As a Creative Technologist, I was embedded on design sprint teams to tackle briefs from AKQA’s clients. The expectation each sprint was to holistically understand a problem space and combine new technology with macro industry trends to generate branded experiences or products.

During these sprints I designed user flows, high-fidelity mockups and prototypes, I synthesized research and generated insights, and I prepared presentation decks which I pitched directly to the clients.

Unfortunately, much of my work at AKQA is under NDA, so I cannot speak directly to the experiences created. However, I can proudly say that my work was always well-received by the clients, and I even earned new business for AKQA.

Some of the clients I worked directly with are shown above.

While working in the San Francisco tech industry, my colleagues and I were stunned by the poor representation of women in the sector. We realized that the only people who could change the developer community was the developer community.

We gained AKQA’s sponsorship to pursue this problem, and built a program that capitalized on the recent microtransactional trend. We launched Develop{Her}, a program that enabled Developers to passively make micro-donations (5-25 cents) to GirlsWhoCode every time they merged their work on Github. GirlsWhoCode is a non-profit on a mission to close the gender gap in technology.

Alongside the development of the idea and feature set, I contributed UX flows and wireframes to help bring the concept to life.

Alongside client support, AKQA encouraged employees to always generate and prototype inventive ideas. One such idea that I fabricated was a smart whistle that pings a mobile app when it is blown. My intent was to make a sentimental, tactile device for connecting with others. It also has implications as a life saving device.

I worked with a development team to design and build a front end web experience that interacticted with the whistle, as well as 3D printed multiple physical prototypes to house the hardware. One of the prototypes is shown above.

I presented my product and application to the staff of AKQA, with a favorable response from the team. However, the product never evolved beyond prototype phase.