Resume

Summary

User Experience professional with 10+ experience owning the design standards and component library for a web and desktop application suite of 100,000+ pages in over 35 countries, with an average of 2.6+ million site visits per day.

Thorough knowledge of usability principles and design methodologies. Extensive experience creating requirements documents, briefs, user personas and scenarios, site maps, content inventories, categorizations and taxonomies, interaction models, wire frames, and working prototypes.

Experience

JOAN VERMETTE, LLC, Cambridge, MA – 2009 – present

Consultant – User Experience Design
Consulting on projects in various industries, including software security, financial applications, email marketing, executive coaching, museums, and retail food businesses, including expert reviews, competitive analysis, wireframing, concept creation, speaking engagements, mentoring, and active participation in local and international professional groups.

FIDELITY INVESTMENTS, Boston, MA – 1997 – 2008

User experience design work for the largest mutual fund company in the world with more than $2.8 trillion of assets under management, 23 million individual investors, and 40,000 employees.

Design Director, Chief architect – Institutional Brokerage Design (2006 – 2008)

• Provided oversight for interaction design models and patterns across institutional brokerage products to ensure reuse of design assets and a consistent user experience.
• Facilitated regular educational seminars on Web 2.0 principles and implementations for product design group to increase team knowledge and effectiveness.
• Set global design standards for Rich Internet Applications for the firm to increase overall efficiency and reduce corporate design costs.

Director for User Experience (2006)
Overseas assignment with Fidelity International, Ltd.

• Established and trained staff on user-centered design processes and design standards across all European, Middle Eastern and African (EMEA) websites to increase the findability and usability of site features and content.
• Led large-scale projects including launch of Fidelity France’s first retail web site and the partial redesign of Fidelity.co.uk to improve mutual fund search and increase online sales.

Director, Corporate Online Style Guardian – Fidelity eBusiness group (2000-2006)
Responsible for developing and maintaining design standards for all customer-facing web and desktop applications.

• Oversight of all active web and desktop application projects (140+) to advise on component implementation and flag the need for new additions to the component library, keeping the style guide responsive to new business and user needs, and current technologies.
• Supervised a team of four style guide reviewers to ensure all products were compliant with standards.
• Designed and delivered extensive campaign of department-wide training on design standards.
• Created and managed 250+ page online style guide website to communicate standards to design, development and business stakeholders.
• Supported the development of templates to lower front-end development costs, decrease time to market, and ensure highly usable interfaces with a consistent online brand experience.
• Guided the creation of the Page Builder, a java-based application that allowed users to create faster, more accurate prototypes and speed development time.
• Created design and editorial guidelines on accessibility and participated in firm-wide task force and training to increase access to Fidelity’s sites and decrease legal risk.
• Developed process, deliverables and standards for the practice of Information Architecture resulting in improved efficiency and higher quality designs.

Lead Designer, Fidelity eBusiness (1998 – 2000)
Design work stream lead and information architect on various projects on Fidelity.com, including two site-wide redesigns, significantly improving findability and usability of content and tools. Other projects included:

• Enhancements to trading platform to increase the number of personal accounts users can monitor and trade, cutting phone costs and increasing users’ time on the site.
• A messaging dashboard allowing users to keep abreast of trade and other alerts through email and mobile devices, making Fidelity an industry-leader in financial mobile applications.
• A personalized home page to allow users to aggregate tools, content, and features.
• A full High-net Worth version of the site which led to the development of the design grid that was eventually applied to all of Fidelity’s customer-facing sites, standardizing look and feel to increase usability, readability and ease of redesign.

Communications specialist and intranet web master, Fidelity Retail Electronic Commerce; (1997 – 1998)

• Conducted surveys, focus groups and work teams on how to improve communications for a team of 500+ employees.
• Supervising a team of two, created intranet site, including applications for locating employees, an online HR and senior management moderated discussion list, and project planning.

AQUENT (formerly “MacTemps”) Boston, MA – 1996 – 1997

Contracting agency, for digital graphics, presentations, web skills, technical writing, document preparation

Presentation specialist in assignments for various Boston-area consulting and advertising firms; last assignment was with Fidelity Investments’ eBusiness group, proactively created an intranet site hosting reporting, project lists, standard document templates and other administrative information to increase transparency of the group’s achievements, projects and goals.

MASSACHUSETTS BAY TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY, Boston, MA – 1990 –1996

Diversity Training Coordinator, Office of Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action

• Designed and delivered training programs and other communications campaigns on diversity in the workplace, sexual harassment, mediation techniques, and other fair employment topics.
• Conducted investigations, and responded to employee relations issues.
• Conducted analyses and wrote and prepared annual reports on fair employment progress in the organization

Education

Bachelor of Arts with High Honors, European Cultural Studies, Brandeis University, Waltham MA

Continuing education

2009: Taxonomy and Controlled Vocabularies, Simmons College Graduate School in Library and Information Sciences
2003-4: Co-active coaching core curriculum for life and executive coaches, The Coaches Training Institute
1999: Introduction to Web Administration, Harvard Extension School/Harvard University School of Arts and Sciences
1989: Teaching adult literacy and English as a Second Language, Harvard Extension School/Harvard University School of Education

Professional affiliations

Information Architecture Institute (IAI)
Interaction Designers Association (IxDA)
Usability Professionals Association (UPA)
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM – SIG-CHI)
User Experience Network (UXNet Boston)
Content Management Professionals (CMPros)
UX Boston Book Club
Boston-IA (Internet Accessibility)