# Al Villanueva > Leading the Design of Better Human Experiences | Driving Client Success for 12+ Years Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/alvillanueva I'm a Design Leader with 12+ years of experience shaping intuitive, scalable experiences that sit at the intersection of user needs, business goals, and emerging technology. Beyond design execution, I lead with intent. I mentor and coach designers, support new team members, and actively drive design maturity across organizations. I thrive in highly collaborative environments where researchers, engineers, product owners, and business stakeholders come together to solve real-world problems. I’ve partnered with global teams and clients across healthcare, fintech, and service industries, helping transform abstract challenges into elegant, validated solutions that improve lives and deliver measurable impact. ## Work Experience ### Sr. Innovation Design Leader @ IBM Jan 2021 – Jan 2025 | San Francisco Bay Area Led cross-functional teams to deliver AI-driven, user-centered design solutions that aligned enterprise UX with digital transformation goals. Applied Design Thinking to reimagine customer journeys and deliver high-impact deliverables for Fortune 500 clients across finance, healthcare, and tech. Key Highlights: • Directed cross-industry innovation programs, aligning design strategy with business outcomes and transformation goals. • Delivered scalable design portfolios influencing over $10M in service investments. • Facilitated 2,000+ hours of design thinking workshops, increasing stakeholder engagement by 30% and unlocking new product opportunities. • Co-created AI-powered strategy tools, accelerating innovation pipelines and empowering decision-making. • Led the onboarding program for new designers, mentoring and coaching talent to foster a culture of preparedness, collaboration, and design excellence. ### Principal UX Designer @ Hawthorne Effect, Inc. Jan 2021 – Jan 2021 | San Francisco Bay Area Led service design for a digital health platform, streamlining clinical workflows and enhancing patient experience across the care ecosystem. Defined UX strategies that improved operational efficiency by 25% and directly influenced the product roadmap. Designed the platform’s first-generation design system, reducing design-to-dev handoff time by 35% and setting the foundation for scalable future growth. ### Staff Product Designer @ GE Healthcare Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | Chicago, IL Designed AI-powered diagnostic imaging workflows for radiologists and clinicians, optimizing speed and accuracy in clinical decision-making. Translated complex medical datasets into intuitive visual tools, resulting in a 30% improvement in usability scores. Initiated cross-functional user feedback loops across national teams, achieving global alignment on UI standards and accelerating product consistency across markets. ### Senior UX Consultant @ Vokal Jan 2019 – Jan 2019 | Chicago, Illinois, United States Facilitated client workshops and co-creation sessions using design thinking methodologies. Led research and ideation for new app features, and collaborated across teams to craft and deliver strategic internal and client presentations ### Sr. UX Designer @ Humana Jan 2016 – Jan 2019 | Chicago, Illinois, United States Directed UX strategy for internal clinical and customer support tools, resulting in a 22% improvement in NPS and measurable gains in user satisfaction. Championed design thinking and Agile integration to accelerate product development and improve team velocity. Led a user-driven redesign of key support interfaces, reducing customer service call times by 18% and streamlining healthcare workflows for both patients and providers. ### Sr. UX Designer @ CareerBuilder Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 | Chicago, Illinois Designed B2B experiences that enabled recruiters to efficiently find, evaluate, and engage top talent. Collaborated with product and dev teams to push UX boundaries while maintaining brand consistency. Led sketch sessions and championed user-centered design, leveraging semantic search, social insights, and data-driven UX strategies to elevate the platform experience. Leverage semantic search, social media, collaboration, and insights from big data to find the best approach to improve the user experience. Lead collaborative sketch sessions and serve as a thought leader and champion for user-centered design within the organization. ### UX Consultant @ IA Collaborative Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 Provided userflows and wireframes for a mobile app designed for global delivery. ### Sr. UX Strategist @ Accenture Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 Provide professional opinions on design leveraging research, user centered methodology, and best practices. Produce user experience design deliverables like journey maps, synthesized recommendations from user testing, and low-fidelity products that inform better approaches to design and process. Collaborate with visual designers and usability experts to provide solutions and recommendations for a meaningful experience and the best viable product. Work with front end developers to translate ideas and solutions that mirrors intended design. Use high-fidelity prototypes to present work articulately with internal teams and with the client aimed to win trust, inform, and influence future designs and direction. ### Sr. UX Consultant @ Walgreens Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 Collaborate with designers, copywriters, content strategist, and developers to envision digital health needs as a complete desktop and mobile user experience. Contribute to service design efforts of online pharmacy and dashboard design for health programs and initiatives. Provide UX deliverables that start with a whiteboard sketch and evolve to support the interactions that take place as customers discover, engage, and make decisions within the customer journey. ### Sr. UX Architect @ Razorfish Jan 2014 – Jan 2014 Provide extensive annotations and wireframing of a mobile application learning tool for students, facing aggressive deadlines and detailed business requirements. Collaborate with content strategist, visual designers, and product managers to ensure quality and useful results. Contribute to presenting deliverables that demonstrate, to both internal stakeholders and the clients, how the mobile app will work. ### Sr. Consultant @ Avanade Jan 2012 – Jan 2014 Contribute to roadmaps, workshops, and strategic planning to guide business stakeholders to meet goals and technical capabilities. Worked independently and within small tracks to communicate progress, design validations, and drive outcomes toward an effective solution for internal projects and clients. Mentorship of colleagues and provide design guidance across teams. Evangelizing user-centered design methods to help build the UX practice and contribute tools that evolve the existing approaches for the larger creative community at Avanade and clients. ### Sr. UXA @ Sears Holdings Corporation Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 Actively collaborated with designers, developers, and business stakeholders to design an internal social site, leveraging performance metrics to encourage a competitive spirit and job productivity. Maintain direct communication and open dialogue with internal and client executive teams. Drive recommendations and make decisions to secure future processes. Identify opportunities to create or improve interfaces for new and existing pages as a solution to drive business strategies and articulate a fresh user-experience ### Sr. Information Architect @ Sapient Nitro Jan 2010 – Jan 2011 Translated user requirements, client research, and business findings to visual models depicting interactions, navigation, and organizational structures. Created information architecture deliverables, with minimal direction, in detail to guide the user-experience with visual cues and meaningful information. Analyzed and identified future enhancements for client reviews. Collaborated with a multiple teams, internal and global, to execute a client focused plan with challenging deadlines, timing considerations, and budget limitations. ### UX Designer @ Williams-Sonoma, Inc. Jan 2007 – Jan 2009 Developed user-flows, schematics, user-interface specifications, and sitemaps. Teamed with other UX designers to solve usability issues with solid, thought-out designs. Provided strategic documentation, including competitive analyses and heuristic evaluations, for site enhancements and proposals for new innovative industry solutions. Gathered requirements from multiple stakeholders into clear process flows and mapped these out to define site functionality. Worked closely with developers to understand technical feasibility and site architecture, business analysts to meet marketing and product goals, and outside vendors to maintain site integrity and provide usability guidance during the development process. ### Information Architect- Contrator @ Classmates Online Jan 2007 – Jan 2007 Leveraged new social media standards and implement best practices for user experience campaigns. Produced UX deliverables including wireframes and user flows to reflect behavioral specifications, style guidelines and icons, user research. ### Information Architect - Contractor @ Cingular Online Jan 2006 – Jan 2007 Presented information architecture to validate user-centered design specifications and ensure design consistency for B2C and B2B web portals. Provided architecture for conceptual designs that responded to targeted user workflows and site navigation; articulated these designs using sitemaps, diagrams, and wireframes. Started a usability lab; researched and procured equipment, fostered relationships with outside vendors, and worked with internal groups to develop test methodologies. ### Product Designer @ Autodesk, Inc. Jan 2004 – Jan 2005 Worked with cross-functional teams to incorporate ideas and drive resolutions for proposed new features and functionality in AutoCAD. Designed elements of the user-interface and authored specifications; creating diagrams, charts, and wireframes to articulate design. Participated in usability testing with prototypes to ensure consistency with the existing architecture, user requirements, and user interaction. ## Education ### Presenting Data and Information Edward Tufte Coursework ### BA California State University-Sacramento ### Industrial Design in Congnitive Psychology, and Computer Science San Francisco State University ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/alvillanueva - Portfolio: https://www.alvillanueva.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/alvillanueva JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/alvillanueva/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13