Contact Me
Email: jmhess77@gmail.com
Phone: 904-864-7014
Education:
Associate of Arts in Web Design and Interactive Media
with a focus on Interaction & visual design and human centered Design principles
The Art Institute of Jacksonville
Current enrolled Courses
hcd Design Thinking & Interaction Design for Usability
AI for designer
Experience:
• Established, updated, and maintained “WildCat”, NewsBank's Enterprise design system and pattern library, growing it to 200+ reusable components built on the MUI component library.
• Conducted, collected, and shared product Ui audit on NewsBank’s three Legacy flagship products to show inconsistent design patterns and decisions.
• Built and managed WildCat variable collections in Figma specifically for color, 8px grid-based spacing and layout, effects, typography, and responsive layout containers.
• Prepared and exported over 300 lines of CSS ready code for Project WildCat - used to establish the redesign base color system in Production.
• Architected and maintained 89+ custom components, establishing consistent UX, interaction, and accessibility standards across the product portfolio.
• Established a weekly component update/release cadence, enabling designers and developers to incorporate current design-system specifications into active product development.
• Served as Lead UI Designer for the company-wide WildCat product redesign initiative, helping establish scalable design patterns and consistent experiences across products.
• Headed UX/UI design for NewsBank's Readex division, launching 11 new consumer facing products within their Life in America product line plus 4 additional historic Readex products.
• Partnered with product managers, project managers, developers, QA, marketing, and stakeholders across the product lifecycle, frequently managing four concurrent projects while identifying risks and communicating complex design solutions.
NEWSBANK INC.
UI/UX Designer | Design System Engineer
SEPTEMBER 2019 - AUGUST 2026
My role with GuideWell as a CX Visual Designer was making sure the six digital customer facing products stay on course and align with the customer journey maps throughout the products life cycle. Much of my work as part of the User Interface design team is to create and implement cutting edge designs using tried and true HCD practices. I strive for an expert level of knowledge of their array of application technologies they utilize on a daily basis. I bring my extensive knowledge and experience in working in an iterative agile environment, designing based on the business analyst’s user stories and acceptance criteria set forth.
My responsibilities include but are not limited to participating in requirements gathering, both qualitative and quantitative research data, definition, and design of new or changing healthcare applications. I seek to design and maintain dynamic user interfaces for multiple web applications as well as follow and assist with the evolution of corporate front-end standards and branding guidelines. I stay hungry and current with web standards and application architectures.
Lead Designer: Served directly under the Communication and Optimization Product Owner as the Lead designer working in an Agile environment to create a communication status dashboard and repository for any type of digital or paper communications sent out to new and existing members. This dashboard had to be able to serve up anywhere from 500 to 10,000 jobs and transactions in any given day. My role as the lead designer was to help drive the entire life cycle of the design process. The dashboard is currently in the testing environment as we push forward to finish this up.
This includes:
Initial wireframes
High and low fidelity mockups
Managed design user stories within the Sprint
Created storyboards for training purposes
Clickable prototypes
Facilitated weekly design sessions with the team
My goal as the Lead UI/UX designer was to create a simple, holistic, user-friendly experience for their internal employees to be able to track and review every single piece of communication or marketing material sent to their members.
Guidewell/Florida blue
Tailored managemenT
UI/UX Designer -
Visual UI designer
February 2019 – JULY 2019
Logisticare .LLC
UI/UX Designer -
Jr. UX Engineer
February 2017 – Nov. 2018
Remote
My duties at Logisticare were to work directly with the UX and development teams to assist with rapid prototyping and creating templates for a large Enterprise level web application. I also have participated in several on site user testing sessions with low fidelity prototypes to collect the necessary data needed to complete our evaluations. I was responsible for facilitating the needs of both the UX team as well as the developers working on the application and taking the necessary steps in order to deliver a solid, functional, systemic product within an Agile environment.
Selected to convert from contractor to a founding member of the UX team at LogistiCare.
o Ensured designs handed over to the development team would function and respond to particular business rules and requirements defined by the product team.
o Acted as an intermediary between the UX team, UI developers, and QA to aid in the success of the final product.
o Provided accessibility guidance and recommendations to meet the WCAG AA standards.
o Create wireframes, storyboards, user and work flows, interactive prototypes and sitemaps to communicate interaction and design ideas.
o Present and defend designs and key milestone deliverables to peers and executives alike.
o Conduct user research and evaluate user feedback
o Made certain the final product met the vision and intention of the UX team on the first development iteration by partnering with QA and development.
o Reduced the number of bugs by 30%
VIZERGY DIGITAL MARKETING
FRONT END WEB DESIGNER
NOVember 2016 - FEBRUARY 2017
Vizergy is a marketing agency that services, hotels, resorts, restaurants and more within the digital advertising sector. I was hired on as a web designer/developer to help implement new HTML templates to pre-existing and new website designs working in a waterfall development process.
o Duties included designing and development of the UI for site concepts for clients in a waterfall design and development process.
o Create wireframes, storyboards, user and work flows, interactive prototypes and sitemaps to communicate interaction and design ideas.
o Worked closely with BA’s, Marketing team members, management as well as the Sales team to produce a clean responsive product that would ultimately serve thousands of customers coming to these hotel sites to book reservations.
o Used Responsive Web Design techniques to implement mobile friendly websites.
o Participated in for client meetings and provided guidance on new functionality, design choices/style guides.
INTERACTIVE RESOURCES
UI/UX DESIGNEr | DEVELOPER
JULY 2015 - JULY 2016
I accepted a one-year contracted Front End Web Developer position with Fidelity National Finance to assist in their Nationwide Web Based Leveraged Solutions Marketing and rebranding project. This entailed designing and development of over 300 title company websites across the US. We used TFS to manage daily tasks and development of these sites.
o Involved in redesigning existing older table-based layout sites and rebuilding those using Twitter Bootstrap to create mobile friendly websites in their chosen CMS Percussion.
o Managed and deployed the sites to both development servers and a “Live Environment” once they went through QA and extensive UAT by the clients.
o Designed and developed new layouts for templates and assigned the proper corresponding div classes and ID’s on the templates to create the final pages and templates used in Fidelity National Finance products.
o Managed the placement of new content that came into Basecamp and had to routinely keep up with daily updates and changes to any of the new website's content sent in by BA’s. This included but was not limited to employee information, new graphics, design iterations and any new imagery that needed to be implemented into the site.
o Worked in an Agile development environment with Sprints that would normally last 3 to 4 weeks.
o Participated in Sprint retrospectives and Sprint review meetings.
o Created and assigned tasks not only myself but to other teammates as well was held accountable for the accuracy of the assigned hours it would take to complete the specific tasks for the sites for each sprint.
Advantage Design GROUP
UI/UX DESIGNEr | DEVELOPER
January 2013 - July 2015
Advantage Design was my first job after graduating and I was a the fresh face newbie that no one knew. To say I was nervous was an understatement. It wasn’t until I started there and realized just how freaking cool the people and this job was. I was greeted with open arms and any questions I had. If it wasn’t for ADG giving me a chance, who knows where I would be today. So, to say I came in here knowing everything would just be silly. I was like a bull in a china shop. But, it didn’t take long for me to have that first creative brief sitting on my desk waiting for me. 😎
My Duties Included:
o Designed and developed the UI/UX for site concepts for clients in a waterfall development process.
o Completed user research to identify opportunities for improving Web presence. o Partnered with User Interface Designers, Web Developers and Creative Directors to translate information architecture, navigation and process flows into easy -to-use solutions.
o Created user flows, hand drawn wireframes, then converted them to low fidelity designs. They were then taken into Photoshop or Adobe Reflow to build out the concept including all the major break points from desktop to mobile to present to the client.
o Started to learn/write semantic HTML markup and CSS to develop a fully functioning alpha design to present to the client in face to face meetings usually. I would then hand it off to the development team to implement the beta stage for integration into the CMS Umbraco.
o Used Responsive Web techniques best practices when started to take off in the market .