College Undergraduate Attended college, asking myself "what do I want to do with my life". Psychology, behavioral sciences and computer science piqued my interest, so I pursued interests that focused on any aspect of those fields. College Internship Received an internship with the Department of Defense, Nuclear Technology Agency. This exposed me to mainframe computer systems and the power of computers, an area that was primarily available only to military applications. SDLC Process The first job in my career gave me a foundation of how to structure, manage and optimize a software project. It focused on instructional design which focused on user center design within a Software Development Life-cycle (SDLC). Code / Illustrate Several projects into my first job allowed me to discover my hidden talents to illustrate as well as have the technical capability to conceptualize and create a program - a test of my left/right brain capabilities First Start-up The Internet evolved quickly and I was tasked to investigate solutions to enable long distance learning. During a trade show I was recruited by a professional services and that was my entry to the dot com area. Usability / Front End In my first start-up, working with a professional services company, I was in the forefront of technology and its implementation. My technical skills grew exponentially working to integrate front end technologies with back-end systems. Additionally, stepped into usability, gathering primary research, testing hand held devices in the field. Dot-com bubble All good things come to a shocking end. All of us were on a technology high, working crazy hours, driving change, and pushing technology. But excessive speculation caused many companies to fail. Onward to my next experience. Information / Interaction Architecture I loved the start-up experience so took on another start-up opportunity. Deconstruction and analysis of a developer constructed application. Applied User Center Design principles determining viability and re-structuring to better define business offerings. After-shock The dot-com bubble apparently was not over. More companies fell to the market demands. The previous experience did prepare me to move on quickly. State Mapping / Simulations Next opportunity allowed me to focus on the mechanics of the application being developed and dive into systems analysis, mapping out the business logic to user profiles and their experiences. I was also able to focus on mapping out user experience strategy to business road maps developing a UX processes and artifact structure. One more time Another start-up was not able to sustain in the market. It was apparent that the market was very volatile during this time period. It forced me to re-examine the direction of my career. New company I had always wanted to work for myself. Most don't start a company when the economy is so volatile, but figured what did I have to loose. I incorporated and started the search for my first client. Thankfully I was successful in building relationships and found a great first client. Business Systems Analysis Took on my first client as a UX Professional. Dove into an unyielding, complex project that no one wanted - designing a reporting application to be used in conjunction with a suite of projects being transitioned from a main frame environment to a series of web applications. Persona / Journey Mapping I had always worked with archetypes in software development, but was introduced to Persona for the first time. I was excited to help develop these tools and utilize them in the course of developing and enhancing products. This clients main objective was working with internal tools, so the Persona was stable and could be fully developed and used for longer periods of time than normal. User Testing Being on a small collaborative team, it allowed me to fully embrace all aspects of user experience, specially building out user flows and scenario mappings. This allowed me to help the testing teams to build out automated testing scripting and develop test plans to work closely in developing testing guidelines and usability standards. Distributed Teams Took on a client whose employees were distributed across the country and around the world. I had worked with remote colleagues but never to this scale especially on the international scale. Had to rethink internal processes and enhance communication skills - language and communications had to be precise and exact. Collaboration / Risk Assessment Working with one of my clients I had the opportunity to work in an Agile environment. User Experience was equally represented in the process. Allowed for a new level of collaboration, and have a greater depth of understanding around critical dependencies and managing risk. Next chapter Recovering from the 2008 economic crisis, I decided that I wanted to settle down for a bit so I placed my company on a hiatus indefinitely and went back to corporate America. Data Analysis It is crucial to understand how people use an applications and all the processes and functions within it, and who is the one using it. it I have worked with data research teams gather qualitative and quantitative data, deep diving into behaviors and trends to inform and optimize user experiences. User Experience Strategy Today I focus on high level end to end solutions for applications, filtering across to other applications and down to various projects, spanning a companies portfolio. Also focus on optimization, enhancement rethinking / re-envision / reincarnations. Also heavily evangelize user experience concepts.
My UX Journey
LORENZO TRENIDAD CHAVEZ