My journey as an artist and designer spans most of my life. It began like many - doodling in my notebook turned into taking formal art lessons, which inspired me to study Art at University. I earned my B.A. in Studio Art, concentrating on the traditional disciplines of painting, drawing, printmaking and photography and I fell in love with the Creative Process.

As a Graphic Design intern during the final year of my undergrad, I became fascinated with how people use computers to express their creativity. My boss, and first Design mentor, taught me the fundamentals of digital design and I learned how to learn by reading all of the software manuals for the top design programs in use at the time.

My career took a detour when I moved from New England to Southern California to pursue competitive surfing. I became a Senior Analyst for a large property management firm where I learned business operations and how to work as part of a team to find solutions to large scale problems.

Driven by my love for Art and Design, I went back to school to complete a Master’s degree program in Interaction & UI/UX Design. I transitioned into the design industry while in school and I’ve been a professional designer now for more than 7 years.

In that time I’ve conducted hours of user research, countless usability tests, designed and deployed hundreds of projects, and worked for some amazing design agencies, SaaS startups, and global companies.

I'm grateful for a successful career where I get to pursue my passion for defining and solving people's problems with digital solutions — a career where I get to push my creativity every day.
Experience
  • UX Designer
    Amazon Web Services (AWS) | Aug 2022 - Present
  • Product Designer
    Dictionary.com | Sep 2021 - July 2022
  • UI Designer
    CentralSquare Technologies | Apr 2021 - Sep 2021
  • Visual Designer
    Superior Court of Orange County | Feb 2019 - April 2021
  • Visual Designer
    OnScale Inc. | Feb 2019 - Nov 2019
  • Web Designer
    Saratech Inc. | Apr 2018 - Feb 2019
  • Web Designer
    KWSM Digital | Mar 2017 - Apr 2018
  • Web / Graphic Designer
    Harcourts Prime Properties | Nov 2016 - Mar 2017
  • Digital Media Specialist
    Toshiba Medical Systems | Jun 2016 - Oct 2016 (contract)
Education
  • University of California Irvine
    UX/UI Design Certificate | 2021
  • Academy of Art University
    MFA, Interaction & UI/UX Design | 2018
  • Bloc
    Certificate Front-End Web Developer Program | 2017
  • University of New Hampshire
    BA, Studio Art | 1998
  • University of Guam
    BA, Student Exchange Program, Studio Art | 1995
 
Software Skills
Figma
Adobe XD
Sketch
Framer
InVision
Visual Studio
GitHub
Webflow
Technical Skills

Design

  • UX/UI & Visual Design
  • Iterative Prototyping
  • Wireframing / Mockups
  • User Flows
  • Information Architecture
  • UX Copywriting
  • HTML/CSS, JS/jQuery
  • Motion Graphics

Research

  • User Research
  • Usability / A/B Testing
  • User Interviews
  • User Personas / Scenarios / Journeys
  • Card Sorting
  • Competitive Analysis
  • Heuristic Analysis
  • Google Analytics / Search Console
Coding Skills
HTML
CSS
JavaScript
jQuery
 
What Colleagues Say:
Steve is a true professional Creative. He has the ultimate combination of project management experience, technical knowledge, and the ability to create a variety of marketing materials starting from brochures, to videos, to corporate headshots, to the front and back-end of websites.

Steve has a varied and strong skill set that includes web development/design (front and back-end), videography, photography, and graphic design. Because of his systematic approach, he is able to see projects to completion - whether the project is the development of a UI for a new software application, editing a YouTube video series, or re-launching a website. Steve loves what he does - and it shows in his work.

One of the things that I appreciate the most about working with Steve is his ability to find ways to improve any project in which he is involved. Because Steve stays on top of the latest developments for website implementations, social promotion techniques, web lead generation, SEO, etc. - he always provides great suggestions of how we can make a project better and is always willing to help.

When I work with Steve- I am constantly growing and advancing my own skills as a marketer. I feel very lucky to have him as part of my team!
Masha Petrova
Vice President of Brand Marketing at Altium®
Steve is a dependable, professional, dedicated and talented team player. In addition, he is just a really genuinely kind person with incredible integrity. He always seeks to find the best process for any project he's working on, and proactively seeks the most efficient ways to communicate and successfully complete projects. He is the technical expert you need on your team, as he can design and build any marketing/visual assets - be it a brochure, case study, various ads, videos, or even a whole bespoke website from scratch!

It's rare to work with someone who has so much technical knowledge, coupled with a positive and can-do attitude. I greatly enjoyed working with Steve and highly recommend him for any team looking for a capable, knowledgable, authentic team member to contribute to better processes and overall success!
Samantha Chou
Marketing Manager at Altium®
Steve was an integral member of our web team. He not only designed and developed great looking websites but he handled the majority of the tech support and became our master troubleshooter in the office.

He's very knowledgeable and always willing to help! Steve is also a super talented photographer. When our clients didn't have the photos to support the new website we were building them Steve would go out of his way to take photos specifically for that client so that he could deliver a quality end product that was an authentic representation of the company.

In the time I've worked with Steve he showed a lot of initiative by bringing new ideas to the team and helping to create new systems and processes to help make our department run more effectively.
Angela Smith
Senior Web Designer, KWSM
Steve is a great web designer specializing in UI/UX and is capable of taking his designs and turn them into elegantly developed websites with the user put at the forefront.

He was instrumental in getting accessibility requirements implemented for a client of ours. He was also very good at turning around designs quickly and adapting to the ever changing demands of clients. I would happily work with Steve again and am excited to see where his career takes him.
John R. Holman
Software Engineer, Harbor
I worked with Steve at KWSM Digital. Not only was he always willing to help solve problems, but he also provided ideas to our whole office on how to make things work more efficiently. He’d always get the job done and would make sure it was done well. His design and photography skills were a huge asset to our team. We constantly received positive feedback from clients about his work. I really enjoyed working with Steve and knew I could rely on him during projects.
Ansley Vasconcellos
Marketing Manager at Chopra
Steve is a tremendous collaborator and very effective web and graphic designer. I worked with Steve for a year at Saratech and he redesigned our entire corporate website and assisted me with the legal page for all of our contracts and relevant legal documents. His commitment-level is impressive, his knowledge base is formidable and he is a very nice person.
Ali Heidari
Legal Counsel at Mainfreight
Steve has been amazing to work with. He communicates very well and his files are always ready for print. He also designs some great looking material.
Brittan Burns
VP Sales, LightSource Printing