Polygence

Lead UX / UI Designer

2022 - 2023

Led UX / UI design for this educational technology startup (Research Opportunities for High School Students)

Facilitated a rebranding and visual refresh of website, web app, and native app

Conducted interviews and usability testing with dozens of mentors and students

Designed and facilitated numerous shipped features to create a world-class passion project experience for mentors and students, including tools for sharing resources, scheduling sessions, and a brand new native app

Company has impacted the lives of more than 2400 students from 44 countries

ChalkCast

Lead UX / UI Designer

2021 – 2022

Lead UX / UI design for this educational technology startup (virtual classroom tool).

Rebranded company and collaborated with mid-level UX designer to produce a more cohesive style guide.

Designed and coded company's front-facing brochure site.

Conducted semi-structured interviews and usability tests with more than 30 teachers and students.

Designed and prototyped numerous features for remote learning including quiz tool, chalkboard, attendance, etc.

Wrote articles on educational technology trends.

Blake Williford Design

Freelance Designer

2010 – 2021

Freelance UI / UX design, front-end development, branding, and illustration services with 10 years of experience working on projects for more than 50 clients including ~15 startups.

Met with clients and executives directly to discover needs and objectives, and honed skills as a highly effective communicator, leader, and facilitator of consistently successful design solutions.

Assisted various startups in launching websites and apps, building brands, and raising venture capital.

Entreprenuerial projects include: DrawDojo - An educational app for learning drawing skills

Texas A&M University / Sketch Recognition Lab

Designer / Researcher

2016 – 2021

Lead the design and development of “Sketchtivity” an educational platform for teaching the fundamentals of design sketching and improving creativity in people. It has been used by over 1000 students at 3 universities and 3 high schools.

Provided design and front-end development assistance with an intelligent educational software called "Mechanix" which is for teaching freebody diagrams. The software has been used by over 1000 students at five different universities.

Designed and developed another intelligent educational software called "FossilSketch" which is for teaching micropaleontology. It has not been deployed yet.

Designed and developed an PIXL (Mars 2020 Rover) XRF simulation interface for Aoleon Lab.

Award-winning design and research, and publications at top conferences around the world.

Medicare Pathfinder

Lead UX / UI Designer

2015 – 2021

Lead UX / UI design and front-end development for this healthcare startup.

Helped company raise more than $450,000 in venture capital.

Designed and developed a simple and clean patient-facing application to gather data on seniors and match them with best healthcare plans.

Designed and developed innovative visualizations for predictive analytics dashboard which can prevent providers from losing money.

Adobe Research

Designer / Researcher

2019

Worked with Holger Winnemoeller in Creative Intelligence Lab to design and develop a novel image editing creativity support tool. This tool leverages modularized Photoshop commands and a simple drag-and-drop user interface to make sophisticated image editing much easier for novices.

Filed for US Patent as co-inventor

Microsoft Research

Designer / Researcher

2018

Worked with AI and Ink applied research group to conceptualize, design, and develop a novel sketch-based application leveraging Windows Ink

Collaborated with Ken Hinckley and Michel Pahud in MSR to conduct a user study of the application with 20 participants.

Filed for 2 US Patents as lead inventor

Fjord

Interaction Designer

2015 – 2016

Collaborated on several client projects for the Atlanta studio of this service design firm. Work involved research, interviews, journey mapping, persona creation, sketching, wireframing, prototyping and visual design.

Projects included a mortgage buying application for USAA, report outage and bill paying experiences for Florida Power & Light, and a booking experience for Celebrity Cruiselines

Georgia Institute of Technology

Graduate Teaching Assistant

2015

Assisted sophomore undergrad Industrial Design students in their main studio course. Responsibilities included helping them with research, ideation, giving them constructive feedback, and grading. Used my knowledge and experience to ensure they get in to good habits, break bad habits, and are dedicated to process.

Georgia Institute of Technology

Graduate Research Assistant

2014

Performed research in the area of advancing spatial reasoning and creative skills in engineers through learning sketching – Specifically by using educational software. Closely related to my Master’s Thesis and PhD dissertation.

StubHub / eBay

UX Designer Intern

2014

Hybrid UX Designer role in which I designed and prototyped a new profile system concept for StubHub users called “My Hub”.

Worked closely with a Project Manager intern to conceptualize a site-wide personalization framework, with the goal of making StubHub a more personally catered experience for event discovery and planning.

Assisted UX team on several projects related to the responsive redesign of StubHub website by exploring page designs with sketches, wireframes, and prototypes.

THINK Interactive

UX Designer

2013 – 2014

Assisted UX team in the design of two responsive websites for national brands during a 3-month contract position with information architecture, wireframes, task-flows, and sitemaps.

Cardinal Web Solutions

Lead UI / Visual Designer

2012 – 2013

Led the design services of this growing digital agency as their first in-house designer.

Rebranded the company and its entire physical and digital presence, leading to a more clear, concise, and cohesive brand identity.

Directed a wide variety of projects for around 30+ local and national clients involving responsive web design, mobile site/app design, graphic design, and branding during a time in which the company tripled in size.

Cooper Lighting

Industrial Design Intern

2011

Supported design team and worked on a variety of commercial LED lighting products. Developed concepts for a family of products for InVue, re-imagining their high-end outdoor lighting brand.

"Exploring Methods for Holistically Improving Drawing Ability with Artificial Intelligence"

Computer Science Department (Texas A&M)

December 13th, 2019

"A Framework for Motivating Sketching Practice with Sketch-based Gameplay"

CHI Play 2019

October 23rd, 2019

"Teaching Sketching with Artificial Intelligence: Integrating an Intelligent Tutoring System into Classrooms"

Educational Psychology Department (Texas A&M)

April 15th, 2019

"It’s Not Just About Accuracy: Metrics That Matter When Measuring Expert Sketching Ability"

IUI 2019

March 19th, 2019

"Facilitating Improvements in Drawing Ability, Self-efficacy, Motivation, and Creativity with Intelligent Systems"

Adobe Research

September 4th, 2018

"ZenSketch: A Novel Sketch-based Game for Improving Line work"

CHI Play 2017

October 18th, 2017

"Conquering the Cube: Learning to Sketch Primitives in Perspective with an Intelligent Tutoring System"

Expressive 2017

July 28th, 2017

"Education for the Conceptual Age"

WIPTTE 2015

April 28th, 2015