Steve LaFrance's Portfolio

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Executive Summary

• Intuitive designer with 10+ years of experience; leverages industry knowledge and creativity to guide projects to new and successful solutions.
• Highly organized and productive, delivers solid designs and specifications well within established timeframes.
• Flexible and able to adjust to changing priorities, harnesses insights to find the most valuable product elements and keeps it the primary focus when project directions are adjusted.
• Mentor and product specialist, able to field technical and process questions to help team members understand products and reasons behind design solutions.
• Notable project management abilities, supports projects through each development stage, maintains composure throughout high-paced sprint phases.

Core Proficiencies

Branding | Client Engagement | Content Development | Illustration | Logo Creation | Prototyping Presentation and Public Speaking | Time Management | User Testing | Wireframing | Brainstorming Industry Research  | Accessibility Best Practices 

Experience

Daimler Truck North America   Portland, OR     2022 – Today
A heavy-duty truck manufacturer, DTNA provides the web based CHEC tool to its customers that allows them to quickly and easily customize vehicles functions to their industry specific needs.

Sr. User Experience Designer

• Joined the project to design and oversee the vehicle virtual dash area of the application. By actively engaging with the tool became a subject matter expert (SME) for most of the product.
• Undertake three to six Product Backlog Items (PBI) each 5-week sprint. Engage with development teams and Product Owners to identify core goals. Create user flows to identify the optimal approach. Publish detailed annotations for each PBI for use in the development process.
• Negotiate potential solutions with Product Owners and development teams, modifying concepts to incorporate feedback and technical restrictions of the applications coding system.

Key accomplishments

• Streamlined and simplified previously complex workflows for creating custom logic. These changes improved user understanding and reduced the volume of requests for assistance sent to the product service team.
• Introduced a new QR code based process for use in the manufacturing facility, eliminated the need for plant employees to manually review DOS based content when building custom assemblies.
• Updated the visual treatment of old but highly visible areas of the tool. These improvements allow users to quickly identify the status of their vehicle in a single pass instead of requiring them to review dense tables of content.

Tektronix   Beaverton, OR     2012 – 2018
Industry leading manufacturer of test and measurement devices used for research, design, and troubleshooting of highly complex electrical devices across the world.

Graphic Designer, User Experience Designer, Industrial Designer

• Originally contracted to design and manage device graphics for approximately 30% of company’s products, within two years was coordinating and developing graphics for 90% of the Tektronix’ product portfolio.
• Collaborated on the design of new products and applications. Delivered specifications for physical product designs along with new digital assets that were used in each specialized software applications user interface.
• Annually managed the design, production, and printing of all content for a corporate event recognizing employees for their achievements in the previous year. Supplied customized concepts and final designs based on each years unique theme.

Key accomplishments

• Based on past successes was assigned to a multimillion-dollar product development project, revised previously created design guidelines to focus on ease of use, introduced new visual treatments to the interface. On release the product surpassed expected user adoption and sales goals, this device became the foundation for the majority of future products in that market space.
• Shifted the design approach for new products to focus on novice and middle-tier users along with expert users. This change in design paradigm improved the accessibility of the units helping to improve adoption in both college and entry-level user markets.

LaFrance Graphic Design   Portland, OR     2008 – Today
Independent creative, provides digital and physical collateral to clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to sole-proprietors.

Graphic Designer, Illustrator, UI Designer, Design Lead

• Specialized in communicating with clients to identify their core needs and prioritize those
  above secondary requests. This guidance ensured that the work did not stray outside of the projects budget.
• Worked with highly unrefined requests, took the time to guide the client through the discovery process and identify what was needed most before starting any work, saving clients time and money and improving the working relationship.
• Project managed and led a team of illustrators over the course of a yearlong project, provided new illustrators coaching to bring their work into alignment with the clients style, negotiated change requests to keep rework within the contract guidelines.

Technology
Adobe Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Audition, XD) – Figma – G Suite – Azure – Jira – Microsoft Office Suite – Zeplin – Asana – Monday.com

Education
Art Institute of Portland – Bachelor of Graphic Design
Interaction Design Foundation – UX track

Patents
US-11231444-B1 – Jan 2022
US-D894024-S – Aug 2020
US-D839115-S – Jan 2019
US-D786107-S – May 2017