Laura Escudé

Designing Player Experiences for Xbox

Working on Game Creator Experiences.

Spearheads the design offering that started our local Fjord studio and steadily furthered its abilities and competencies as it grew to 60+ designers. Leads design research and execution for products and services in the US and LATAM in industries as varied as: banking, non-profits, retail, technology, life sciences, energy and transportation.

Local Diversity and Inclusion Lead.

As part of an internal agency, I work as a lead for UX projects, in charge of client communication, and leading visual designers, front-end developers and quality assurance analysts to achieve clear deliverables in line with the product’s vision. I’m regularly balancing several projects at once. Being an strategic subject matter expert for the UX discipline in the Costa Rica delivery center, I collaborate with executives in order to develop new delivery models, as well as with managers to streamline our teams’ organization and workflows. I regularly scout internally and externally for UX talent and provide mentorship — even taught a UX management class. Prior to that, during my tenure in the Business Technology team, I led a group of junior UX designers and visual designers to develop an internal responsive web design application from beginning to end — and participated on the concept and validation of other two apps. I provided user research planning and execution as well as interaction design, typically delivered as Axure wireframes or prototypes.

I taught a class on Interaction Design (Diseño de Interacción en el Técnico Superior de Desarrollo y Diseño Web). Covering UX fundamentals, basics of Information Architecture and Digital Prototyping.

As I learned more about Instructional design, I moved to support our Lead ID, coordinating in-house and contractor talent. I developed new concepts and interactions for courses targeted to a wide variety of industries, spearheading the Instructional Design Pattern Library to serve as common reference material across all E-Learning production disciplines. During this period I was responsible for the client’s E-learning Interaction Libraries and corresponding storyboard template and documentation. My Build Manager functions included ensuring projects adhered to predetermined scope, and timeline. Identifying critical path items to ensure a smooth project flow and client satisfaction and conveys strategy, objectives, standards and processes to project team members.

As a Production Manager, I was in charge of the design, development and implementation of digital content such as Online Advertising, and Web and Software development. At one point I was leading 2 teams simultaneously, consisting of 16 designers and developers. I constantly reviewed output work, ensuring conformity to design and functionality specifications. Served as subject matter expert, providing guidance to clients on digital production matters. Discovering my affinity to User Experience topics, I attended, prepared and facilitated talks, and participated in usability tests with the company’s UX team. Initially hired as a designer, I created Online Advertising animations in Adobe Flash, incorporating direction from Creative leads onshore, doing Image retouching in Photoshop and basic ActionScript 2.0 & 3.0 programming. I’m specially proud of an Augmented Reality internal project, in which I had the opportunity to participate on concept, design and coordination. *This company was acquired and is now part of Prodigious Latin America.

I was engaged for Lakelubbers full-site redesign, including its newsletters and vector-drawing of custom maps illustrations. I made 3D icons and flash banners, and I often had to edit images for the site.

At Neo, I designed, drew and illustrated master plans for residential developments. Apart from the CAD blueprints, I worked in 3D modeling and rendering. Contact with engineering professionals and constructions suppliers. Unguided developments of at least three draft projects, one including financial viability studies and legislation research.

Computer-Aided Drawing and physical 3D modeling for a variety of building projects. Design of architectural constructive details.

civilRights

artsAndCulture · Envisions ILA21, leads local IxDA team to pitch it to LATAM chapters, and steers execution, adjusting to the pandemic to deliver the first virtual IxDA conference in the region, a multilingual 3-day gathering attended by 800+ designers. -Presents on the stages of ILA19 in Medellín and Interaction20 in Milan. -In charge of identifying, reaching out to, and securing potential sponsors. -Participates in the curation of the program. -Creates social media pieces and upgrades website to visual brand identity. -Answers support questions and requests. -Moderates speaker Q&A sessions.