About
The medium changed. The instinct didn’t.
For nearly a decade, I turned footage into something audiences could follow and respond to. Now the raw material is research, behavior, systems, and product complexity. I help teams see what matters and decide what to do next.
- 6 years as a UX Designer and Researcher
- Detroit area · Remote ·
What that looks like now
Today, I work across product discovery, research, experience design, and post-launch evaluation. I am often brought into work where the request is still fuzzy, the evidence is scattered, or teams need a clearer way forward. My role is to find the decision underneath the request, create the right research or design mechanism, and help people act on what we learn.
- Built a customer-research program that turned partner conversations into five qualified product opportunities Smurfit WestRock
- Restructured two financial websites around distinct audience needs and more relevant customer journeys Lending experience
- Designed human research that validated a navigation problem, helped unlock a new mega menu, and returned after launch to evaluate early behavior Atlanta Beltline
Before product design
Before UX, I spent nearly a decade working across film production and post. Camera operation for live events at UC Santa Barbara, editing those events for UCTV, then television post, dailies, and trailer work.
Then a trailer my team cut went into audience testing. Watching strangers react to choices we had argued about internally changed the conversation, and it changed mine. Instinct was no longer the only thing we had to work with, and I wanted to build a career around the part that could be learned.
I became fascinated by what happened when creative decisions met a real audience.
What carried over
- Film Understand how an audience is responding
- ProductStudy how people behave, interpret, and decide
- Film Find the story in a large amount of material
- ProductTurn research and complexity into a usable direction
- Film Collaborate across specialized disciplines
- ProductAlign product, design, engineering, and stakeholders
From people I’ve worked with
“She expertly translates complex research data sets and customer feedback into key insights, consistently delivering high-quality work that aligns user needs with business goals.”
Everett Lee
Product Management Leader
“Lauren makes the complex simple. She stays laser focused on experience and process design, and is a keen executor as well as strategist. I would hire Lauren again in a heartbeat.”
Geoffrey Held
Chief Product and Technology Officer
“Her facilitation has been critical to aligning cross-functional teams and ensuring that projects move forward with clarity and momentum.”
John Coria
Fractional Head of Product and Design
Where I do my best work
In-house, on consequential problems, close enough to product, engineering, data and business partners that discovery reaches implementation.