About

Garth Walker

garthwalker@gmail.com

My name is Garth Walker and I've been consulting and designing user experiences for the web since 2005. I started as a visual designer at SynchSource, but was quickly given the opportunity to supervise an overseas team of developers. I spent a period of time consulting as a freelancer, and eventually returned to the bay area where I worked primarily as a UX consultant for HR, payroll, and benefit systems. In 2012 I joined Pegasystems as a Senior UX Architect, a role that puts me face to face with clients in the Financial and Insurance industry to help them implement superior BPM and CRM solutions with a great user experience.

Skills

• Client management, thought leadership, and team mentoring.
• Creating wireframes, interactive prototypes, flowcharts, and diagrams. (Adobe Suite, Omnigraffle, Balsamiq)
• Expert with HTML, CSS, plus moderate experience and good working knowledge of javascript.
• Development with IDEs including Eclipse and Netbeans using version control systems (CVS, SVN, GIT)
• Certified System Architect (CSA) with Pega PRPC technology.

Experience

 

Senior User Experience Architect
Pegasystems
(Sept. 2012-Current)
North America

• Provide guidance and mentorship to client/partner teams to ensure that solutions are implemented following user-centered design principles and PEGA best practices.
• Provide design reviews, heuristic evaluations, and produce documentation and design deliverables as needed.
• Implementation and configuration of user interface components for client projects using PRPC, HTML, CSS, and javascript.

User Experience Lead

SyncHR

(2008 - August 2012) 

Oakland, CA

• Designed and wrote functional documentation for the Employee Self Service Portal,  the performance management system, as well as some benefits and payroll related components.

• Created mockups, flowcharts, and prototypes as necessary.

• Front end application development with HTML, CSS, and javascript.

• Designed a series of basic usability research projects to improve our UI metaphors.

• Client consulting; worked with stakeholders on both sides to document business requirements, write specifications for our development team, and manage client expectations through intermediate releases and testing cycles.

• Sales Consulting; performed product training and demos for client groups to help understand the challenges and benefits of a transition or integration.

• Managed the quality assurance team. Developed test plans and test cases for manual unit testing and those scripted into our automated test harness.

Web Application Consultant

Self Employed

(2007-2008)

Sofia, Bulgaria

• Worked on a series of entrepreneurial ventures, assisting in choosing appropriate tools, scoping, and executing a successful design strategy.
• Created a design document for a job board which was aimed at repatriating executive talent working abroad.
• Designed and built real estate website with CMS.

User Interface Designer

Synchsource

(2005-2007)

Oakland, CA - Sofia, Bulgaria

• Visual Design and CSS for HR, benefits, and payroll application.
• Created mockups for new product features.
• Relocated to Sofia, Bulgaria to manage the initial development team.

Education

Adaptive Path UX Intensive

San Francisco, CA 2010

Academy of Art University

San Francisco, CA 

BFA in Design, 2005