Resume

Lead Designer (P70)

May 2016–present

Currently, I look after end-to-end journeys and design strategy for Atlassian's DevOps suite of cloud products. These include Jira Software, Bitbucket, Statuspage, and Compass. I work with UI/UX designers, researchers, product managers, marketers, developers, and support staff to ensure Atlassian makes good on our market promises throughout the entire customer lifecycle. I support and grow Atlassian through mentorship and design operations. I conduct user research and customer interviews to keep from working off my assumptions. I measure the impact of our design teams’ experiments, concepts, features, and implementation, including terminology and documentation. I hope to prove that good design brings in more customers and keeps them happy.

I’ve worked for Atlassian for a long time. Here’s a bit of a history of my contributions and responsibilities:

I started as a Senior Content Designer for Jira Service Desk. Embedded in product teams, I delivered features for reporting, customer portal translations, onboarding, and contextual help services. I helped Atlassian develop their style guidance, particularly voice and tone. I helped build our experimentation muscle in early signal testing, including aesthetics testing. I helped architect the content management system that all Atlassian content producers use today.
I worked a few years on the Jira platform. These teams produce features and tooling for 4+ Jira products. I contributed to major refactors of Jira’s core experiences, including Jira’s underlying conceptual model. I led projects in Jira's information architecture, including terminology and tree testing. I drove the creation of a contextual help and release note service for all Atlassian products. Atlassian promoted me to Lead Content Designer (P60 on the Pascal scale). I was the first designer with a content background to achieve this position at Atlassian.
Growing into a lead role, I worked on a team that delivered design projects for a portfolio of product experiences for Atlassian. This included products aimed at development audiences – Jira Software, Bitbucket, Opsgenie, Statuspage, and more. I focused on end-to-end experiences and key journeys to reduce time to value and increase product “stickiness.”
Currently, I lead design for Atlassian's DevOps portfolio. I helped launch a new product called Compass, including early strategic design and product vision work. I help Atlassian establish more efficient ways of working for design teams, and launch features that prove Atlassian is a world leader in DevOps tooling. I work with senior product leadership to help them understand the opportunity and value of design-led product development. I mentor 10+ product and content designers as they build their design careers.

In 2022, Atlassian promoted me to Lead Designer (P70), the first designer with a content background to achieve this distinction at Atlassian. I joined a handful of designers who shape the trajectory and vision of Atlassian’s product landscape. The line between content and product design has blurred significantly in my role as a P70. I now lead design initiatives that span both disciplines and execute in both crafts with relative ease.

Documentation Specialist

Opera Software ASA, Oslo, NOR

Feb. 2013–May 2016

I was part of the language services and documentation team at a software company that makes web browsers and apps, among other things. I was tasked with crafting, proofreading, and editing text for various external and internal customers including help files, FAQs, customer communications, tutorial and training materials, and technical documentation such as changelogs and version histories. I helped with user-interface strings (all those little menus, buttons, warnings and dialogs in the browser) and assisted the marketing department as a copywriter for advertisements and product sheets.

Technical Editor/ Writer I

Raytheon Ktech, Albuquerque, NM, USA

May 2011–Jan. 2013

I administered a corporate requirements database [for how to legally distribute work in the nuclear weapons complex. Yikes!], troubleshot complex collaborative websites, wrote and edited all sorts of documents, produced online content for various engineering customers, designed and developed organizational and process graphics, proofread and adapted technical manuals for national laboratories, consulted and assessed requirements system architecture, and worked with environmental safety and health. Fun fact: Did you know that the word 'Caution' implies that you could be injured, and the word 'Warning' implies that you could die?