Chris Watkins

Leading strategic UX design initiatives as part of a highly skilled cross-functional team for hybrid physical/digital experiences to support people living with diabetes. Design efforts include research-driven setup, onboarding, and daily use experiences for mobile applications across Android and iOS platforms. Collaborating with software development, product management, data and systems, content strategy, instructional design, regulatory experts, and clinical teams to create safe, effective, and delightful mobile experiences. Mentoring junior designers and evangelizing user-centered commercialization practices across the organization.

Creator, writer and artist of comics including Odori Park, a romantic-family-geek comedy strip published at OdoriPark.com, and new long-form stories for kids, plus teacher of cartooning and comics-craft. • Produced and published two book collections of comics and bonus content. • Wrote, illustrated, and collaborated on strips and stories for Brock Heasley’s The SuperFogeys, published by Th3rd World, Woody After Hours from Ben Carter and Paul Westover, and others. • Promoted work at comic arts festivals, conventions, and book signings. Created marketing materials and leveraged traditional, Web, and social media venues. • Created the site at OdoriPark.com, teaching myself PHP and WordPress to heavily customize the ComicPress theme for a better user experience and unique visual design. • Handled all business operations from accounting to vendor and project management. • Instructor of workshops and classes for children in drawing cartoons and making comics. • Now developing new comics for kids, including Gamescape, which takes a group of wandering monsters through comedy-adventure stories mixed with riddles, puzzles, and games.

Drive exceptional educational platform experiences within a holistic marriage of digital and in-classroom environments. Empower a team of designers to ideate and deliver engaging UX and to champion user-centered design practices for measurable business impact. Key Contributions: • Accelerate team growth through active mentorship, fostering of cross-team connections, and identifying/creating development opportunities. • Shape product strategy by partnering with cross-functional leaders, aligning user experience goals with business objectives, and evolving crossover processes. • Optimize operations including the evolution and integration of the HMH Design System and acceleration of high quality deliverable output. Remove obstacles for team members. Educate and drive adoption of the Shape Up model for cross-functional design and development. • Strengthen stakeholder relationships by building connections at both the leadership level and directly for individual contributors. Demonstrate the measurable value of UX practice with tight integration of UX research and active education. • Transform organizational culture by amplifying contribution models and mindset. Be a hands-on advocate for the team. Champion new UX practices including AI tool adoption and awareness of the "pancaking" of digital teams.

Spear-heading UX design and design discipline growth for the Digital Product Design team dedicated to HMH's Ed e-learning platform and its interrelated products. • Building close cross-functional relationships across product verticals, engineering, design and business teams to facilitate the implementation of holistically designed cross-product experiences for teachers, students, and school administrators. • Hands-on design work from workflows, wireframes and mock-ups to prototypes, UX requirements documents, and facilitation of collaborative workshops. • Evolution of UX design processes and integration methods to support rapid delivery of solutions for user needs and business requirements. • Co-creation and extension of design systems including UX patterns, components, templates, iconography, and copy patterns. • Mentorship and supervision of design staff at multiple experience levels. • Planning and facilitation of user research studies in concert with support from dedicated user research team.

Led UX design for complex software products and product suites, including ThingWorx, PTC's premier tool for creating Internet of Things apps, and the related ecosystem of PTC Smart Connected Operations apps. • Lead designer for the suite of Smart Connected Operations applications, driving a user-centered holistic approach, with test results showing improved comprehension, success, and speed across user tasks. Supervised senior design staff working on the SCO app projects. • Designed the core concept for the next generation of the ThingWorx build environment, combining tools to create IoT mashups and AR experiences. • Co-planned and facilitated design thinking workshops for cross-functional teams. • Collaborated with design team members to build common patterns and components as part of the development of a company-wide design system. • Evolved design processes with organizational leadership to improve lean UX engagement with project teams. Integrated with agile dev teams and provided prototypes, storyboards, and other design artifacts. • Planned usability testing and identified research needs in cooperation with User Research team leads. Directly supported recruiting and research activities at the PTC LiveWorx conference.

Guided a team of interaction designers, graphic designers, user researchers, technical writers and document production specialists to craft the highest quality integrated product and out-of-box experiences. • Directed the creation and implementation of a UX design system for hardware, software, and integrated product experiences. • Spearheaded a corporate initiative to create a holistic strategic vision for the Bose out-of-box experience, setting direction for packaging artwork, structural packaging design, interaction design, and user support and documentation. Identified and evolved the “north star” vision and presented vision direction to stakeholders, key leads, and partner organizations. • Led a dedicated out-of-box experience team to develop and implement style standards, designs and content across the consumer product portfolio. • Managed designers, researchers and writers delivering the largest single year product portfolio launched by Bose, including the ecosystem of SoundTouch Wi-Fi music products. • Provided creative direction of product visual UI design in apps, hardware, and embedded UIs.

Led a multi-disciplinary user experience team through the development of still- and video- capture devices and software. • Coordinated assignments, resources, and design direction for a team of interaction designers, graphic designers, and human factors specialists across an annual portfolio of roughly twenty products, multiple product lines, and affiliated software applications. • Initiated and led integration of a new process for iterative design and testing on touchscreen products, garnering significant measurable improvements in user satisfaction from prior products. • Tracked and maintained reduced budgets while guiding team through continued implementation of the new UI language, improvements in touchscreen product experiences, and multiple user testing activities. • Continued to work with local and international branches and vendors, building relationships that empowered UX team members to deliver their best work.

Designed experiences, interfaces, layouts, icons, and other attributes across a variety of consumer and commercial imaging products. • Led design, refinement, and integration of two new UI design languages across the entire portfolio of Kodak digital cameras. • Collaborated directly with Design Strategy, Product Marketing, and external design and development vendors in the US, Japan, and Taiwan to deliver game-changing user experiences within constrained technical environments. Led or guided interaction design for nearly all digital still cameras from 2008 through 2012. Primary experience designer for touchscreen camera interaction, including the CES Innovations Award-winning Slice. • Championed user experience design through respectful education of broader colleagues on rationales and practices, and by active maturation of interaction design within organization. Participated in planning and results analysis/reporting of user testing. • Lead implementation designer for Kodak's Picture Kiosk Attract Loop. Built relationships within multi-function team and guided sub-teams (marketing and software) through adoption of application and process so that each could reach goals independent of specialized support. • Created interaction and visual UI designs, icons, prototypes, and graphical assets for the Kodak Digital Cinema theater system, the Kodak Picture Kiosk, medical imaging applications, and medical imaging equipment.

Illustrator, concept artist, and character designer for book, board game, video game, comics, and marketing projects. • IIllustrated all assets for the Tiki Mountain board game from Slugfest Games, including game board, character designs and tokens, box cover artwork, and 42 unique event and item cards. • Game illustration for role-playing and collectible card game publishers such as West End Games, Guardians of Order (Big Eyes, Small Mouth), Goodman Games, Z-Man Games (Shadowfist), and others. • Character and prop designs, UI designs, and animation keyframe assets for video games. • Illustration for textbooks, newspapers, and magazines. • Performed all business operations, including marketing, requirements definition, scheduling, budgeting, billing, and customer service.

Identified student language goals. Developed lesson and course plans with periodic progress reviews. Also worked with partner to quickly turn around Japanese-to-English translation of employee surveys and technical documentation.

Creator, editor, publisher, and cartoonist for an online comics anthology site, featuring eleven serialized comic features and ten columns, plus a news blog. Comics included two works of my own: the fantasy adventure Legacy Dawning, and the interactive language-teaching comic Electric Spirit. Also featured were contests and promotions with other comics, pop culture sites, and PR firms representing McFarlane Toys and Universal Home Video.