KATE USHAKOVA
Contact Information
Mobile: 617 7843182
Email: ushakova@gmail.com
Address: 52 Harold Street, Sharon, MA
SKills
Management:
Team management, collaboration, design review facilitation, coaching, mentoring, art direction, data-driven design decisions, iterative improvement plans, scalable experiences, growth mindset, ability to influence leadership, thriving in a face-paced environment, holistic product development, written and verbal communication skills, cross-function collaboration
User Experience:
UX Strategy, Human-Centered Design, Accessible Design, User Experience Research (Surveys, A/B Testing, Qualitative Research, Heuristic Evaluations), UX/UI Design (Prototypes, Wireframes, Workflows, User Flows, Storyboards, User Maps, HCI, etc.), User Persona Research & Creation, Visual Design, Design Systems, Personalization, Interaction design, animation.
Technical Skills:
Design and Prototyping (Figma, Sketch, Azure, Abstract, Adobe CC (Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, inDesign) Microsoft Office (Powerpoint, Excel, Word, Outlook), Work Management software (Rally, Jira, Trillo) User Research (UserTesting, User Interviews, Adobe Analytics, Clarabridge, Medallia, Glassbox), Content management (Adobe AEM, Teamsite, Wordpress)
Experience
Citizens Bank / VP, Principal UX Designer
July 2020 - present
In my role as Principal User Experience Designer, I have developed a comprehensive UX strategy for the Citizens Access suite of digital products. I fostered cross-functional collaboration with business stakeholders, product owners, engineers, and technical architects. This included conducting design reviews and stakeholder demonstrations, and establishing a seamless, human-centered, and data-driven design approach to ensure continuous delivery. By incorporating design system components and tokens, improved our team’s efficiency in delivering designs in a fast-paced environment.
Drove a 60% improvement in CSAT (customer satisfaction) score by completing a redesign of the storefront website.
Directly led the design team in the development of the brand new Citizens Access Mobile App, currently servicing over 100K monthly users
Spearheaded convergence effort, by delivering a comprehensive product growth strategy for combining consumer-facing applications under one umbrella. Supplied research-driven wireframes and prototypes that helped influence and align the leadership team around a common vision. Established a mobile component library that would serve as a basis for a unified code base.
Managed and coached a team of designers, helping them enhance their skills, stay updated on industry trends, and encourage innovation by running regular design workshops.
Manulife / UX Lead Designer
May 2016 - July 2020
Successfully led .com redesign project transforming the site from legacy systems to a responsive component-based CMS. Designed component architecture, and delivered user interfaces for content authors. Reduced the delivery timelines by over 90%.
Delivered end-to-end customer-facing experience, by conducting customer journey workshops, developing a set of user personas, collecting user and market research, and delivering UX design artifacts from low-fidelity wireframes to high-fidelity mockups, prototypes, and all the supporting assets.
John Hancock / Senior UX Designer
January 2014 - May 2016
Delivered high-quality mobile and web applications to support ongoing marketing campaigns, including yearly Boston Marathon activation that included RunBold mobile app, Jumbotron experience, Boston Sports Expo digital marketing experiences, promotional landing pages, and websites for runners and media. Advocated the value of human-centered UX design by facilitating design-thinking workshops across the organization.
Previous experience
John Hancock, Senior Interactive Designer / Envision, Art Director / Dentino Marketing, Art Director
Education
UX Design Bootcamp / Nielsen Norman Group
Masters of Science / Advertising / Boston University
BFA / Graphic Design / Mass College of Art & Design