Hey there!

I'm Joel Elizaga. I'm a UX engineer and technologist fueled by a fascination for human-computer interaction and informatics to build technologies that advance human thriving.

• I've recently completed a certificate in Full Stack Development with JavaScript and I'm looking for work in front-end development, UX engineering, and full-stack development.
• I've worked on numerous projects for large corporate clients, including Intel, T-Mobile, PwC, and the (admittedly non-corporate) city of Providence, RI as a UX designer at Infosys Ltd.
• My aim is to build technologies that advance human thriving, whether that's through development or design.

UX Designer · Infosys Ltd.

As a UX design consultant at Infosys I worked with a multitude of clients, providing experience design services to maximize competitive innovation, usability, and optimize key product indicators:

• Semi-conductor manufacturer - Complete reconceptualization and redesign of a shopper-facing marketing app featured in electronics retailers internationally.
  • Conducted stakeholder workshops to stimulate divergent creativity, develop collective knowledge-sharing, and glean actionable insights that would make for an effective and impressive shopping and device-configuration experiences.
  • Designed, built, and demonstrated interactive wireframe prototypes for client review, iterative revision, and ultimately hand-off for visual design and development.
  • Managed a design team of four dedicated to designing the retailer-facing administrative portal used to customize and install marketing experiences to be enjoyed by customers on floor-model computers, driving sales.
  • Designed to up-sell and market client's latest technological advancements and flexibly feature the hardware components of countless and innumerably unique computers, from gaming laptops, barebone machines, all-in-ones, desktops, and even models containing competitor technologies.
  • Audited completed components for usability, WCAG 2.0 accessibility, and adherence to design principles.
• Telecommunications company - Redesigned web portal chatbot to drive self-service automation, ticket deflection, and mobile service plan conversions.
• Accounting firm - Heuristic audit of in-house benchmarking mobile application used by financial consultants.

This work being under NDA, I won't be showcasing it here.

I hope, though, that you can appreciate my approach to design and see it in action through my available projects.

Corps Member · AmeriCorps NCCC

I served a year in AmeriCorps NCCC (National Civilian Community Corps) after graduating university, where I was assigned to the southwestern United States. My team worked three major service projects in partnerships with non-profit sponsors:

• Sonoran Desert Mountain Bicyclists - Built 3 miles of the McKenzie Ranch system of multi-use & mountain bicycle trails in the Sonoran Desert, around Tucson, AZ. Featured in The Vail Voice.
• Generation One - Directed volunteer groups on landscaping & hurricane recovery projects for senior citizens in the Third Ward of Houston, TX.
• Not Forgotten Outreach, Inc. - Deforested & developed land for a newly implemented eco-therapy veteran service program in Taos, NM.

I found NCCC to be an awesome exhibit of the restorative magic and strength of diversity:

Corps members converge from across the U.S. from a kaleidoscope of experiences, abilities, cultures, economic disparities, personal convictions, and identities to work, eat, and live together while on a mission to strengthen communities across the nation. A prospering AmeriCorps team leverages its differences as strengths, effecting restorative change and building the resilient capacities of these communities which are equally unique and just as diverse in their stories, circumstances, and needs.

I believe that designing and developing technology that advances human thriving requires a somewhat similar system; intentional accountability to the users and stakeholders effected by the technology, as well as an interfusion of a wide manifold of skills, knowledge, perspectives, and experience that makes for complex, resilient systems that can effectively adapt to challenges and centers the needs and values of stakeholders.

Informatics Student · University of Washington

I studied informatics with a focus in human-computer interaction (HCI) at the University of Washington, graduating with my bachelors in 2017.

The School of Information's mission is to train technologists who bend information technology towards equity and justice, and it's home of the Value Sensitive Design Research Lab. During my studies I developed personal affinities for humane technologies, informatic integrity, and open-source software.

UW's School of Information is a fairly small department (my undergraduate cohort was 33 students) with a heavily interdisciplinarian and project-based curriculum designed to simulate the cross-domain collaboration of the tech industry.

I specialized in HCI, supporting projects with UX work and design, but I found aspects of developing software compelling in their own right. I've got a soft spot for the technical and precise, and while I enjoyed designing experiences, the computer science curriculum taught me that I could build my own tools out of ASCII characters and some logic, and I found that enchanting enough to remain at the intersection of design and development. As someone fascinated by technology, its design, and its cybernetically augmenting/psychosocial/cultural role in our lives, fussing around with the tools used to construct the stuff has its draw.

Video Production Intern · AnswerDash

While studying at the University of Washington I interned as a video producer at AnswerDash, a SaaS startup founded by two professors of the School of Information.

I produced explainers for each of AnswerDash's products as well as promotional material. This entailed conceptualizing each video, writing scripts, selecting and directing talent, recording footage and screen captures demonstrating the product, creating compelling motion graphics that featured AnswerDash's snappy ease-of-use, and revising content in a iterative Agile-like process to deliver videos that served as the company's sole motion picture strategy online.

Check out my AnswerDash work.

That's the jist of it!

Thanks for sticking around.

• Grab my resume if you're a recruiter/web-crawling bot and visit my LinkedIn,
• Check out my work here or on GitHub,
• Read my techno-centric human-computer interaction musings on my blog if you've got time,
• And contact me if you wish.