About me
I grew up in Wisconsin and have been focused on technology since my family got our first Commodore 64. I spent my teens getting into veganism, environmental and social activism, phreaking, hardcore punk, riding bikes, self sufficiency, and graffiti.
Trouble, with all the ethics a teen can muster.
I went to DePaul University for Geography, dropped out, traveled, dropped in, graduated, and worked as a bike messenger. After realizing that's actually pretty boring I moved on to Trader Joe's clerk, front-end dev (LAMP), systems admin (*NIX), and finally Instructional Design.
Then, in 2009, I discovered UX's nerdy academic cousin, Human-Computer Interaction.
It was love at first sight.
I spent 5 years working full time and getting my MS in HCI (and single parenting, omg) before becoming a UX professional. Since entering the industry I have worked as a UX Researcher, UX Designer, and Interaction Designer at agencies and in-house.
My passion is human-centered design and creating things that make people's daily lives easier, better, and less stressful overall. I am fortunate to work with the talented designers and engineers at MetaLab to build products that ship.
Today I live on the land of the native Arapaho, Cheyenne, Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute), and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ peoples in so-called Denver, Colorado, USA. I spend my time going on walks or bike rides with my daughter, partner, a dog, and a cat. I collect hobbies, bikes, books, loud music, tattoos, and too many bags and backpacks.
What past managers say about me
"Ian is a talented UX professional with a strong interest in making the companies he works for, and the products he works on, better. He’s a voracious reader and whole-system thinker and excels at seeing the big picture.
He has many ideas for how to do things differently and a thirst for sharing his knowledge of multiple design approaches. He works to design solutions that take into account broad user needs and meet business goals, and crafts effective design deliverables that are high-quality, well-supported and effective."
User Experience Manager
ZS Associates
"Working with Ian was a pleasure. Beside being a highly technical and structured interaction designer Ian is great at working with clients and managing and collaborating with teammates. Ian's diverse set of interests such and behavioral economics, psychology, technology, music, and geography makes him well rounded designer that can bring in different perspectives to a problem or solution. Finding a designer who can tackle the full range of interaction design skillsets is getting harder to find, but Ian's experience has given him expertise in systems analysis, user research, synthesis, product definition and validation, IA, UX design, and prototyping."
Director of Experience Strategy & Design
Pandera Labs
Featured
Speaking
- HCI 530, Mobile Design, DePaul University
- HCI 522, UX Strategy and Web Analytics, DePaul University
- HCI 460, Usability Evaluation Methods, DePaul University
- The Politics of UX panel, DePaul Experience Design Roundtable
- Designing Culture for Creative Teams panel, DSW 2018
Conferences & Workshops
- Blackboard World (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011)
- Desire2Learn Fusion (2012, 2013, 2014)
- World Information Architecture Day (2015)
- The Grove Graphic Facilitation workshop (2016)
- UX Immersions 21 (2016) including:
- 8 hour workshop on group facilitation by Marc Rettig
- 8 hour workshop on enterprise design by Hagan Rivers
- THNK, Presentation and Facilitation workshop series (2018)
- MetaLab Summit, feat. Irene Au (2018)
- Studio D Radiodurans, Field Study Fundamentals (2019)
- Studio D Radiodurans, Sensemaking for Impact (2019)
- MeasuringU, UX Measurement Boot Camp (2020)
- Creative Reaction Lab, How Traditional Design Thinking Protects White Supremacy (2020)
Accomplishments
- North Carolina Outward Bound School (1997)
- Milwaukee Inst Art & Design AP courses (1999 – 2000)
- Perfect score on 2-D Advanced Placement Art portfolio (2000)
- Certified Spin Instructor (2002 – 2005)
- Being an awesome dad (2007 – Present)
- GORUCK Tough Challenge 046 (2011, Cadre Jason)
- Mentor for Hexagon UX (Spring 2019)
- Mentor for EforAll Longmont (Fall 2020)
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