Who am I?

I’m a curious Product Designer in San Francisco, California. I have a business background, graduating from UC Berkeley with a BS in Business Administration. I care about building solutions for our most vulnerable populations and driving social change.

How I went from Business to Design

After graduating from UC Berkeley with a business degree, I joined Tophatter, a high-growth eCommerce marketplace, as an Account Manager. I worked closely with Tophatter’s sellers and found that our existing sellers tools were not meeting their needs. I explored design in order to build better tools and found I loved it.

I took initiative and pitched to leadership that having a dedicated designer would improve both buyer and seller satisfaction and business metrics. I became Tophatter’s first designer, where I built a 4-person design team and fostered a design-centered culture at Tophatter.

Tophatter was a great place for my learning and development, but my passion is to drive social impact and support causes I believe in. While at Tophatter, I consulted with UCSF on an initiative to help HIV youth manage their medications.

Currently, I work at Checkr where I’m devoted to removing biases from the hiring process and expanding employment opportunities for people with conviction histories.

What I care about

Designing with empathy. Developing emotional connections with people with the underlying drive to make things better.

Being mission driven. Feeling accountable towards how I’m impacting direct customers and the greater world.

Solving what’s most impactful. Thinking beyond what’s quantifiable to solve the problems that will have a lasting impact.

My design chops

Interaction and visual design. I spend the majority of my time creating user flows, wireframes, and interactive prototypes.

Information architecture. I also spend a great deal of time thinking about the overall structure and navigation.

User research. I design and lead all my own discovery and validation. I owned all of User Research at Tophatter, where I determined the needs and goals of our customers to fuel product strategy.

Prototyping. Figma, Flinto, or Invision, depending on fidelity.

Usability testing. Usually through UserTesting.com. I write the usability questions, launch studies, and aggregate individual insights into big-picture trends.

Design sprints. I’ve read through Knapp’s Sprint book multiple times and have led six Google Ventures’ Design Sprints.

My design in action

Checkr’s Expungement Service: from Hack Week to MVPNov 12, 2020 — **Expungement Service: from Hack Week to MVP**
Nov 12, 2020

How we’re humanizing the background check process with Candidate StoriesApril 16, 2020 — **How we’re humanizing the background check process with Candidate Stories**
April 16, 2020

Furthering our mission with the design processOct 1, 2019 — **Furthering our mission with the design process**
Oct 1, 2019

Testimonials

Melanie is a model employee: she is optimistic, takes initiative, thoughtful and thorough in all her endeavors. She has a can-do attitude and a growth mindset, and is ready to take on any challenge that comes her way. She was so driven to become a Designer that she started taking classes in her personal time, and on her own dime. She learned a great deal in a short period of time, eventually leading both Product Design and User Research at Tophatter. Melanie made great strides as a Designer, spearheaded Design Sprints and created an iterative design process which includes acting on feedback from customers. She always has a positive attitude and I enjoyed working with her. - Ali Michel, VP of Product Design @ Stealth Robotics

Melanie is one of the most engaging, energetic and positive people I’ve had the pleasure to work with. Her real strength and success is founded on her passion for understanding and then serving customers, both internal and external. Her natural ability to listen thoughtfully, and then recognize and distill insights into fresh, meaningful, real-world value, means that she can easily carry a wide range responsibilities. Whether she’s conducting ad hoc market research, hosting a webinar or crafting new product positioning, Melanie is an incredible self-starter, natural project manager and has exactly the right mix of moxy and humility you want in any team member. I look forward to the day when we can work together again. - Michele Don Durbin, Senior VP of Marketing @ Evernote

Melanie is a natural leader with excellent relationship-building skills and huge potential. She helped GoodHire during a critical time of rapid growth and market discovery. Melanie is also quite thoughtful and wise beyond her years. Definitely recommend. - Matthew Monahan, Co-founder and CEO @ Inflection

What I do for fun

ART. I enjoy observing and creating art. I like how art distorts reality and makes me think about the world differently.

HIKING. I love being outside in nature. In 2018, I hiked on a glacier in Alaska, through a waterfall in Iceland, and around the erupting volcano in Hawaii.

THEATER. I stage managed Every 28 Hours at FaultLine Theater (2016) and Urinetown at UC Berkeley (2014).

MUSIC. I’ve been playing piano for 20 years (mostly embarrassing pop songs) and I’m learning how to play the guitar.

VOLLEYBALL. I played in the National Junior Olympics in Atlanta in 2006 and Minnesota in 2007.

RODEO. Award-Winning equestrian in Western. I also did mounted 4-H drill team in the Ellensburg, WA rodeo.

Let's talk

About

Who am I?

I’m a curious Product Designer in San Francisco, California. I have a business background, graduating from UC Berkeley with a BS in Business Administration. I care about building solutions for our most vulnerable populations and driving social change.

How I went from Business to Design

I took initiative and pitched to leadership that having a dedicated designer would improve both buyer and seller satisfaction and business metrics. I became Tophatter’s first designer, where I built a 4-person design team and fostered a design-centered culture at Tophatter.

Tophatter was a great place for my learning and development, but my passion is to drive social impact and support causes I believe in. While at Tophatter, I consulted with UCSF on an initiative to help HIV youth manage their medications.

Currently, I work at Checkr where I’m devoted to removing biases from the hiring process and expanding employment opportunities for people with conviction histories.

What I care about

Designing with empathy. Developing emotional connections with people with the underlying drive to make things better.

Being mission driven. Feeling accountable towards how I’m impacting direct customers and the greater world.

Solving what’s most impactful. Thinking beyond what’s quantifiable to solve the problems that will have a lasting impact.

My design chops

Interaction and visual design. I spend the majority of my time creating user flows, wireframes, and interactive prototypes.

Information architecture. I also spend a great deal of time thinking about the overall structure and navigation.

User research. I design and lead all my own discovery and validation. I owned all of User Research at Tophatter, where I determined the needs and goals of our customers to fuel product strategy.

Prototyping. Figma, Flinto, or Invision, depending on fidelity.

Usability testing. Usually through UserTesting.com. I write the usability questions, launch studies, and aggregate individual insights into big-picture trends.

Design sprints. I’ve read through Knapp’s Sprint book multiple times and have led six Google Ventures’ Design Sprints.

My design in action

Testimonials

What I do for fun

ART. I enjoy observing and creating art. I like how art distorts reality and makes me think about the world differently.

HIKING. I love being outside in nature. In 2018, I hiked on a glacier in Alaska, through a waterfall in Iceland, and around the erupting volcano in Hawaii.

THEATER. I stage managed Every 28 Hours at FaultLine Theater (2016) and Urinetown at UC Berkeley (2014).

MUSIC. I’ve been playing piano for 20 years (mostly embarrassing pop songs) and I’m learning how to play the guitar.

VOLLEYBALL. I played in the National Junior Olympics in Atlanta in 2006 and Minnesota in 2007.

RODEO. Award-Winning equestrian in Western. I also did mounted 4-H drill team in the Ellensburg, WA rodeo.