In 2023, I decided to go on a self-learning sabbatical, and get reacquainted with the developer languages and tools that I had begun to lose touch with over the past few years.

This learning journey is meant to refresh my front-end developer skills and add some new ones. Also, I plan to deepen my Figma UI design skills, and to design several mobile-first applications, from idea to wireframe to interactive prototype.

Why do all this? So that I can be an even more effective UI/UX designer. Being able to talk tech with the dev team, about application interface issues, possibilities and limits, is critical to the success of any project.

UI / UX lead for many of their public-facing websites, as well as the employee intranet. With a combination of SharePoint and WordPress, our SiteDev team designed, coded and maintained a variety of websites.

Gathered client requirements, and turned those ideas into workable website designs (Photoshop / Adobe XD) that focused on optimal user experience and intuitive interfaces. Also lead many projects, using Agile project management methods.

Selected successes for each website redesign (one year after launch):

• Cooperative.com - bounce rate dropped from mid-70% to mid-20%.
• Electric.coop – page views up 22%; visitors up 28%.
• HomesteadFunds.com - organic and search traffic up 56%, account opens up 30%..
• NRECANow (intranet) - page views up 18%; time on site up 44%.

UX skills used to varying degrees for each project:

• needs assessment & prioritization / card sorting
• personas and user stories
• wireframing / user flows (low fidelity)
• visual design and layout (high fidelity)
• interactive prototypes
• A/B testing

Concepted, documented and co-designed the first iteration of the NRECA Design System (“Current”)

Chaired the Engagement Committee: created fun, virtual social and/or fund-raising events for employees.

Mike Truese Creations was a website design & development firm.

Responsible for providing full project life cycle efforts on all work: specs – design (UX / UI) – development (WordPress, HTML, CSS, JavaScript) – testing – launch – ongoing maintenance.

Created hundreds of websites for many happy clients.

Manager of Application Development, with a team of four developers (direct reports), created business applications for the firm. Developed standards (look and feel, coding, and usage) that allowed for rapid creation and reuse of application components as needed.

Successfully implemented several dozen time- and cost-saving projects, including:

• A job tracking and time billing system for Document Production.
• A New Business approval and Conflict of Interest tracking system.
• A Conference Room and Resource tracking system.
• A Help Desk and Inventory Management tracking system.
• A Litigation docket and calendaring system.

Promoted from Senior Application Developer to Manager of AppDev within my first year at WG&M.

Senior Visual Basic developer, and lead architect (design/development) for projects, and heavily involved in all aspects of requirements gathering and user interface design & prototyping.

Also provided “human factors” specialist reviews for other projects, and reviewed prototypes at successive stages of development for a consistent, user-helpful look and feel, including:

• An On-Line Interactive Viewing of Employee Resources (“OLIVER”) system that allowed employees to selectively browse and print any of the policies, procedures and practices that the employee wants to know more about.
• An executive incentive compensation and salary planning system. This application tracked the salaries, option awards and bonuses for the top 1000 executives of a Fortune 50 firm, and calculated proposed awards based on historical and current financial results within their business units.

Early career as a programmer/analyst spanned several challenging positions, where I learned to develop project specifications, design user interfaces, write and debug quality code, deploy applications to users, and train & support clients.

• Bankers Trust Corp: Assistant Treasurer
• Revlon, Inc: Micro Workstation Specialist
• NYU Medical Center: Systems Analyst
• Citibank, N.A. (Cash Mgmt Division): Systems Analyst, Assistant Treasurer
• Merrill Lynch & Co.: Programmer/Analyst

Management Information Systems

3.96 GPA: Salutatorian, Summa Cum Laude