“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
— CARL SAGAN
Me and my daughter in Harajuku
👋 Hi! Nice meet you!
My name is Laura and I’m a UX Designer and Researcher living in Tokyo, Japan.
I never know what to write on these things, to be honest, but I wanted to try and give a casual intro to who I am. I've always joked that I'm an "Enthusiast Enthusiast." I love talking to anyone that is passionate about something. Even if I have no knowledge of the topic prior, I will listen intently. Sometimes I find myself 90-minutes into a YouTube video about techniques for speed-running Wii Golf (a game I've never even played) being wholly absorbed in it. 😆
I channel this same energy into my UX work. I find it fascinating to learn about almost anything. Searching for travel, the physical steps to testing a product for release, or even the process of reading API documentation while learning a new tool. All actual research projects I've conducted, actually! It's always wonderful to have interviews and discover something incredible that I can use in my design work.
📒 If you want to see my work, you can jump straight to my UX portfolio from the button below. Or to learn a little more about me, keep scrolling!
Where have I been?
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Ann Arbor, MI, USA
2004 → 2008
Received Bachelor of Fine Arts from University of Michigan Art & Design School -
Portland, OR, USA
2008 → 2017
UX/UI Design and Research at Jama Software, Snapflow, & International Institute for Analytics -
Tokyo, Japan
2017 → present
UX/UI Design and Research at Rakuten Travel
Skills
Design
User experience design, user interface design, product design, user-centered design, design thinking, wireframes, logical flows, user flows, prototyping, information architecture, low and high fidelity mockups, design systems, animation, video editing
UX Research & Analysis
Interviews, contextual inquiry, ethnographic study, card sorting, usability testing, task flow analysis, surveys, personas, remote moderated research, stakeholder interviews, facilitation
Tools
Figma, Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite, OmniGraffle, Invision, Prott, Overflow, Keynote, Origami, Principle, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, Confluence, Jira, Zeplin, Jama Connect
Collaboration
Mentoring, workshop design, workshop facilitation, UX research consulting and planning
Recommendations
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“Laura is the genuine article--a full spectrum user experience professional. From the fuzzy start of a project through the perfect pixels at the end, all tested for usability, she can cover it all. Laura is one of those unicorns so many companies think they can find just anywhere. No. There are not many like her. Working with Laura is always a delight, because she can take any complicated, enterprise software workflow you throw at her and come back with questions or needs that you forgot… If you want a design powerhouse who also has an anthropologist's sensibility, you want to work with Laura. Pay her for two jobs. She's that good.”
— Eva Miller, UX Manager
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“Laura is a great designer and any company would be lucky to have her… Laura is very well-rounded: she gathered requirements from customers and their users, did primary persona research, created story maps, designed workflows and UIs, and created visual design for production. Some of these practices Laura had before I joined, and the rest she learned quickly. I've worked with very few people who learn and apply new skills so well and fearlessly”
— Randall Hansen, UX Director
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“In a tumultuous startup, there are plenty of opportunities to rise to the occasion; Laura consistently went above and beyond in her work for our clients and to help and guide our team members. She took on responsibilities far outside of her original job description, with very little notice, and always approached problems with a highly collaborative process…Her designs consistently received praise from our clients, and I can safely say that the majority of success with our strategic client was due to Laura’s hard work and professional delivery.”
— Casey Rosenthal, Manager