of UX that increased scanability and usability and enabled System Architects to  verify completeness with clients

• Documented UX Design Standards for implementation by offshore development team, which reduced late-cycle churn and decreased the number of change requests

• Took on projects from other teams with immediate needs when ramping up a new designer was unfeasible

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MICROSOFT - Microsoft Store (Onsite-Contract)

Sr. UX Designer

2015-2016

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Designed a full-featured industrial website builder and CMS, including WYSIWYG editing, templates, asset management, localization, and accessibility to be used to create, manage, and unify Microsoft web properties

• Identified best-of-breed features and interactions as well as functionality gaps in commercial web-builders in order to shorten the design phase and maximize the usability and feature set of the product 

• Delivered mockups and detailed interaction storyboards in Balsamiq (40 mockups per task flow)

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PLAYNETWORK (Onsite-FTE)

Sr. UX/Interaction Designer

2013-2015

View case study

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Performed all UX tasks, from initial task analysis and discovery, logical modeling for data and user interaction flows, wireframing in Balsamiq and Axure, as well as reviewing designs with stakeholders and C-level. 

• Ended a wasteful build-and-modify cycle by redesigning and prototyping an iPad app to provision devices

• Formed solution trees, created task flows, wireframed and prototyped a device management and diagnostic dashboard to improve quality of service and decrease time-on-task for Customer Service

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ZULILY (Onsite-FTE)

Sr. UX Designer

2012-2013

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Designed new features and larger fixes for an internal app that collected and prepared data for an extremely large and fast-paced daily-deal site. Emphasis on scale, ease of use, speed, and accuracy.

• Key project replaced an error-prone manual process with automated ingestion of spreadsheets, matching products to existing items, and enabling Merchandising staff to edit and augment product lists as needed

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MICROSOFT RESEARCH - Robotics (Onsite-Contract)

Sr. Product Designer

2010-2011

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Bridged gap between design team and developers on autonomous communications robot

• Designed and tested interactions across Voice UX, Gesture, Device and Graphical UX

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ISILON SYSTEMS/DELL (Onsite-FTE)

UX Engineering Manager, Sr. UX Designer

2007-2009

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Led team that transformed a product created by multiple teams over several years into a coherent UX

• Reduced bug count by over 65% and closed all bugs above Minor severity

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MICROSOFT - Security Business Unit (Onsite-FTE)

UX Program Manager

2004-2007

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Windows Firewall and Forefront Client Security Console

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IBM Lotus Notes Client (Onsite-FTE)

UX Designer

1999-2003

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For Mail, Calendar, and To Do

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PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES AND PUBLICATIONS

Puget Sound SIGCHI

President

Programming Chair

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Publications

Comparison of GOMS Analysis Methods

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In "Proceedings of ACM SIGCHI 1998 Conference"

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=286742&coll=portal&dl=ACM

23 Citations and over 650 downloads

“Although members of the same family of techniques, the Keystroke Level Model and CPM-GOMS often predict different execution times for the same task. Our data suggest that KLM describes error-free performance of a skilled user with little practice on a particular task whereas CPM-GOMS describes error-free performance after extensive practice.”