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Adobe/Oxfam Design Challenge
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Oakland, CA 94611

+1 925 785 7363
joel@ryerson.design
Copyright © 2020 Joel Ryerson. All rights reserved.

A little more about me

Oakland, CA

+1 925 785 7363
joel@ryerson.design

A thoughtful, practical, caring, & dedicated design-thinker

Hello! I am an emerging, process-driven, ever-curious, design thinker. Most recently, I was employed with Quip at Salesforce in an enterprise segment sales role and found my passion for design while working cross-functionally with the design team, leading to extracurricular exploration and self-study into the design process and creative thought. I chose to pursue design as a career and attended a UX/UI course through UC Berkeley Extension while working full-time in my sales role. In the class, we studied design thinking and created end-to-end design prototypes that enabled me to practice initial research, problem definition, ideating with conceptual interaction designs, prototyping, testing, and validation with instructor feedback.

Curiosity and empathy drives me to learn, connect, grow, and embrace the uniqueness in all of us. I have developed unique, translatable design skills from various non-design roles. My previous healthcare experience as an EMT and Caregiver gave me a more profound sense of identity, empathy, objectivity, and levelheadedness that the design process requires. More recently, my experience in customer-facing sales roles has given me greater awareness into balancing stakeholder and user needs. Talking with customers everyday at Salesforce further developed my discovery and research skills where we stressed the importance of knowing your customer inside and out. To create returning customers in an enterprise space, I had to identify and capture the attention of key decision-makers with the use of various tools, creative thinking and writing, and leveraging mutual connections. With non-leading/open-ended questions and intentional listening, I built trust and credibility by ensuring I clearly understood and could paraphrase the customer pain point and overall business initiative. Lastly, as a thought leader and product/industry expert, I had to be transparent about the viability of our product as a problem-solution fit. Sometimes there would be no solution fit but building that relationship with trust and honesty meant that the customer was more than likely to consider you again down the road when another problem emerged. With this customer-centric strategy, I sourced some of the largest deals with high-profile customer engagement, most notably a $2.5 million deal and a $3.6 million deal. 
‍
I value – customer-focused strategies, innovative thinking, kindness, awareness, humility, purposeful listening, excellent communication, time management, open-mindedness, attention to detail, operational analysis, cross-functional team collaboration, and professionalism, to name a few.

Skills

Design Specific
  • Articulating design decisions
  • User research, interviews, surveys
  • UX concepts & strategy
  • Information architecture
  • Wireframes, prototyping
  • Usability testing and iteration
  • UI design principles
  • Interaction design
  • Grid composition
  • Typography
  • Color theory
  • Front-end web development
Toolbox
  • Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD
  • Flinto, ProtoPie, Invision
  • Photoshop, Illustrator
  • HTML, CSS, Sass, Javascript, jQuery, SwiftUI
Check out my resume to learn more about me.
download resume

Industry Experience

MUSIC
ADVERTISING
HEALTHCARE
SALES

Relevant Experience

2020
2020

UC Berkeley Extension

UX/UI Certificate

Highlights: Foundations of UX, UI, product management, front-end web development, and articulating user-centric design decisions. Utilized industry-standard best practices and tools to create group projects that ended with clickable prototypes and case study group presentations.

2018
2018 - 2020

Salesforce

Enterprise, Business Development Representative - Quip

Key Accomplishments: sourcing and driving key deal stages that led to a $2.5 million closed deal inFY20 and a $3.6 million closed deal in FY21.

2011
2011 - 2013

Havas Edge

Traffic Coordinator & Assistant Media Buyer

Traffic Coordinator: Facilitated all infomercial (a.k.a. Direct Response TV Advertising) media traffic and distribution from our ad-agency to television stations nationwide.

Assistant Media Buyer: Assisted in analyzing, negotiating, and purchasing media commercial time slots being offered up by television stations nationwide to air infomercials (a.k.a. Direct Response TV Advertisements).

2009
2009 - 2014

EMT & Caregiver

Caregiver: Assisted individuals living with quadriplegia, Alzheimer's, and dementia with advanced nursing practices and care: bathing, grooming, dressing, toileting, exercise, feeding.

EMT: Assessed patient condition through physical and verbal practices to signal signs and symptoms of injury or illness. Gathered patient information at the scene and provided care and monitored vital signs to ensure stability of patients during transportation to the intended location.

Check out my resume to see more of my work experience.
download resume

My Work

Adobe/Oxfam Design Challenge

Top 10 Finalist for Adobe/Oxfam America's Creative Jam

Carbon Footprint Case Study

Reducing your Carbon Footprint with Mindful Air Travel

ELL Case Study

Equity for English Language Learners in the United States

Mentorship Case Study

Increasing Workplace Readiness for Underprivileged Young Adults Entering the Fourth Industrial Revolution