Rachel Simpson

I currently work as an Interaction Designer on the Chrome team, supporting product development in the Munich office and acting as an advocate for the Chrome UX team in Mountain View.

I worked as a Freelance designer, creating apps, websites, and acting as a consultant in product development for organizations and companies. Clients include DriveNow (in collaboration with BMW), ExB, and Munich-based startup companies. Alongside, my community development efforts include event organization as a coordinator for Make Munich, IxDA Munich, and Munich Design Jams.

I worked as an Interaction and User Experience Designer on a variety of different projects for different clients. I was also very lucky to work on an internal project called Nova, which since won an Interaction Award in the "Disruption" category. It can be viewed here: http://nova.lunar-europe.com

In addition to production on web-based projects, Mod7 offered me the opportunity to work on systems-design problems in a real world setting, in the form of a game for the iPhone. My role included working with the team of 12 designers, programmers and business managers to design a complex game-world system. This also required that I participate in discussions and brainstorming sessions about how the game would function, make wireframes, and even organize a paper prototype testing session with users.

As a representative on the Emily Carr Students Union, I advocated for the needs of Industrial Design students at meetings of the Students Union, and in some cases with external bodies. I also participated in the successful UPass Campaign in 2009 and 2010.

In this role, I worked as part of a student team, led by faculty Dave Humphrey. We worked over the course of 4 months to develop visualizations of P.H.D. research being conducted on patient flow at the BC Children's Hospital Emergency Room. This required skills in design Research, concept development and visual design.

I worked with a team of Emily Carr students, faculty and graduates as consultants on a competition entry for the Living City competition with a team of amazing Stantec staff. We were lucky to work with Architects, Engineers, and Sustainability Specialists to put together a vision of a city of the future.

I was responsible, in partnership with a Master's Student, for designing and coding an iPhone application prototype, focused on location-based storytelling. This project was a collaboration between Emily Carr University and Lat49. The project is documented online here: http://www.rachelilansimpson.com/portfolio/recite

I worked with the Millennium Network to help launch their independent organization, after the closure of the Millennium Foundation (a government-based organization from which the M-Network was born.) My responsibilities included managing a variety of online platforms for communicating with Network Members, including website, blog, mailing lists and more.

Note: I worked in this role for 3 consecutive summers. (about 9 months total.) Working with this Creative Team was an excellent experience for a recent High-School Graduate. They offered me different tasks, from drawing storyboards and creating stopframe animation to using Illustrator and Photoshop to design graphics. They took a strong interest in helping me to develop a variety of skillsets and pushed me to learn everything I could.

Application Design, Invention Design