Lisa Colvin

Current

Practice Lead, User Experience Architecture (Southern California) at Ascentium Corporation
Principal at Lisa Colvin Consulting - Strategic User Experience Design

Past

Director, User Experience at Adapt Technologies
Manager, Information Architecture and Usability at Spot Runner, Inc.
Senior Information Architect/ Creative Lead at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Online

Business Systems Analysis Lead at MetLife
Platinum Systems Analysis Lead at Countrywide Financial Corporation
Director, Information Architecture at DNA Studio
Regional Special Projects Manager / Senior Information Architect at Full Moon Interactive
Consultant at Additional Experience

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Education

University of California, Los Angeles
University of Southern California

Recommended

24 people have recommended Lisa

Connections

500+ connections

Industry

Online Media

Lisa Colvin’s Summary

Strategic design leader with 13+ years building and leading multi-divisional teams and projects in the creation of immersive and engaging user experiences across entertainment, retail/e-commerce, search, travel, automotive and financial verticals; extensive background facilitating cross-functional collaboration between advertising, marketing, creative, technical and business partners to achieve market growth and ongoing profitability for products and services; thorough understanding of design opportunities presented by emerging technologies; ability to drive the full project lifecycle from concept and translation of complex business and technical requirements through successful creative execution.

Lisa Colvin’s Specialties:

Strategic & Tactical Creative Team Leadership; User Experience & Interaction Design; Product & Content Development; Brand Management & Art Direction

Lisa Colvin’s Experience

Practice Lead, User Experience Architecture (Southern California)

Ascentium Corporation

(Privately Held; 201-500 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

2007 — Present (1 year)

* lead and grow the User Experience/ Information Architecture practice in the Southern California region, assisting in establishment of the team as design leaders in the interactive and emerging technology space
* define the vision and direct the integration of experience design strategies and practices into the creative/ technical development process, ensuring that all practices effectively and directly address business needs while focusing on the overall user experience
* contribute to the acquisition, maintenance and enhancement of customer relationships via sales and business development efforts, representing the discipline and the company in client meetings, proposals and presentation of creative concepts and deliverables
* serve as the primary user advocate and UX lead on cross-disciplinary project teams, making the complex simple and creating effective, innovative and usable solutions
Principal

Lisa Colvin Consulting - Strategic User Experience Design

(Internet industry)

2001 — Present (7 years)

* advise on in-flight and upcoming creative projects to establish strategic direction and identify opportunities for tactical improvements
* design interfaces, interaction plans and experience paths for software products, web-based applications and branded sites
* conduct site and system heuristic evaluations, user experience assessments, competitive analyses, focus groups and usability tests
Director, User Experience

Adapt Technologies

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)

2007 — 2007 (less than a year)

* responsible for the overall user experience of a suite of web-based consumer applications and associated corporate sites, including strategic product management, content and copy, information architecture, interaction & visual design, user research and testing
* built and led a team of designers, writers and developers through a redesign/ merge of two corporate/ e-commerce sites and a launch of two new tiers of the product application
* partnered with Sales and Customer Service Teams to recruit a beta-council of subscribers and set up ongoing research/ testing procedures
* collaborated with Marketing leadership to define the brand and voice of the company
Manager, Information Architecture and Usability

Spot Runner, Inc.

(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Internet industry)

2006 — 2007 (1 year)

* recruited to build an entirely new interaction design division for a startup company
* coordinated with multi-level divisional leads to create process, hire a team and implement procedures integrating structured user experience architecture and usability practices into the existing visual design/ technical development frameworks
* evolved user testing capabilities by improving facilities via software purchases, equipment upgrades and physical layout changes; augmented user testing recruitment techniques and taught improved moderation and report generation
Senior Information Architect/ Creative Lead

Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Online

(Public Company; 201-500 employees; Internet industry)

2005 — 2006 (1 year)

* created engaging and innovative site experiences for multiple brand partners, focusing on e-commerce solutions and consumer-facing web applications
* managed team building, cross-departmental knowledge sharing efforts and resource allocation, provided ongoing mentoring, evaluated vendor deliverables, wrote job descriptions, assessed and interviewed candidates
* developed standards for UX design deliverables, led Flash process flow/ storyboarding process development, designed QA, usability and user acceptance tests
* consulted on multiple cross-business unit issues to ensure communication and consistency among projects and processes
* collaborated on advanced strategic project efforts to promote the brand, including iPod platform, social networking and word-of-mouth initiatives
Business Systems Analysis Lead

MetLife

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

2003 — 2005 (2 years)

* headed the systems analysis effort for multiple web-based applications with a mainframe back end, managing multiple simultaneous large-scale projects in differing stages of development
* created standards for documentation including process flows, wireframes, use cases, site architectures, and functional specifications
* represented the BSA/ UXA practice throughout the organization, speaking at conferences and training sessions and mentoring other analysts
Platinum Systems Analysis Lead

Countrywide Financial Corporation

(Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

2002 — 2003 (1 year)

* primary liaison between users, vendors and design/development team regarding all issues for a web-based application handling $19 billion per month in submissions
* supervised full lifecycle development from conception to launch
* investigated, identified and implemented user change requests in consultation with developers and the analyst team, designing prototypes, layout and flow for all new features
Director, Information Architecture

DNA Studio

(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Internet industry)

2001 — 2001 (less than a year)

* led creative/ interaction design strategy on motion picture and television marketing site projects for clients such as Sony, Viacom, Paramount, Universal and Warner Brothers
* served as the link between design, engineering, marketing and production as the designated user advocate, mentoring co-workers in user experience best practices
* developed templates and procedures; wrote complex technical use case, schematic and wireframe documentation
Regional Special Projects Manager / Senior Information Architect

Full Moon Interactive

(Public Company; 201-500 employees; Internet industry)

1999 — 2001 (2 years)

* guided creative process for design deliverables including data models, site architectures, wireframes, process and user flows for large-scale transactional sites in collaboration with designers, technologists and strategists
* developed process methodology intranet as a senior member of Process Development Team
* administered office operations: allocated resources, assigned project managers, organized training, planned moves
* clients included Dell, Oral-B, Gillette, CarsDirect.com, Wells Fargo Bank, Citigroup
Consultant

Additional Experience

(Online Media industry)

1994 — 1998 (4 years)

* Toyota USA National Headquarters - Archives and Research Center
* DreamWorks, SKG - Digital Animation Archive
* UCLA Film and Television Archive - Digital Media Lab
* Los Angeles Times - Photo Library
* GapKids/ BabyGap

Lisa Colvin’s Education

University of California, Los Angeles

Masters, Information Science, 1996 — 1999
University of Southern California

BA, Communication Arts and Sciences, 1986 — 1990

Additional Information

Lisa Colvin’s Groups:

* Interaction Design Association (Presenter, Facilitator)
* American Institute for the Graphic Arts (SIG – Experience Design)
* Information Architecture Institute (nominated for a Board of Directors position, Mentoring Initiatives)
* Boxes & Arrows (Editorial Staff, Online Professional Journal)
* Association of Information Science & Technology (SIG – Information Architecture)(Program Evaluation and Committee Leader)
* Association of Computing Machinery (SIG – Computer Human Interaction)