Some call me JC. I grew up in Nashville, but Brooklyn is home now.
As of late, I’ve been slowing down to reflect on what encourages me to lead a joyful and intentional life. I believe connections—with a person, place, community, cause, movement, or meal—should be celebrated daily. I’m drawn to effective and emotive brands, products, processes, and people.
Outside of work you’ll find me baking for my side project Ode To, volunteering at BedStuy Urban Farm, bopping around on my bike, connecting with friends over a meal, or smelling flowers on my daily walks.
I’m a big-picture thinker, with an eye and passion for details. I often find myself bringing the conversation back to our north star. Collaborate, listen, and ask questions. Someone on the team may have a special use case in mind that we haven't thought of. What are our users’ needs and how are we addressing them with our decisions? How can we be more efficient with our time while keeping our roadmap in mind? What are we measuring? What does our current data say? In addition to the strategy checkpoints throughout, I enjoy the ideation stage of developing a story, product, or brand. Let's think long-term. Design a product or business, not just screens. Before getting into the design stage, I ask questions, do market research, competitive analyses, then ask more questions. I try to involve users early and often.
I thrive in environments where design has meaning and is leveraged in problem-solving. Prototyping is a powerful step in the design process which most accurately helps users evaluate product changes and developments. I try to get a prototype built before the designs are pixel-perfect so we can involve users as early as possible for User Testing.
Designs come to life during the Development stage. When you have a designer that can code, you ultimately diminish time wasted on designs that can’t efficiently and effectively be built. Of course, there are times when engineers are going to be faced with complex problems that they need to solve. However—while avoiding putting business problems on the user—there are times when time and resource management need to be addressed by way of clear design solutions. On top of efficiency with time, a designer that can code is usually going to have a better understanding of how to balance design and site/app performance. Ultimately, the more synergy on a team, the smoother the operation will run.