# Geraldine Lua > User Experience Researcher and Designer | Illustrator | Small Biz Owner Location: New York City Metropolitan Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/geraldinelua Hi I'm Mae! I am a Product Designer with a rich creative foundation in visual design and illustration. I love collaborating with other creatives to experiment and build products that are intuitive to use. Prior to my UI / UX journey, I worked as a Graphic Designer and Illustrator, developing logos, high-quality images and game assets for my clients. I still do freelance illustration work for personal and commercial clients (and in the web3 NFT space)! Even before that, I worked in healthcare (specifically as a dental hygienist), and my past engagement in healthcare as a dental hygienist strengthened soft skills—empathy, articulate communication, and strategic interviewing —to decipher core issues, generating actionable insights tailored to individual needs. Currently, I work for Morgan Stanley as a Product Designer, while concurrently contributing to Nerdy Diva as a part-time UX Designer, illustrator, and mentor. Previously, I worked at Microsoft as a UX Designer. If I'm not working, I'm busy refining my digital illustration skills and exploring other creative ventures! On the side, I manage Tiramaesu.com, a small stickers and stationery business. As a solopreneur, I run all operations of the business - from conducting user research with the goal of understanding my target audience and what products would most resonate with them, to designing and testing marketing campaigns and reflecting on sales and engagement metrics. Of course, my favorite roles are actually coming up with illustrations and creating short and long-form content for people on the web to enjoy. My skills include: UI / UX Design, User Surveys, Interviews, Competitive Analysis, User Personas and Journey Maps, Wireframes, Low to High Fidelity Prototyping, MVP, User Flows, Product Teardowns, Information Architecture, Web Design, Responsive Design, Design Thinking, Design Sprints, Designing for Accessibility, Mobile App Design, Concept Illustration , Visual Design, High Fidelity Mockups, Game Assets Illustration, Concept Sketches, Line Art, Coloring, Tattoo Art, storyboarding My toolkit includes: Tools: Figma, Adobe XD, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Maze, Miro, User Testing, Clip Studio Paint, Adobe After Effects, Jira ## Work Experience ### User Experience Researcher @ Morgan Stanley Jan 2025 – Present User experience researching supporting the Morgan Stanley Firmwide Marketing and Investment Management department. Defining, analyzing, and socializing research studies that generate insights that directly informs the business on brand and design decisions as well as marketing strategy with cross-functional partners, including Product Management, Design, Tech, and more. ### UX/UI Designer @ Morgan Stanley Jan 2023 – Jan 2025 | New York, New York, United States Contract UX/UI Designer to support Morgan Stanley's Investment Management (MSIM) UX Team, with a focus on combining multiple acquired websites/brands into one experience. Job functions include designing and delivering web and mobile interfaces based on best practices, building design specifications that comply with existing brand guidelines for each brand (MSIM, Eaton Vance, Calvert), including digital products with data visualizations and dashboards for financial services, partnering with brand team, engineers and compliance team to understand limitation on design options, and contributing to the growing design system consisting of components and UI patterns, providing documentation and use cases. For the TOPS Project, I partnered with my design manager, product owner, developers, and product users such as internal salespeople and financial advisors to establish the MVP and product roadmap and create the initial product concept. The TOPS project is the creation of the TOPS (Tax Optimization Portfolio Solutions) engine, which is an analysis tool for taxable clients seeing to reposition an existing stock portfolio to more closely align with a client-specified target portfolio while minimizing transition tax costs. Programs used include the M365 suite (WXP, Teams, Outlook), Figma, Figjam, UserTesting, Jira, Monday board Skills: User research, information architecture, storytelling, public speaking, design systems, design libraries, branding collaboration, visual design, wireframing, prototyping, mockups, usability testing, design thinking, competitor analysis, data synthesis. ### Illustrator & UX Designer @ Nerdy Diva Jan 2022 – Present | Remote Contract designer for Nerdy Diva. Position and role includes: - Providing UI/UX mentoring and coaching for STEM ENRG (in collaboration thanks to Nerdy Diva) and the graduating cohort of students between April and May 2022. Mentored Nerdy Diva's first interns during Summer 2022 on UI/UX projects and gave career advice. - Providing feedback and direction on UX student projects, researching articles and teaching tools for students - Collaborating with Nerdy Diva owner to create illustrations for the company that represents women in tech and highlighting on diversity and equality - Researching and brainstorming illustration concepts, creating mood boards, concept sketches, high quality, full color illustrations, creating surveys to best understand audience needs and preferences for Nerdy Diva Skills used: mentoring, UI design, UX design, information architecture, visual design, storytelling. ### Designer & Founder @ Tiramaesu Jan 2020 – Present | remote Creator and business owner at Tiramaesu, my one-woman sticker and stationery brand inspired by Japanese kawaii culture, cats, and everyday life. I design everything myself—stickers, memo pads, greeting cards, and more—hoping to connect with others who find comfort and creativity in cute things. From stickers and memo pads to accessories that brighten up your space, Tiramaesu is a destination for stationery lovers and fans of the kawaii aesthetic who appreciate fun, thoughtfully designed pieces that add personality to their space. ### Freelance Illustrator @ SHEIN Jan 2022 – Jan 2025 Created a collaborative capsule collection with SHEIN / ROMWE company. Illustrated 3 pieces to be printed on tees, hoodies, sweatshirts, etc. Continuing another collaboration with SHEIN to develop more apparel designs with the theme of music festivals and researching patterns and viral trends to create an eye-catching and aesthetic design. Skills and tools: Clip Studio Paint Pro, Adobe Photoshop, Sketching, Digital illustration, Cel Shading, minimal illustration, kawaii-aesthetic, cat / animal illustrations, trend and market research, moodboard, design research, visual design ### UX Designer @ Microsoft Jan 2022 – Jan 2023 | Remote Contract UX Designer to support Microsoft's M365 Consumer Marketing GTM teams, with a focus on the Subscription Retention team. Job functions include product teardowns, capturing and analyzing user flows, creation of graphics / illustrations, high-fidelity mockups for testing, maintaining an open line of communication and collaboration with the Retention GTM team, analyzing and compiling usability test learnings with suggestions and reporting to the Principal PMM for the next steps. Projects include facilitating a team brainstorming workshop to create wireframes and mockups for optimizing the Microsoft Save Flow. This involved testing several business hypotheses while utilizing psychology principles to ensure a better user experience while satisfying business goals and requirements. This led to an improvement in Paid Save Rate and Trial Save Rate, as well as an increase in the Switch to Monthly Option adoption rate. Other projects include conducting usability tests to research and observe how users interact with the OneDrive interface, uncovering areas where friction may occur including discovery of a broken core user journey, and collaborate with the Principal PMM to bring prompt design changes to the OneDrive UI. Spearheaded design direction for the Paid Subscriber Engagement Campaign Pilot in partnership with a team of 5 to engage with our subscribers in non-traditional and creative ways and inspire new ideas of using the Microsoft 365 suite. Programs used include the M365 suite (WXP, Teams, Outlook), Figma, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Skills: User research, information architecture, storytelling, public speaking, design systems, design libraries, branding collaboration, visual design, wireframing, prototyping, usability testing, design thinking, competitor analysis, user interviews, data synthesis, some motion graphics. ### UX Design Mentor @ STEM ENRG Jan 2022 – Jan 2022 Contract designer for STEM ENERG, a collaboration through Nerdy Diva. Position and role included: - Providing UI/UX mentoring and coaching for STEM ENRG (in collaboration thanks to Nerdy Diva) and the current cohort of students - Providing feedback and direction on UX student projects, such as information architecture, visual design principles, and researching articles and supplemental teaching tools for students - Encouraging Design Thinking and giving guidance on the best practices and methods of reframing problems for students to implement into their projects with stakeholders ### UI / UX Designer In Training @ Thinkful Jan 2021 – Jan 2021 Designed intuitive and practical solutions while keeping business requirements and users in mind. Full design process includes formulating research plans to high-fidelity prototyping and re-iteration after usability testing. Projects: MY DAILY NOSH GROCERY APP UI DESIGN   - Reviewing provided materials such as style guide, mood board, color palette, personas, etc. and tweaking them as necessary to reflect the company values accurately   - Establishing visual design and branding material   - Ideating, sketching, wireframing, high fidelity clickable prototypes LOCALEYEZ EVENT APP UI DESIGN - Reviewing provided materials such as mood board, color palette, user personas, sitemap, etc. - Defining requirements for app UI - Ideating, sketching, wireframing - Guerilla testing and reiterating design to turn into high fidelity mockups BUBBLE TEA KIT APP TEAM DESIGN - Developed a mobile app that allows users to customize and order DIY bubble tea kits, as well as separate ingredients apart from the kit - Worked with client to establish business requirements and conduct user research on target audience - 4 step sketches and storyboarding - Sketched and iterated mid-fidelity clickable prototypes and guided usability testing - Brand identity and visual design BUSTLE - PUBLIC BUS APP DESIGN - Designed a mobile app that allows users to view a schedule of live-tracked buses as well as purchase and store bus tickets in-app - Conducted user research and constructed wireframes based on analysis of user responses - Developed branding and style guide for mobile app - Usability testing for initial wireframes and for clickable prototypes Skills: User Surveys, Interviews, Competitive Analysis, User Personas and Journey Maps, Wireframes, Low to High Fidelity Prototyping, MVP, User Flows, Info Architecture, Web Design, Responsive Design, Design Thinking, Design Sprints, Designing for Accessibility, Mobile App Design ### Freelance Designer & Illustrator @ Self Employed Jan 2019 – Jan 2021 | New York City Metropolitan Area Offered various creative services, with illustration and logo design being the most popular services. - Worked with clients to develop business logos and banners - Illustrated cosmetics and other game assets for a game company Skills: Branding and identity, digital illustration, concept illustration, 2d design, vector art, vector illustrations ## Education ### Associate of Arts and Sciences - AAS in Graphic Design County College of Morris ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/geraldine-lua - Behance: https://www.behance.net/geraldinemlua - Portfolio: https://geraldinelua.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/geraldinelua JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/geraldinelua/resume.json Last updated: 2026-03-29