I design the product and the system around it

I design how program catalogs are organized, how associate tools behave, and what a prototype has to show before a team can commit. The standards and the training come out of that same work, not after it.

Selected work

Projects, and the decisions behind them

Two phone screens of the shipped Program Explorer. The front one shows the Refine Results panel open, with Program Type filters for undergraduate major, undergraduate minor, master’s, doctoral and certificate. Behind it, the results list shows program cards, each carrying a photograph, the degree type, a one-line description and the format.

College of ACES, University of Illinois · 2022–2023

ACES Program Explorer

I designed and led an interest-based Program Explorer that helped prospective students browse a growing academic catalog without needing to understand the college’s department structure first.

Read the ACES case study

Two phones at an angle, each showing a Walmart product. On careers.walmart.com, a staff pharmacist posting with an Apply now control. On walmart.com, the Spark Good page headed "Organization resources designed for you", describing local grants and a space request tool for nonprofits.

Walmart Experience Quality Strategy · 2024–2026

Touchpoint portfolio strategy

I built one decision system for roughly 80 touchpoints, so accessibility support could follow risk rather than visibility. A reorganization had just put all of them under one organization, and the support model that came with them had been built for a fraction of the work.

Read the touchpoint case study

Three overlapping social posts from Hedgerow Pottery. The owner holds up a teal t-shirt printed with the round Hedgerow Pottery mark. A winter classes and workshops graphic carries the same mark at its center, over a grid of studio photographs. A hand holds a green glazed mug with the mark pressed into the clay.

Hedgerow Pottery · 2022

Hedgerow Pottery identity system

I turned a fragile logo file into a production-ready identity system, giving Hedgerow Pottery a guidebook, vendor-ready assets, and a brand toolkit that could work in real production without constant design translation.

Read the Hedgerow case study

Melissa co-presenting on stage at a Walmart enterprise town hall, her image projected on a large screen above a seated audience.

Speaking & teaching · 2020–2025

Presentations & knowledge sharing

Invited talks and teaching where I turn complex experience, design-system, and governance work into a shared direction teams and leaders can act on.

Read the presentations page

How I work

The first decision is which layer the problem is on

Draw it early enough to be wrong

Wireframes and working prototypes, so people are reacting to something real instead of to a description of it.

Write the call down so it holds

Written guidance, review paths, and decision tools, so a judgment made once does not get remade from scratch. One of those was an AI-assisted intake I piloted, with a person checking every result.

Teach it while I do it

Job aids, practice files, and coaching while the work is still open. The next call should not have to come back to me.

Put the tradeoff on the table

I bring product, engineering, business, and design into the same conversation when a decision affects the experience, the team, or both.

About and resume

The projects make more sense with the background

About Melissa

Where the systems habit came from, how accessibility changed what I count as finished, and what I do outside the work.

Resume

Roles, scope, and what I was responsible for at Walmart and the University of Illinois.