Berm Lee, Interaction Designer

I Live to...

  • Ship things with self-evident value, and make a terrific mess on the whiteboard every day
  • Promote disciplined creativity based on the continual testing of assumptions, and ensure a clear "why" for what we are building, and clarify the entire development process
  • Balance integrity with tradeoffsto ensure that we ship
  • Generate shared energy from start to finish, facilitating constructive dialogue among executives, product managers, designers and development teams
  • Hear people say, "You did THAT in PowerPoint?"

Experience

  • Various CompaniesInteraction Design Consultant | 2002.10 to present
    • Served 14 clients and almost 100 user personas with interaction design, visual UI, and branding
    • Designed for startup and legacy products in Web, and mobile platforms, for enterprise and consumer domains, including an operating and experiment management UI for scientific optical equipment
    • Introduced, taught, and practiced scenario-based design for an all-volunteer, non-profit effort to provide advanced linguistic analysis tools and computer-aided translation software for minority languages
  • SK TelecomDesign Thinking Coachwww.sktelecom.com | 2014.10 to 2014.12
    • Together with SAP Korea and PXD, generated two viable new products for SKT's New Business Division, via open inquiry, prototyping and validation of many concepts, and received the final go for productization
    • Incited a local culture-change towards daily collaborative, non-judgmental generation and iteration of ideas
    • Contributed to the creation of SKT�s internal Design Thinking Team
  • UseiconsProprietor and Designermetro.useicons.com | 2012.02 to present
    • Introduced a set of 300+ AppBar icons for use by Microsoft Windows Phone and Windows 8 App developers
  • Striiv Inc.Interaction Designerwww.striiv.com | Beijing, China (with Redwood City, CA) 2011.06 to 2012.02
    • Helped a startup launch a smart pedometer: designed device syncing, "walkathon" donations and updates, error conditions, edge cases and COPPA compliance
    • Collaborated with a developers in California, Hawaii and China
    • Pivoted the design of Striiv Sync from desktop app to web app, back to desktop applet to meet constraints and shifting developer resources, negotiating around detailed specifications
    • Produced final pixel-level UI, illustrations and icons
  • Saymeon Inc.Designer and Fellow Lab Rat | 2009.11 to 2011.03
    • Coralled, pruned, and shepherded ideas while managing non-western developers working on computer vision technologies and iPhone and Android apps
  • SAP AGContract Co-Lead Designer, Eventus Concept Projectwww.sapstreamwork.com | Palo Alto, CA | 2006.11 to 2007.01
  • SAP AGDesign Services Team, Office of the CEOwww.sap.com | Palo Alto, CA | 2005.09 to 2007.01
    • Provided design triage and "Design-Led Innovation" coaching to high-profile projects, evolving SAP's offerings to a changing world of knowledge work
    • Co-directed the Eventus concept that incited SAP to rethink basic assumptions about "business processes" and the tools that support people who respond to disruptions and surprise
    • Eventus was featured in CEO Henning Kagermann's keynote presentation at SAP's main industry conference, SAPPHIRE '07
  • Yahoo!Contract Interaction Designerwww.yahoo.com | Sunnyvale, CA | 2003.10 to 2004.03
    • Promoted alignment between design direction and product mandates via reality-based project scheduling, focused design sessions and clear communication as Contract Designer for Yahoo! Messenger and Lead Interaction Designer for Yahoo! Avatar 1.0
    • Received CNET Editor's Choice (Flash Video FLV) for Yahoo! Messenger 6
  • Cooper Interaction DesignInteraction Designer and Visual Designerwww.cooper.com | Palo Alto, CA | 1999.04 to 2002.07
    • Led multi-disciplinary teams designing knowledge management systems, a handheld for the college-age market, and a terminal for implantable medical devices, and helped set the foundation for the effective use of personas.
    • Set the standard for Cooper�s visual design and implementation support, created tools and practices still in use today at Cooper and beyond
    • Clients included SAP, HP, Informatica, Discover Financial, St. Jude Medical, Fujitsu Softek, Adobe, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and a "large semiconductor company."

Skills

  • Communication
    • Writing clear Behavior Specifications, Visual Style Guides, storyboarding, illustration, pixel-level UI, icons, animation, walkthroughs, facilitating discussions, furious whiteboarding
  • Tools
    • Adobe Fireworks, Photoshop and Illustrator, rapid prototyping using PowerPoint, familiarity with XHTML + CSS, Flash, unusual Microsoft Office hacks, GTD, PC and Mac omnivore
  • Languages
    • Native in English, business fluency in Korean, and beginner's enthusiasm in Mandarin Chinese
  • One more thing
    • 3D character animation using Maya, mentored by professional animators in the industry, www.animationmentor.com, 2007-2009

Education

  • Pomona CollegeBA in Science, Technology and Societywww.pomona.edu | Claremont, CA | 1994.08 to 1998.05
    • Inter-disciplinary studies in the history and process of science and technology. Advanced psychology coursework in cognitive science.