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

Sr. Director of Product Design, Engineering

I’m a Chicago-based Senior Director for a large product design team at Epsilon (a data management company under Publicis Groupe). I’ve been in a UX or engineering role for over 16 years. Currently, I manage UX disciplines across all stages of software development from strategy to design to code. I oversee teams that specialize in product design and development for 50+ enterprise applications. Together, we strive to give users positive and purposeful online interactions by simplifying complex tasks, transforming data into storytelling, optimizing workflow, 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 Angular/SASS components that make up our interfaces: coreui.epsilon.com

LinkedIn Product Designs

Approach

I have a strong background in both design and engineering (I joined the career force when UX was barely 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 I grew to become a leader in my career, 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 Design, UX Engineering, and Design 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 sign-off between each:

User research →
Whiteboard sessions →
Wireframes (Figma) →
User feedback →
Hi-fi designs (Figma) →
Coded animation/interaction states (CodePen) →
Handoff for full stack dev →
Design QA →
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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