About Tiffany

I work as a jill-of-all-trades Seattle user experience designer/developer: a slew of web design, a ton of web development, a smidge of writing, a measured amount of design thinking, a pinch of project management, a dash of team management, a soupcon of search engine optimization and a smattering of information architecture, all combined with budget usability testing and (thankfully) infrequent database work. For more information about me, see my Jobster profile: http://www.jobster.com/people/tiff-fehr

Key Info

Position Desired	Full Time
Willing to Relocate	Yes
Commuting Distance	No Preference
Acceptable Travel	No Preference
U.S. Work Authorization	U.S. Citizen
Eligible for U.S. Security Clearance	No

Interview

What are you most passionate about? (06/15/2007)

Building experiences that don\'t get in the way of users. If my mom can use something I've designed without feeling down or guilty for things entirely not her fault, that\'s very rewarding for me. (Aside from the fact it means less long-distance tech help.)

What is the toughest problem you have had to solve? (05/19/2007)

Battling for: semantic markup, real *cascading* CSS, separation of presentation layer and data layer, usability for people, "usability" for googlebot, consistent vocabulary, web-standards best practices, usability best practices, accessibility best practices, unobtrusive JS, comments in back-end code frameworks, that IA is worth attention...all the usual battles of a small web shop.

Why did you choose this career? (05/19/2007)

My career is less a choice and more an evolutionary process. I started as an artist, then went digital for CAD prototyping and design, which then led to a web portfolio project. So I picked up HTML from a one-page primer...and here I am, 8 years later with a UX design/development gig, sometimes even doing stuff like database design. It's a far cry from outdoor sculpture, but I like it for the same reasons -- coding is puzzle solving, and interactive design is similar in 2-D (digital) and 3-D space. I'd even argue that Ajax interactivity is the third dimension of interactivity on the Web.

What kind of job are you looking for? (04/16/2007)

A team and organization that understands and supports the fact that the best tech workers eat, sleep and breathe their geek interests, and bring all of it to bear at work. A good company hires those people, and gives them some latitude to participate in their geek communities on the clock.

What do you want to do when you grow up? (04/09/2007)

When I grow up, I want to be one of those lucky people who can look back on a good career and also see a rewarding work-life balance.

Describe your ideal work environment. (04/02/2007)

My ideal environment includes a fast-paced, fast-thinking, forward-looking team, with a genuine enthusiasm to work together. I like a company that understands the role of best-practices, and encourages employees to (responsibly) pursue and further creativity. And maybe an organic fruit basket delivery.

What did you learn from your previous job? (01/30/2007)

Politics and professionalism. And even though I grew a lot in both respects at my previous employer, those are two areas in which I think I will always be learning.

What do you like most about your job? (01/30/2007)

Elegant code solutions. I get a kick out of a UI & code solution that expresses the content or data *just* right. If a component can be wrapped up in a simple, meaningful answer that people understand easily, that makes me pretty happy.