I’m usually the person asking the question before the question.

• Before we redesign the website, what actually needs to change?

• Before we build the feature, what problem are we trying to solve?

• Before we jump to a solution, what do we know—and what are we assuming?

I’ve been designing for almost twenty years. I started in print and branding, moved into advertising, and eventually into UX and product design. I like being able to move across all of it: have the stakeholder conversation, pull the pieces apart, turn what I’m hearing into a framework, then make something tangible enough for people to react to.

Looking back, it’s been the same job the whole time: making rules other people can build from. I’ve designed identity systems for most of my career. One client (a nonprofit) is still using their brand more than a decade later. The same instinct later turned into building playbooks, component libraries, and most recently, the architecture behind a children’s hospital website.

That’s where I’m at my best—when the problem is complicated, the path forward isn’t obvious, and a team needs someone to make sense of it and turn it into something they can move on.

“The client is not easily impressed, but when they knew Nicole had been assigned to a particularly difficult task, their anxiety and fears went away.”

Phaedon Hain, Human-Centered Design Lead, TISTA Science & Technology

A lot of my recent work has been in the healthcare space: a pediatric hospital, a merged health system. Before that, a federal program for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. I like work where the stakes are real, the constraints matter, and “just make it look better” isn't really the problem.