Molly giving a tech talk for Chicago Design Systems
EPSILON, CHICAGO

Sr. Director of Product Design, Engineering

I’m a Chicago-based Senior Director of Product Design for a large data company managing UX strategies across all stages of software development, from process to UX & UI design, to code. I oversee teams that specialize in product development for complex enterprise applications. Together, we strive to give users positive online interactions by pursuing simplicity, optimizing workflows through user-centered design, crafting delightful visual experiences, and writing efficient and scalable front-end code.

To unify and automate these efforts, we built a design system of configurable components that make up our interfaces: core-ui.epsilon.com

LinkedIn Product Designs

Approach

I have a strong background in both design and engineering (I joined the career force when UX was only a buzzword and JavaScript was disabled in browsers by default) which has given me an in-depth understanding of the software development process from both perspectives. No matter how many teams I’ve worked for, three problems have been consistent:

1) An unclear distinction between UX and UI
2) A lack of engineers dedicated to meeting the requests of designers
3) Poor translation from design to code

As a Senior UX Director, I’ve taken a unique approach to building teams that solve these problems. At Epsilon, I’ve established a UX practice with specialized and equal-weighted disciplines in UX Design & Research, UI & Interaction Design, UX Engineering, and UX QA. My teams actively fulfill duties in all of these areas, each being a key player in creating best-in-class software.

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PROCESS

My teams and I are involved in the software development life cycle from day one all the way through launch. The process we adhere to involves the following steps, in order, with review and signoff between each:

User research →
Whiteboard sessions →
Wireframes (Invision or Axure) →
User feedback →
Hi-fi designs (Sketch or Figma) →
Design specs (Zeplin) →
Coded interaction states and UI skins (CodePen) →
Handoff for full stack dev and QA →
UX QA for pixel pushing →
Launch →
User research

Community Involvement

To share my passion for technology, I attend and speak at tech and leadership events and also teach classes. This keeps me clued in on UI trends and tech stacks and inspires me to push myself and my teams to come up with better design and development solutions.

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