Lisa Colvin:

About Lisa

Lisa is currently the Experience Design Lead for Southern California Edison.  She's passionate about the user experience and really enjoys working on the hard stuff – particularly things that make life easier.

Over the years, she's led user experience teams and projects for clients including Sun, Citibank, MetLife, Countrywide, Wells Fargo, Toyota, UCLA, Buzznet, Gillette, Nordstrom, Dell, Expedia, Dreamworks, Universal, Sony, Viacom, Paramount and several Disney brands.  

An LA native, Lisa has a BA in Communication Arts and Sciences from USC and a MS in Information Science from UCLA, thereby successfully infuriating fans from both schools.  She reads far too many blogs and mailing lists, is a guest lecturer, committee member and mentor for several professional associations, attends as many conferences as possible and is on the editorial staff at Boxes and Arrows.

Resume                                                      Download as Word Document

Experience

Southern California Edison
Experience Design Lead, Current

 Sun Microsystems
Chief Information Architect, 2009 - 2010

• connect separate but dependent interdisciplinary teams to bring out the best ideas, drive decisions and influence quality, unified experiences
• partner with other organizational leads to anticipate and envision short and long term strategic changes to requirements and evolving customer and business objectives
• manage experience design efforts with external agencies and facilitate the transition of assets to Sun deployment resources
• apply user-centered design methods to translate user needs, business objectives, and technology capabilities into enterprise-class experiences
• maintain and evolve Sun’s information architecture standards, philosophies and practices

Ascentium Corporation
Practice Lead, User Experience (Southern California), 2007 – 2009

• lead and grew the User Experience practice in the Southern California region, developing a team of leaders in the interactive, e-commerce, community and emerging technology spaces
• defined the vision and direct the integration of design strategies into the creative/ technical development processes, ensuring that all practices effectively and directly address business needs while focusing on the overall user experience
• contributed to the acquisition, maintenance and enhancement of customer relationships via sales and business development efforts, representing the discipline and the company in client meetings, developing proposals, and presentation of concepts and deliverables
• served as the overall lead on cross-disciplinary project teams, making the complex simple and creating effective, innovative and usable solutions
• clients included Southern California Edison, Nordstrom, UCLA, Microsoft, Intel, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Adapt Technologies, Inc.
Director, User Experience, 2007

• responsible for the overall consumer experience of a suite of web-based e-commerce/ transactional applications and associated corporate sites, including strategic product management, content, copywriting and editorial direction, interaction and visual design, user research and testing, front-end development and integration with back-end infrastructure
• built and led a team of designers, writers and developers through a redesign/ merge of two corporate/ e-commerce sites and a launch of two new tiers of the product application, delivering on-time and on-budget
• collaborated with Marketing leadership to define the brand and voice of the company
• partnered with Sales and Customer Service Teams to recruit a beta-council of subscribers and set up ongoing research/ testing procedures

Spot Runner, Inc.
Manager, Information Architecture and Usability, 2006 – 2007

• recruited to build an entirely new interaction design division for a startup company
• coordinated with multi-level divisional leads to create process, hire a team and implement procedures integrating structured user experience architecture and usability practices into the existing visual design/ technical development frameworks
• evolved user testing capabilities by improving facilities via software purchases, equipment upgrades and physical layout changes; augmented user testing recruitment techniques and taught improved moderation and report generation

The Walt Disney Company - Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Online
Senior Information Architect/ Creative Lead, 2005 – 2006

• created engaging and innovative site experiences for multiple brand partners, focusing on e-commerce/ content solutions and consumer-facing web applications
• managed team building, cross-departmental knowledge sharing efforts and resource allocation, provided ongoing mentoring, evaluated vendor deliverables, wrote job descriptions, assessed and interviewed candidates
• developed standards for UX design deliverables, led Flash process flow/ storyboarding process development, designed QA, usability and user acceptance tests
• consulted on multiple cross-business unit issues to ensure communication and consistency among projects and processes
• collaborated on advanced strategic project efforts to promote the brand, including iPod platform, social networking and word-of-mouth initiatives

MetLife – Annuities Information Technology Division
Business Systems Analysis Lead, 2003 – 2005

• headed the systems analysis effort for multiple web-based financial applications with a mainframe back end, managing multiple simultaneous large-scale projects in differing stages of development, as well as running queries and writing code and/ or copy as needed
• created standards for documentation including process flows, wireframes, use cases, site architectures, and functional specifications
• represented the BSA/ UXA practice throughout the organization, speaking at conferences and training sessions and mentoring other analysts

Countrywide Financial Corporation - Correspondent Lending Division
Platinum Systems Analysis Lead, 2002 – 2003

• primary liaison between users, vendors and design/development team regarding all issues for a web-based application handling $19 billion per month in submissions
• supervised full lifecycle development from conception to launch
• investigated, identified and implemented user change requests in consultation with developers and the analyst team,  designing prototypes, layout and flow for all new features

DNA Studio
Director, Information Architecture, 2001

• led creative/ interaction design strategy on motion picture and television marketing site projects for clients such as Sony, Viacom, Paramount, Universal and Warner Brothers
• served as the link between design, engineering, marketing and production as the designated user advocate, mentoring co-workers in user experience best practices
• developed templates and procedures; wrote complex technical use case, schematic and wireframe documentation  

Full Moon Interactive, Inc.
Regional Special Projects Manager / Sr. Information Architect, 1999 – 2001

• guided design and development process for deliverables including data models, site architectures, wireframes, process and user flows for large-scale transactional sites in collaboration with designers, technologists and strategists
• developed process methodology intranet as a senior member of Process Development Team
• administered office operations: allocated resources, assigned project managers, organized training, planned moves
• clients included Dell, Oral-B, Gillette, CarsDirect.com, Wells Fargo Bank, Citigroup

Lisa Colvin Consulting – Strategic User Experience Design
Principal, 2001 – Present

• advise on in-flight and upcoming projects to establish strategic direction and identify opportunities for tactical improvements
• make recommendations regarding appropriate tools and technologies including content management systems, rich internet applications, customer relationship management, analytics and sales solutions
• design interfaces, interaction plans and experience paths for software products, web-based applications and branded sites
• conduct site and system heuristic evaluations, user experience assessments, competitive analyses, focus groups and usability tests

Additional Experience

• DreamWorks, SKG - Digital Animation
• UCLA Film and Television - Digital Media Lab
• Los Angeles Times - Photo Databases    
• Toyota USA National Headquarters  - Web Development

Education

Masters - Information Science
University of California, Los Angeles - 1999

Bachelor of Arts - Communication Arts and Sciences
University of Southern California - 1990


Affiliations / Conferences / Editorial

• Interaction Design Association (Presenter, Facilitator)
• Information Architecture Institute (nominated for Board of Directors, Mentoring Initiatives)
• Boxes & Arrows (Editorial Staff, Online Professional Journal)
• Association of Information Science & Technology (SIG – Information Architecture) (Program Evaluation, Conference Presenter, Committee Leader)
• Association of Computing Machinery (SIG – Computer/ Human Interaction)
• American Institute for the Graphic Arts (SIG – Experience Design)

References

Available upon request

Also see LinkedIn recommendations