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About Me

Hi! I’m Melissa, and have spent over the last decade launching successful products with my product and UX design skills. Since designers come in many flavors, here’s a little about me! People have described my working style as collaborative, empathetic, and business-minded. My “superpowers” include:

  • Solving complex problems with strategic, data-driven systems thinking
  • Driving alignment while being inclusive of diverse interdisciplinary perspectives
  • Balancing vision, craft, and pragmatism to deliver large-scale impact and guide others

For as long as I can remember, I have been passionate about design, psychology, and technology. So when I learned about human-computer interaction (HCI) while studying Cognitive Science at UC San Diego, I immediately dove in and helped teach a human-centered design course, interned for industry leaders, and published two HCI papers.

Since then, I have solved problems for big tech (ex-Meta), startups, labs, agencies, and Fortune 500 companies across numerous industries. My work has been featured on Awwwards, TIME, Ad Week, Bloomberg Business, Digiday, Mac Rumors, Fast Company, and various conferences. I have also applied my user-centered design philosophy to excel in leadership roles and foster empathy, communication, and collaboration across teams.

My philosophy is that every project has unique needs, and I recommend processes, generate solutions, and format deliverables to best serve each stakeholder based on their budget, timeline, industry, access to users, team structure, and project management framework.

Clients

Amazon
Anthem
Behr Paint
Cornerstone
Dell
Eastman Music Company
Focus Features
Foster Farms
FritoLay
GoDaddy
Hewlett Packard
Meta
Microsoft
NASA
Philosophy
Taco Bell
Target
T-Mobile
Volkswagen
Wall Street Journal

Testimonials

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I really, really enjoyed the time I spent working with Melissa. It’s very rare to find UX designers that have a strong affinity for conducting user research as well as the visual side of UX and Interaction Design. She demonstrated ability to lead projects and worked effortlessly with clients, developers, visual designers, and other UX designers. You would be crazy to pass up on her, because she is truly unique. Would I want the opportunity to work with her again? Absolutely.

Edric Lapniramai, UX Lead at BLITZ
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Melissa is a go-getter with a heart. She stays on target and gets the job done, taking initiative and learning whatever skills are required. All in a way that leaves everyone gladdened by the interaction. I have no doubt that Melissa can help any organization achieve great accomplishments.

Eric Norman, CEO at Cinder
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Melissa is a brilliant research partner who lends a pragmatic, and practiced, perspective to any user experience project in a range of topics from virtual reality to cultural heritage. In addition, she expresses a consistently positive and cooperative attitude to all of her peers, making the workplace a more pleasant and productive environment for everyone. I have every certainty that Melissa would be a great boon to any company that she joins.

James Darling, Researcher at Qualcomm Institute