― My background
I’ve gone through a number of phases in my career, and each of them has informed my current work ethos and philosophy. I have excelled in a number of project management roles in diverse industries, and believe that my number one asset is my ability to adapt to any challenge that is thrown my way.
― Skills
Performance tracking
Psychological safety
Stakeholder management
― Work experience
Design Team Lead
IBM / Nov 2021 - Feb 2024
Designer: Practice customer-centric, Enterprise Design Thinking to address user needs and pain points through ideation, conceptualization, research, iteration, and delivery of solutions to drive design value while improving the user's journey.
Facilitator: plan, recruit for, run, synthesize, and present workshop readouts for stakeholders.
Researcher: Recruit for, lead, and synthesize research sessions with client users for feedback, contextual inquiry, and usability testing.
DesignOps: focus on workflow and processes including project management of team objectives linked with agile initiatives.
Lead: Collaborate with 3-in-a-box (PMs and Devs) on near- and long-term product vision strategy. Quarterly planning with cross-functional teams for SAFe Program Increments.
Co-Lead: UX/UI Community of Practice aimed at consistent implementation of interfaces and interactions across the product offering ensuring best-in-class experience and continuity throughout the portfolio.
Mentor: coach entry- to senior-level designers
― Education
San Jose State University
Bachelor's degree, Design Studies / San Jose, California
Sr. Manager, Design & Research
IBM / Feb 2024 - Present
Align with executive leadership to define and prioritize objectives.
Plan design team initiatives with defined roadmap milestones.
Meet weekly with 13 direct reports to coach their development and drive high-performance.
Prioritize and map design requirements against team availability and individual skills to meet objectives.
Conduct mid-year and annual performance reviews with employees. Provide metrics to track performance.
Hire and promote talent across five global locations.
Sr. UX Designer
LexisNexis / Jan 2020 - Oct 2021
Participate in SVPG Discovery processes culminating in hand-off of UX assets to product roadmap development teams.
Collaborate with tech delivery team members to ensure proper execution of design deliverables
Organize, facilitate, and report on Design Sprints/Sessions
Development of UX Roadmap including UX vision, goals, and OKR driven outcomes
Manage team's UX documentation and assets
Produce wireframes, mockups, and prototypes during all phases of Discovery
Collaborate with UX Research to develop high-fidelity prototypes for feedback sessions and user testing
Accessibility: Coordinate execution of CounselLink's baseline VPAT WCAG 2.1 AA Compliance report. Strategize and plan implementation of Accessibility improvements through new agile processes.
UX Designer
CoStar Group / Mar 2015 - Feb 2019
Work with content strategists and developers to design, prototype and deliver holistic user journeys for full-scale redesign of FindaFranchise.
Conduct usability tests for design validation
Create wireframes and prototypes to communicate user flows and interactions to product managers and engineers.
Develop design systems and style guides for hand-off of deliverables for consistency in execution of user experience.
Develop a hypothesis from Google Analytics and run an A/B test to determine the effectiveness of icon-based search vs. dropdown-based search. Results showed 6.3% improvement in lead conversions.
“Whenever I am in a difficult situation where there seems to be no way out, I think about all the times I have been in such situations and say to myself: I did it before, so I can do it again.”
- Idowu Koyenikan
Case Study 1
To come
to come
case study 2
Case Studies