About me
Ian grew up in Wisconsin and has been focused on technology since he got his first Commodore 64. He went to DePaul University for Geography and worked as a bike messenger, Trader Joe's manager, front-end dev, systems admin, and then in 2009 he discovered User Experience's nerdy academic cousin, Human-Computer Interaction.
It was love at first sight.
Since becoming a UX professional he has worked as an Interaction Designer, UX Researcher, and UX Designer at agencies and in-house. Today he works remotely for MetaLab doing UX research with fun teams for fun clients!
Ian lives in Denver where he spends time with his daughter, girlfriend, a dog, and a cat. He collects hobbies, bikes, books, loud music, tattoos, and nerdy bags and backpacks.
He has only spoken in the third person for a short time but finds that it comes naturally.
He's not sure how he feels about this...
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)
Accomplishments
- North Carolina Outward Bound School (1997)
- Certified Spin Instructor (2002 – 2005)
- GORUCK Tough Challenge 046 (2011, Cadre Jason)
- Being an awesome dad (2007 – Present)
Stay in touch
