Greetings. I'm JL.

My pronouns are they or he. I am a Principal UX Designer and Information Architect with 20 years of digital design experience.

I've been fortunate to have a varied career. I have been responsible for the information architecture, layout, visual design, front-end code, testing, and overall successful user experience of both non-profit and commercial web properties. I have led the UX design for intranets for Ford Motor Company, to college and career search tools for The College Board, to the flagship sites for the New York Public Library and Infor.

My design foundation

I am part of the generation of designers who first observed the usefulness of innovations like content strategy, responsive design, and mobile first design, and propagated them in our own work. The practices developed by folks like Karen McGrane, Kristina Halvorson, Luke Wroblewski, and Ethan Marcotte taught me to prioritize good content, accessibility, and community in design. Those principles still inform my UX practice.

Speaking of good content: without good writing, digital platforms have very little foundation. By good writing I don't only mean the copy which gets read by the user; good writing is also product strategy documents, principles guiding product design, content strategy plans, and style guides. Foundational material must be well written in order to inform good content creation.

My library training

My training in information science has been crucial to my success; after all, the primary job of a librarian is to assess user needs and facilitate information delivery. After completing my MLIS, I worked on the website of the New York Public Library, and learned to apply my new training to UX design. I worked with small collections as well as the entire NYPL catalog system, and I collaborated with all sizes of departments. I learned how investment in structured data, metadata, and infrastructure set up a project for organizing, sharing, transforming, and displaying content. It makes design more flexible in terms of branding choices and code changes. Learning information science and working in a huge library made me a better UX designer.

Research and testing

I have encountered a lot of expectations that somehow designers "just know" what the user needs, and that research is unnecessary. I am grateful to have worked alongside UX researchers who showed me the variety of lean ways to learn and test user needs. I learned to incorporate design research techniques throughout the design of a project, make informed design decisions, and turn research into a list of success measurements.

Current project

I’m currently interested in how AI can work alongside other engines and sources of data behind the interface. AI is good at discrete organizational tasks, humans are good at nuance and empathy. How can I use AI to give humans more space to do what we are better at than machines? My current project explores how AI can help build design documentation.

Finally, I have a great sense of humor. Shared laughter is the most enduring form of team building.