Photo of Laura Wilkens

Laura Wilkens, CUA

UXD / UI / Digital Strategy

Good design communicates.
Great design compels.

Hi. I’m Laura and I evangelize for UX Design Thinking and develop UX Design Ops that support the business and our clients. User experience design is a savvy business strategy and provides a competitive advantage. As advocates for the user, UXD is committed to building inclusive, trust-worthy, and human-centered design solutions. As a Certified Usability Analyst, it’s challenging and exciting to apply cognitive science and psychology to design for the best possible outcomes.

Having worked for world-class corporations, a Silicon Valley Ag Tech company and small start-ups, in Corporate Comm Marketing and IT, growth has been inevitable working with the talent that I’ve worked with. These collaborations have helped evolve my expertise in all facets of Digital Design: Experience Design, User Interface Design, Brand, Visual, and Interactive Design.

Presently, I’m a UX/UI Design lead at EMC Insurance working on myriad products using interruptive and critical thinking skills. As their first UX designer, my charge was building out these processes and securing their alignment with business and product teams. This includes implementing ongoing usability tests to discover important user insights through qual and quant testing. We are creating a Design System for reducing tech debt and building a more holistic user experience across our platforms. My mission is to teach others not just about the “how,” but the “why” of UX design.

My mantra: Know Thy User. My work style: help each other be successful and have fun doing it, solve problems, respect others, my locus of control is internal. It makes life happier.

  • Product Design
    Agile Framework
    Building a Design System for EMC Transformation Apps
    User Experience (UX) Design
    User Interface (UI)
    Interaction Design
    Mentoring and sharing knowledge of the UX methodology
    Discovering and maximizing business value and ROI through Product Design
    Reduce design and tech debt by building design systems that inform everyone
    and keep it holistic
    Provide expertise at all levels of the agile UX and dev ops process including:
    Evidence-based concepts
    Responsive, inclusive, accessible, robust and mobile-first design concepts
    Interactive non-coded prototypes
    Generative discovery and evaluative research methods
    Experience / empathy / journey mapping
    Storymapping and writing
    Profile building

  • Presently: EMC Insurance
    Granular (A software division of Corteva, based in San Francisco)
    Meredith Corporation (Dotdash Meredith)
    Nationwide Insurance

  • Art Institute of Pittsburgh — Interactive Design
    Ohio State Fisher School of Business — Marketing
    Simpson College — Spanish

    Certifications and training
    SAFeHuman Factors International Certified Usability Analyst

  • Panel speaker at [Wo]man Up AIGA Design Conference

    Experience UX DSM

    ISU graphic design lecture

    SE POLK Career Days

    DSM Storytellers on redemptive powers of art

  • I want to be a life long learner. I have no shame in admitting what I don’t know and asking others to teach me.

    My bikes keep me moving and climate-conscious. Inline skating is a a newly revived recreation of mine - wish me luck! How many people say they love snow and the sports that come with it, but I do. Kayaking - even better.

    MCM, post-modern and brutalist design have always caught my eye. #GeoPonti #OscarNiemeyer

    I’m into reading and traveling to see as many art museums as I can, and the same goes for architecture. In line with that, urban planning has caught my interest as well as living a more sustainable life. I make it a passion to find street and graffiti art including Banski on the West Bank in Bethlehem. I also enjoy painting (see link below for more).

    I have mastered the Belgian Liege waffle. I may be “waffley” nice, but I’m not giving up my recipe. ;)