My resumé.

Ready-to-print version.

John “JP” ARNZEN

Information Architect + UX Designer + Developer.

Email
resume@johnarnzen.com
Website
https://johnarnzen.com/
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnarnzen/

Summary

Problem solver. Craftsman. Polymath.

  • 24+ years of digital creative experience as an individual contributor, team lead, and manager, as:
    • information architect (IA)
    • interaction designer (IxD)
    • user experience (UX) designer
    • usability and accessibility specialist
  • 5+ years as a software developer/engineer, working on desktop and embedded applications.
  • I continue to keep up my development skills where possible, because I enjoy it and I strongly believe in craftsmanship—part of which I define as we should be able to build what we design.
  • I enjoy and prefer designing and building complete solutions, working end-to-end on a project.
  • I adapt quickly to new challenges, domains, and opportunities. My education and experience required me to do so: picking up new tools and technologies while solving nuanced and difficult problems.
  • I've worked for small, medium, and large companies—local, national, and international—in a variety of domains:
    • embedded technology
    • telecommunications
    • agricultural technology
    • Linux/OS services
    • custom construction
    • consulting

Experience

  • hrfarmteam
    2023–present
    UX Mentor/Coach (March 2023–present)
    Providing continuing education and skills-transfer training for candidates changing careers into the UX field.
  • Canines & Corvids LLC
    2020–present
    Owner (November 2020–present)
    Providing freelance design and full-stack development services for small companies. Built a full-stack internal web application on a Microsoft and .NET Core technology stack for a local business analytics company to track business intelligence data migrations and client queries, with the possibility of the application becoming a product.
  • AT&T
    2010–2020
    att.com Digital Experience
    • Lead UX Designer (August 2014–October 2020)
    • Associate Director of Web Design (June 2014–August 2014)
    • Information Architect/UX Designer (August 2010–June 2014)
    Summary: Improved various parts of the user experience across myAT&T, AT&T's online account management system serving its 230+ million customers, by designing, leading, and managing various UX efforts. Spearheaded numerous internal projects to improve site-wide navigation and taxonomy, and improved identification and archiving of project documentation.
    • Led and managed various project and organizational teams and roles within the online/digital organization.
    • Optimized and improved the user experience for numerous facets of customers' online account management.
    • Led and designed a standardized, unified-branding email template redesign for all customer-facing transactional emails. I worked closely with a senior content writer to create a more holistic user experience for customers across the customer lifecycle of online communications.
    • Updated neglected user tasks on myAT&T, bringing them into our online design system to make them consistent with the overall site and brand experience, and provided UX quick-win improvements to their flows and pages where possible.
    • Helped simplify and speed up customers' experience paying their service bills online by leading UX improvements to myAT&T's bill payment process.
    • Researched and publicized ways for my teammates and me to automate details so that we could focus on the larger, more interesting, more crucial points of our designs and processes.
    • Researched and led efforts to clean up and manage our library of page flows and designs. I worked closely with business and design leadership to revamp our page ID/"call number" structure for page designs, and helped inventory all known designs in our library.
    • Advocated usage of tools for online knowledge sharing internal and external to our teams to improve transparency and reduce risks.
    • Worked with leadership to understand, identify, address, and improve design processes for waterfall, agile, and hybrid projects.
    • Managed and maintained the global site navigation for the authenticated att.com experience.
    • Researched and recategorized/re-taxonomized the global site navigation as part of a team effort making the site navigation more user- and usage-friendly.
    • Assisted the online design standards team re-taxonomize their documentation, along with helping solidify some of the overall standards.
    • Coordinated and managed UX-related portions of sustainment work across myAT&T.
  • Red Hat
    2006–2010
    Senior User Experience Designer (December 2006–August 2010)
    Worked on improving the user experience for customer online help and account management. Helped with design standards documentation for company web services and applications.
  • Cingular Wireless
    2004–2006
    cingular.com e-commerce Content & Creative Services
    • Senior Manager of Information Architecture & Site Development (April 2005–December 2006)
    Summary: Led user experience efforts and site development for cingular.com. Led user experience and site development efforts for cingular.com's site-wide redesign. Acted briefly as interim site creative director.
    • Acted as lead Information Architect for cingular.com, leading and managing a cross-coastal team of IAs and site developers. Responsibilities included:
      • improving usability and accessibility of the site
      • improving site management and technology
      • evangelizing web standards
      • evangelizing web usability and accessibility
      • improving site organization and visitor experience
      • increasing sales and retention through improved customer satisfaction with the site
    • Helped merge the IA and UX of AT&T Wireless into Cingular's site post-acquisition.
    • Spearheaded the IA, UX, and site development efforts for cingular.com's site-wide redesign, including providing requirements for its new content management system (CMS).
    Human-centered Design Group
    • Senior Information Architect (February 2004–April 2005)
    Performed field research, worked with organization leadership and executives, and designed user experience improvements for internal call center tools used throughout Cingular's call centers. Helped design the user experience and performed in-store user testing for customer-assistance kiosks to be deployed in Cingular stores to reduce/remove customer wait times to talk to in-store employees. Moderated and analyzed usability tests with customers in our usability lab.
  • AGRIS/John Deere
    2002–2004
    Usability Engineer & Webmaster (March 2002–February 2004)
    Designed the user experience for a grain tracking and auditing desktop application to be used by co-ops and grain silos. Worked closely with SMEs, business analysts, application architects, and developers. Performed field research at silos with existing customers. Oversaw, managed, and improved the AGRIS company website, and enhanced various processes around its content management.
  • Red Sky Interactive & AGENCY.com
    2000–2001
    Information Architect (April 2000–July 2001, August 2001–November 2001)
    Designed the IA and UX for a large-scale, custom-construction project scheduling and inventory tracking web application for a key construction software client. Worked closely with the client, business analysts, application architects, developers, and visual designers to create the first version of the application. Helped train business analysts and our larger team on how to write and execute proper, flexible use cases as part of the Rational Unified Process (RUP).
  • Ratio DesignLab
    1996–2000
    Software Developer (July 1996–March 2000)
    Seven years before iOS and XCode, I ported Visual Basic for rapid application development (RAD) on custom handheld embedded systems to be used by clients such as FedEx as part of Ratio's original AppForge project. I also integrated this into Visual Studio to make developing for embedded systems as easy as developing for desktop applications. Maintained and extended a custom language and compiler for testing network communications for an early home-banking application.
  • Ceridian Employer Services
    1995–1996
    CBT Programmer (July 1995–July 1996)
    Developed computer-based training tools used for HR and payroll training for Ceridian's products.
  • Georgia Tech Office of Information Technology
    1993–1995
    • Unix Helpdesk Assistant (1994–July 1995)
    While a student, I provided helpdesk services to students, faculty, and employees for on-campus Unix systems at Georgia Tech.
    • Unix Lab User Assistant (1993–1994)
    While a student, I provided in-person assistance to students and faculty in various campus Unix labs at Georgia Tech.

Education

Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech)
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science
Specializations
System software (programming languages & operating systems), telecommunications & networking, computer graphics, engineering psychology/human factors

Continued Education

Coursera
Courses
Johns Hopkins University courses in data science and R programming

Specialties

Design
information architecture (IA), user experience (UX) architecture, interaction design (IxD), user interface (UI) design, usability evaluation, usability testing, accessibility, user-centered design, usage-centered design, user research, design testing, design systems, design standards, design processes, design communication, navigation design, site navigation, site taxonomies, information classification, information categorization, taxonomy research, taxonomy creation, site maps, wireframes, user flows, process flows, prototyping, responsive design, mobile-first design principles, content management, content management systems (CMS)
Development
software engineering, front-end development, full-stack development, tool assessment, compiler design & creation, system software design & creation
Tools & technologies
Web standards, HTML, CSS, DOM, JavaScript/ECMAScript, C/C++, C#, .NET Core, ASP.NET Core, Entity Framework Core, SQL, Visio, Axure, Sketch, Figma, InVision, Semantic Web, Linked Data, Power BI
Familiarty & interests
Python, Julia, F#, LISP/Scheme/Clojure, Haskell, React, Svelte, functional programming, data science & analytics, Web ontologies, RDF/Turtle, OWL
Delivery frameworks
Kanban, Agile, XP, RUP, traditional/waterfall