Hi! I'm Kelly
I'm a former high school chemistry teacher turned UX strategist who got tired of watching EdTech products fail because they weren't built with any understanding of how educators actually work.
For 15 years, I lived the chaos of platforms that promised to save time but actually added three more steps to my workflow. I carry that frustration into my UX work—not to make prettier interfaces, but to make sure EdTech products genuinely make teachers' lives easier, not harder.
I earned my PhD studying how people actually learn/think and how to design EdTech products that work with the way our brains work, not against it. This isn't theoretical knowledge gathering dust on a shelf—I use it every single day, combined with my years in the classroom, to create experiences that let teachers and students focus on their goals instead of fighting the interface.
Now I partner with EdTech companies ready to move from opinion-driven decision-making to evidence-based strategy. Not through six-month research cycles or academic theories, but through strategic, practical UX that drives real adoption.
What makes me tick?
I'm relentlessly curious about why people do what they do—and I have zero patience for building features based on guessing.
When someone says "Users want feature X," I immediately ask: What problem are they actually trying to solve? Who are we solving it for? What's the smartest way to get there? And what evidence says this is the right move?
I work with organizations who want strategic thinking backed by actual understanding of human behavior—not just polished interfaces. Whether I'm redesigning a workflow, running a discovery workshop, or building a design system, I cut through assumptions to focus on what matters: solving the right problems for the right people.
The practical stuff
I bridge strategy and execution. I can run your stakeholder workshop in the morning and prototype solutions in Figma that afternoon. I speak fluent developer (HTML, CSS, React) and collaborate seamlessly with tech teams—no awkward designer-developer translation needed.
I've led projects everywhere from scrappy startups to enterprise organizations, and I know how to adapt my approach to fit your reality, your constraints, and your actual capacity (not just what the project plan says you have).
How we'll work together
Partnership, not vendor relationship. You won't send me off to "do UX" and wait for a deck. We'll work side-by-side to:
Dig into your existing research (or run studies if you don't have any)Challenge assumptions together—even the a stakeholder's favorite featureMake evidence-based decisions as a team, not in silosBuild systems that last after I'm gone (so you're not dependent on me)
You bring: Business context, stakeholder relationships
I bring: EdTech UX expertise, strategic frameworks, research methods that work in EdTech's constraints
Together: We transform opinion-driven decisions into evidence-based strategy
What you can expect
Direct communication. If your feature request doesn't solve a real user need, I'll tell you. If your roadmap is opinion-driven instead of evidence-based, we'll build the research to fix it. No corporate speak, no dancing around the problem.
Strategic thinking grounded in research. Every recommendation comes with the "why," backed by user research, data, or cognitive science. You'll have evidence to defend decisions when stakeholders push back.
A partner who pushes back AND champions your ideas. I'll challenge assumptions when needed and be your biggest advocate when you're right. Because I genuinely care about making your product successful—and I've seen what happens when EdTech gets it wrong.