# Melissa Serdy-Velez > Senior UX Designer | Values-Driven | Research-Focused Location: Greater Seattle Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/melissaserdyvelez Experienced, research-focused, values-driven, highly collaborative UX Designer with a passion for relationships, design systems, and holistic product strategy. Kind, good-humored, big-hearted, endlessly curious, and persistently optimistic. Player of the long game. I like working with nice people designing products that create joy, help make difficult things easier, or both! About me: * Over 6 years as a Product/UX/UI Designer * SaaS, Service, Brand and Content/media design * Over 10 years managing creative projects for some of the most visited digital properties in the world. Portfolio: melissaserdyvelez.com Skills: Design for SaaS | Service Design | User-Centered Design | Visual Design | Interaction Design | Accessibility | Content Strategy, Curation and Management | UX Writing | Project Management | Visual storytelling | User Research | Heuristic Evaluation | Organizational and Domain Research | Persona and Scenario Creation | Information Architecture | Rapid ideation | Sketching | Wireframes | Prototyping | Usability Testing | Responsive Design | Budgeting | Training | Licensing | Agile development Tools: Figma | Sketch | Invision | Photoshop | Illustrator | InVision | Jira | Confluence | Trello | Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and SharePoint ## Work Experience ### Senior Product Designer @ Socrata Jan 2018 – Present | Greater Seattle Area Product Designer for the open data platform used by many major US cities (New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, Austin and more) as well as many Federal agencies (Health and Human Services and others). Focused on making complex data science activities accessible and intuitive for government data publishers and consumers no matter their experience. Designed and shipped features that handle the end-to-end data publishing workflow from cleaning data, automating imports, publishing, shaping data via a UI that writes SQL-like queries, federating public data for increased transparency, and more. Lead generative, foundational and evaluative research efforts on all projects. Currently working on a data look-up tool that helps divert individuals from incarceration into behavioral health services. ### UX Designer @ Premera Blue Cross Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | Mountlake Terrace, WA UX and visual design for a major brand refresh and product re-visioning. Conducted competitive analysis, user research, and usability testing. Produced sketches, wireframes, and high-fidelity prototypes of new features and designs. Presented to stakeholders. Collaborated with product managers as well as front and back-end developers in an agile work environment. Developed processes and guidelines for the larger design team. Addressed information architecture issues. Fixed accessibility errors. Key contributor in the development of a new design system. ### User Experience Designer @ Capital One Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 | Seattle, WA Designed the Mobile App experience for Capital One Investing's Managed Portfolios in a 3-week design sprint. ### Senior Creative Project Manager / Managing Photo Editor @ MSN / Microsoft Jan 2013 – Jan 2016 | Redmond, WA Project Manager for US photo acquisitions leading a team of up to 40 vendors sourcing over 100,000 images annually for News, Weather, Sports, Money, Travel, Lifestyle, Health & Fitness, Food & Drink, Entertainment, Autos, Windows Store app promotions and Bing Popular Now verticals for publication to hundreds of millions of users. Process and workflows | Tool development | Budgeting | Licensing | CMS expert | Documentation | Training | Legal risk-assessment | Visual and editorial guideline creation | Partner and vendor relationship manager | Global coordination ### Managing Photo Editor @ MSN / Microsoft Jan 2011 – Jan 2013 Built and led a team of up to 13 vendors sourcing images for the global release of the full suite of eight Windows 8/Bing apps (News, Sports, Finance, Travel, Weather, Food & Drink, Health & Fitness, Magazines) sourcing over 50,000 images annually. Content strategy | Collaboration with UX Design, product management and senior leadership | Developed the team and project in "start-up" mode | Created editorial and design guidelines based on a best-in-class quality bar | New product marketing | Strategic licensing partnerships ### Managing Photo Editor @ MSN / Microsoft Jan 2003 – Jan 2011 | Bellevue, WA Built and led a team of up to 10 vendors for the MSN.com homepage, the primary traffic driver of one of the world's most visited web products with billions of page views a month. Operational, creative and quality lead | High-volume workflow with extreme scale | Breaking News coverage | Visual Journalism | Content strategy | Data-driven | Photoshop production | Licensing and pricing negotiation | Outstanding Achievement Award for work on the Clinton Global Initiative project ### Senior Collections Editor @ Corbis Jan 2000 – Jan 2003 | Seattle, WA Selected and organized intellectual property from the Corbis Collection for use in consumer products (stationery, wall décor, calendars and gifts), digital products, fixed media, editorial and promotional offerings. Digital merchandising | Strategic planning and product development | Redesign photo lead | Image sales | Client relationship manager: Avery-Dennison, AT&T Wireless, Hallmark, American Greetings, Graphique de France, Barewalls, and others | Content acquisitions ### Photo Editor @ Corbis Jan 1997 – Jan 2000 | Bellevue, WA ## Education ### Bachelor’s Degree in English Language and Literature/Letters Humboldt State University ### User Experience Design Immersive General Assembly Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 ### Graphic Design School of Visual Concepts ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/melissaserdyvelez - Portfolio: http://www.melissaserdyvelez.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/melissaserdyvelez JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/melissaserdyvelez/resume.json Last updated: 2026-03-30