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[event_group_title icon="bookmark-empty" text="Experience."]

[event current="current" date="2018 – Present" title="Senior Product Designer" sub_title="Integrate"]

Unifying the platform experience across [internal and acquired] business lines to create a consumer-grade experience within an enterprise-level SASS product.

Accomplishments

[event date="2017 – 2018" title="Senior Consultant II, Ideation & Experience Design" sub_title="Neudesic"]

Guided clients through discovery and design phases of consulting engagements, working collaboratively to expose and deliver upon actual needs over perceived needs to achieve their business goals.

Accomplishments

• Created a new sales offering for content strategy and lead the first engagement based upon that offering.
• Collaborated with sales on approaches for selling and communicating the value proposition of UX strategy engagements.[/event]

[event date="2015 – 2017" title="Manager, User Experience Design" sub_title="Pearson Education"]

Set the K-12 user experience strategy, and lead the teams responsible for designing the user experience for six flagship educational platforms and the content products they contained.

Accomplishments

• Increased continuity and reduced spend by minimizing duplicative efforts through the introduction and adoption of a design system.
  
• Increased new feature adoption and reduced development spend by conducting usability studies early and often, to test design assumptions with actual users.
  
• Improved cross-discipline communication and collaboration by working with designers to grow the team's technical knowledge.
• Scaled team output, without increasing headcount, from four-to-six platforms and the content products they contained.[/event]

[event date="2008 – 2015" title="Senior Consultant, User Experience" sub_title="Unicon, Inc."]

Contributed to and lead teams responsible for building the user experience for Pearson Education's award-winning educational platforms Pearson Realize and Pearson Online Learning Exchange.

Accomplishments

• Succeeded in bridging the gap between creative and technical team members to reliably deliver upon the product vision.[/event]

[event date="2006 – 2008" title="Engagement Delivery Manager" sub_title="Gatesix, Inc."]

Guided clients through strategic engagements that blended experience-focused solutions with technical business needs like commerce and content management systems.

[/event]
[event date="1998 – 2006" title="Earlier Work History" sub_title="Design, IA, and technical roles, mostly with consulting firms"][/event]

[event_group_title icon="graduation-cap" text="Education."]
[event date="1995 – 1998" title="Graphic Design & Photography" sub_title="Hennepin Technical College"]

Worked as a teacher’s assistant, graduating with a 4.0 GPA.[/event]
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SKILLS.

[skill title="Product Thinking"]
[skill title="Discovery & Ideation"]
[skill title="Information Architecture"]
[skill title="Content Strategy"]
[skill title="Design Systems"]
[skill title="UX Research"]
[skill title="UX & Product Design"]
[skill title="Usability Studies"]
[skill title="Front End Implementation"]

INTERESTS.

[skill title="Divergent Non-Linear Thinking"]
[skill title="Failing Quickly and Learning"]
[skill title="Cross-Discipline Collaboration"]
[skill title="Crowdsourcing Ideas"]
[skill title="Hypothesis Validation"]
[skill title="Automating Repetition"]

TESTIMONIALS.

[testimonial image="https://alexby.design/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Anika-Bausom.jpg" title="Anika Bausom" sub_title="UX Designer / Pearson
Design for Good Director / AIGA Arizona"]The best type of leader is a coach and advocate. As my manager in my first year at Pearson, Alex has been exactly that.

He has helped me accomplish my personal goals in ways that support Pearson’s business goals. When I expressed interest in learning more about data visualization, he assigned me to relevant projects within our team, and also introduced me to people in other departments and encouraged me to form relationships with them to further my learning.

Alex’s multi-disciplined background across design and development is a huge benefit to the team and company. His knowledge and insights make communicating with development teams more productive. He also makes sure our UX team includes people with complimentary skills sets, so we have a balance of technical and visual skills.

Above all, Alex treats his team with trust and respect. He encourages us to make our own decisions and backs us up, but is always available to steer us if we need it. I find his combination of peer reviews and manager reviews especially helpful to get useful feedback on my work.

Alex’s skills as a designer, developer, and leader make him an asset to any team.[/testimonial]
[testimonial image="https://alexby.design/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Jeffrey-Streber.jpg" title="Jeffrey Streber" sub_title="Director, Digital Product Mgmt / Pearson"]Alex's work as a UX team leader, as well as a UX designer himself, has made a huge difference in forming the shape and the direction of key products within the Pearson portfolio. First and foremost, Alex ensures that the solutions we deliver meet the needs of our students and teachers. As a user-centric designer, Alex understands how to iterate through a design or an approach, using analytics data and end user feedback, to hone in on the optimal design for any given set of use cases. However, because Alex also has a development background, he understands the technical "behind the scenes" constraints within which the development team must work. The result is that he has an incredible ability to balance solutions that consider technical constraints as well as user needs. I highly recommend Alex as a designer, leader, and collaborator.[/testimonial]
[testimonial image="https://alexby.design/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Jennifer-Reichlin.jpg" title="Jennifer Reichlin" sub_title="Sr. Software Product Manager / Pearson"]I've been fortunate to work directly with Alex the past several years at Pearson on one of our flagship products.

Alex is uniquely positioned to deliver amazing customer experiences not only due to his background as a developer, but also due to his extensive UX design skills. He has proven his abilities to balance architectural constraints with user needs, which is truly a fine art! He is a trusted partner who works to bring the best solutions to our users by relying on end user feedback and data analytics to help establish the right approach.

In addition to being a skilled colleague, Alex brings a collaborative yet focused style to all he does. He is able to assess situations objectively to make the right decisions, but is also able to use his great sense of humor to keep teams highly functioning and motivated. Alex is a rock star – I recommend him highly! [/testimonial]
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