Lydia Gilbert š
Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary creative using my background in cognitive science and user psychology to inform user-centric design, and my arts and programming backgrounds to create engaging visuals and thoughtful products.
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UI/UX at Slate Magazine
Helping out at Bed-Stuy Strong
Check out my resumƩ and LinkedIn, drop me a line at lydiaggilbert@gmail.com.
Material+
I'm currently Senior Designer at the qual research division of Material+, a full-service market research and consulting agency where I have the opportunity to bring insights to life for clients including Amazon, L'Oreal, Apple, Sony, Visa, Savage x Fenty, and Facebook.
I create impactful deliverables to present consumer insights, spanning various forms of media including slide decks, print, web, and video. My detail-oriented design work turns complex information into engaging, rich stories.
I built up our division's UX research capabilities, both as sole wireframe and prototype designer and as an authority on user testing methods. I presented to an audience of 100+ to train researchers on UX research tools and best practices, and have since frequently been consulted across the company on new UX projects and pitches.
I have won both the āOutstanding Contributionā and āOffice Sparkā awards for my expansion of our UX work and for being an innovative and energizing presence on the team. I have also been solo designer on five consecutive Reports of the Quarter, an award highlighting impactful and innovative projects across Material+.
While most of my work here is proprietary, I'm more than happy to discuss case studies and favorite projects!
I create impactful deliverables to present consumer insights, spanning various forms of media including slide decks, print, web, and video. My detail-oriented design work turns complex information into engaging, rich stories.
I built up our division's UX research capabilities, both as sole wireframe and prototype designer and as an authority on user testing methods. I presented to an audience of 100+ to train researchers on UX research tools and best practices, and have since frequently been consulted across the company on new UX projects and pitches.
I have won both the āOutstanding Contributionā and āOffice Sparkā awards for my expansion of our UX work and for being an innovative and energizing presence on the team. I have also been solo designer on five consecutive Reports of the Quarter, an award highlighting impactful and innovative projects across Material+.
While most of my work here is proprietary, I'm more than happy to discuss case studies and favorite projects!
Alation
In Summer 2018, I had the opportunity tointern in UI/UX at Alation, adata catalog startup working to empower businesses to make data-drivendecisions. Iworked on many exciting projects, helping Alation accomplish some of their keygoals in expanding their product offerings and staying a leader in a buddingmarket. My capstone project wasto visually represent complex data lineage maps at different levels of granularity,giving data stewards a thorough and multidimensional history of each data point. The challenge of designing thistool is the constantly developing nature of data and how to include vastamounts of history without overwhelming the user. Working with engineers and productmanagers, I completed front-to-backdesign, prototyping, and user testing of the data lineage tracking tool using Sketch, InVision, and Lookback.io. This and other projects are proprietarywithin Alationās system, butthis image is a representative example map of one data point.
Critical Making
The following projects are from ComputerScience 298 ā Critical Making: Materials, Protocols, and Culture at UC Berkeley. In this innovative and thought-provoking course, we explored various design techniques and the implications of the maker movement, as well as fabrication, prototyping, and testing strategies. The class is project-based, with each "provocation" having a conceptual prompt involving emerging technologies like wearables and connected devices, and prominent themes like sustainability, transportation, and safety. My roles on all these projects included ideation, sketching, wire-framing, prototyping and fabrication, user testing, and construction of the physical product. While none are meant to be marketable products, they are meant to stretch the bounds of design thinking and learn hands-on solutions for bringing these concepts to life from front to back.
Provocation 01: Talkbox is a movement-powered device for Uber drivers and passengers. While moving, a propeller on top of the car powers a Bluetooth-enabled printer inside the car to generate an ice-breaker question to foster fun communication between drivers and passengers. I designed the casing for the propeller and printer, created with laser-cut wood.
Provocation 02: Pogo-litical is a connected pogo stick that signals a swinging robotic arm. We decided to make it a political challenge, pogo left and swat a photo of the "right" candidate, and pogo right to swat a photo of the "left" candidate. The pogo stick and robotic arm are fully functional, and I designed the graphics and presentation for the project.
Provocation 03: Wanderer is a sweatshirt enabled with NeoPixel lights in the sleeves and connected to the directions app on your phone to guide you when walking. Light patterns indicate when to turn and when youāve arrived. I sewed the electric and LED components and designed the presentation for the project.
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Paper Road
Paper Road is an exciting tournament-style Rock Paper Scissors competition app with rapid game rounds and cash prizes. Featuring livestreams of participants, there is an innovative human connection component that other game apps don't have. I designed all brand elements including graphics, logo, and animations for Paper Road in late 2018, as well as created an interactive prototype of the app using Figma. The flows include rapid game matches and user sorting. See mocks of tournament logistics, gameplay, and account management below!
Bed-Stuy Strong
Bed-Stuy Strong is a mutual aid network in central Brooklyn that began at the outset of Covid-19 to address rising food insecurity in our historic neighborhood. Since its founding, it has redistributed over one million dollars back into the community in the form of food, baby supplies, medication, financial assistance, and so much more. BSS volunteers have also started wide-ranging initiatives including vaccine outreach, political education book clubs, voter and census outreach and support, and letter-writing to incarcerated neighbors. I joined Bed-Stuy Strongās communications team in August 2020 to contribute to their social media graphic design, largely for their Instagram of over 13,000 followers. I set out a joyful and inclusive aesthetic now replicated throughout BSS. HSome of my favorite graphics are posted here!
Additionally, IĀ pioneered a merchandise fundraiser using art contributed by 20 local POC and LGBTQ+ artists. IĀ worked with each artist individually to refine their visions and publish their delightful designs. The program raised over $9,000 for BSS and the artists in seven months. While it is paused now, you can see our best-selling pieces here and a BK Reader article about the initiative here.
Additionally, IĀ pioneered a merchandise fundraiser using art contributed by 20 local POC and LGBTQ+ artists. IĀ worked with each artist individually to refine their visions and publish their delightful designs. The program raised over $9,000 for BSS and the artists in seven months. While it is paused now, you can see our best-selling pieces here and a BK Reader article about the initiative here.
A La Carte
A La Carte is an RFID-connected shopping cart and companion app which help grocery shoppers be more informed in real-time during their shopping journey. This concept was created for Computer Science 160 - User Interface Design at UC Berkeley. Our team's Medium.com write-up explains in detail the initial prototyping, user testing, and building of the final product. I wrote the piece and created all the graphics, including all interfaces, interactions, product logo, and photographic mock-ups. We were very excited about this project and our work has since been shown to subsequent classes ofCS160 as an outstanding example to follow.Ā Check out our write-up here.
material
bed stuy strong
alation
paper road
a la carte
critical making