Experience

Code for America, Greater New York City Area

Staff User Experience (UX) Designer, January 2023 – Present. As a Staff UX designer on the Platform team, I support teams in the Safety Net Innovation Lab by leading the UX design of 2 internal tools used to deploy human-centered digital form services for state governments nationwide, as well as integrate process improvements to the organization's design practice in accessibility and creating public digital forms.

Platform responsibilities

• Design System – I lead internal collaboration efforts to develop the design system for new state government digital products and services.

• Form Flow Builder – I maintain our core platform's user interface (UI) and experience design, enabling other designers to replicate human-centered digital forms.

Contributions

• Adoption assessment for the U.S. Web Design System – I led the investigation, planning, and migration of our core platform, the Form Flow Builder, to the U.S. Web Design System.

• Accessibility initiatives – I review and mentor junior staff contributions to ensure design and engineering comply with and exceed Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 AA standards.

New York City Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity, Greater New York City Area

Digital Product Designer, January 2020 – December 2022 (3 years). I contributed to the management and strategy of 11 products in our portfolio throughout their lifecycle. Beginning with identifying the needs of our product audiences and stakeholders, then market delivery, engagement measurement, and finally, maintenance and iteration on features to ensure impact, scale, and client satisfaction.

Projects

• Brand Identity Accomplishments – I audited and created guidelines for our product brand identities to help our team contextualize how residents interact with our products as well as illustrate how to create new brands using the New York City brand identity.

• UX Accomplishments – Led the assessment of team UX maturity using Nielson Norman Group's UX Maturity model and worked towards more effective practices. Organized our research materials, collection, and archival practices to facilitate regular in-person testing to inform our project decisions. Piloted the use of Airtable as a User Relationship Manager tool for outreach and research archiving. Mentored our first UX Design fellow, overseeing her work on several core initiatives such as heuristics for our products.

• Working NYC Product Launch and Iteration – Designed and developed the brand identity and UI for working.nyc.gov, a workforce program guide aggregator. Conducted usability interviews and worked with other team members to launch and iterate on the product during its post-launch phase. Created a feature development process incorporating feedback into our existing analytics collection resulting in a framework for validating feature ideas. Participated in the strategy, design, and engineering of several research-backed product features including user feedback forms, newsletter, job board, and inclusive color themes.

• ACCESS NYC COVID-19 Response – Redesigned homepage and introduced COVID iconography of access.nyc.gov, a benefit program guide aggregator and eligibility screener, to funnel the traffic surge due to the pandemic. I scoped and oversaw the implementation of the Special Announcement structured data schema for COVID-related information through the management of junior staff. As a result or our efforts, our team was awarded for excellence in customer service by the City of New York Mayor's Office.

Lead Front-end Developer, May 2017 – January 2020 (2 years 9 months). As a lead front-end developer on the product and technology team, I work with colleagues through direct input and the mentorship of junior staff and fellows to support our portfolio using UI design and full-stack development.

Projects

• NYCO Patterns Framework and Libraries – Engineered an open-source command-line interface, JavaScript module library, and other tools as a framework for pattern library development. Modularized UI tokens, fonts, icons, elements, and components into 3 accessible UI libraries for our digital products.

• ACCESS NYC Development Contributions – Contributed to the development of 60+ releases to our award-winning product, access.nyc.gov, including new features, optimizations, and security enhancements.

• Released and maintained 13+ open-source projects – Published code used by our products and for the City of New York’s civic technology community.

Mentor. I mentored 4 engineering fellows and 1 user experience fellow in a program for emerging designers, product managers, and engineers to gain experience working in local government.

Principle, Digital Product Designer, exp. design

May 2009 – May 2017 (8 years 1 month), Greater New York City Area. I provide digital product design and web development services using design research, brand identity, UX design, UI design, data visualization, and full-stack engineering through my freelance practice.

Projects

• Clark Product Launch – Designed and engineered UI elements for the product launch, including landing pages, social media assets, sign-up forms, and product UI for Clark, a tutoring business management platform.

• Hello Smile Homepage Redesign – Redesigned and engineered homepage for Hello Smile, an innovative NYC-based pediatric dental provider network.

2016 Design Fellow at the Blue Ridge Labs @ Robin Hood Foundation

June 2016 – October 2016 (5 months), Greater New York City Area. I participated in agile-based research, prototyping, and development sprints to create technology solutions for low-income New Yorkers that address access-to-justice issues in the areas of juvenile justice, foster care, and consumer debt. Led engineering and product design of a non-profit SAAS product, daisydebt.org, that helps financial counselors assert their client’s rights against unlawful debt collection agencies.

Co-founder, Chief Design Technologist at Quadrant.io

May 2014 - December 2015 (1 year 8 months), Greater New York City Area. Lead front-end developer and designer of the core product and marketing site for Quadrant.io, a macro-economic data platform. I designed and developed the brand identity and UI, including macro-economic data visualizations, dashboards, and chart-building tools.

Previous Experience

• Design Technologist at Sideways Inc. – September 2012 – March 2014 (1 year 7 months), Greater New York City Area – I programmed interactive experiences for marketing websites and web applications.

• Interactive Designer at happyMedium – April 2012 – August 2012 (5 months), Greater St. Louis Area – I designed, prototyped, and developed interactive experiences for mobile and desktop applications.

• Interactive Designer and Front-End Web Developer at 2e Creative – October 2009 – March 2012 (2 years 6 months), Greater St. Louis Area – I designed and programmed interactive experiences and produced video content.

Recommendations

Linda Tvrdy, 2016 Civil Justice Fellow, Blue Ridge Labs @ Robin Hood Foundation

Worked directly with Devon at Blue Ridge Labs @ Robin Hood Foundation

Devon is a deep thinker who begins from a place of compassion. He meets people where they are, whether that person is a New Yorker City resident helping with user research or a legal academic without much tech experience. He unhesitatingly embraced the complexity of trying to improve access to justice for ordinary people. Without losing sight of that complexity, he designed elegant and practical tools, not to mention beautiful. In addition to being a first-rate designer, Devon also has “mad engineering skills,” to quote one of our teammates. In addition to his professional skill, Devon is the definition of a team player. He preserved team cohesion by keeping us focused on our goals, and he facilitated ideation sessions that brought out the best each of us had to offer. I cannot recommend him highly enough.

Dane Vrabac, Founder and CEO, Quadrant.io

Managed Devon at Quadrant.io

Devon is both an exceptional designer and a front-end developer. He’s easy to work with and takes pride in everything he delivers. He’s flexible enough to work with either a fixed set of requirements or a rough idea and make it great.

Joe Toohey, Principal of 2e Creative

Managed Devon at 2e Creative

Devon embodies the individual who is constantly pushing himself to new heights yet has his feet firmly planted in the realities of life and the business of doing intelligent creative. His willingness to tackle any challenge with commitment and dedication to excellence functions as a catalyst to propel any initiative he undertakes to a heightened level. I am confident that one day he will be viewed as a trend leader within the creative industry.