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Stefan Gutnick Allen, MSc
Experience
Freelance UX Designer
Irvine, California
January 2025 – Present
- Delivered end-to-end design for multiple clients, from discovery and wireframing through to high-fidelity prototypes and handoff.
UX Designer
EMBL-EBI, Hinxton, Cambridgeshire
February 2021 – December 2024
- COVID-19 Data Portal – Drove usability and interface improvements to a global viral and genomic data portal through iterative usability testing, analytics, and design system work. The portal collected over 9 million COVID records from 161 countries and was featured in a peer-reviewed publication in Nucleic Acids Research (2021).
- ServiceNow Implementation – Identified critical usability barriers in a company-wide internal tool rollout through heuristic evaluations and user testing, delivering multiple quality-of-life updates.
- Other projects: Designed and improved usability for various websites such as CancerModels.org, EMBL-EBI Training, insdc.org and more.
UX Consultant
Intact Financial Corporation, Montréal
August 2018 – August 2019
- Added Value research – Planned and conducted interviews with customers to discover opportunities to deliver additional value and revenue streams. Organized an internal hackathon developing the most promising features.
- Billing Research and Redesign – Redesigned the billing experience for millions of Canadian customers, validating decisions through multiple rounds of remote and in-person usability testing, card sorting, A/B testing, web analytics and high fidelity prototyping.
- Other projects – Improved desktop and mobile experiences across Intact and subsidiary platforms, including iOS and Android apps, through targeted UX research and iterative design.
UX Designer
Jonar, Montréal
July 2016 – August 2018
- ParagonERP – Led design of an enterprise SaaS product by introducing structured research practices, and translating findings into wireframes and validated prototypes.
- Website redesign – Redesigned website based on A/B testing and UX heuristics. Increased usability and lead generation by 108%.
- Other projects – Designed online banner ads, contributed to marketing campaigns, improved purchasing flow, and implemented a focus on user-centered design.
Interpretation Coordinator Intern
International Telecommunication Union, Geneva
Interpretation Coordinator Intern
February 2016 – July 2016
- Organizing interpretation needs for international conferences
- Schedules, contracts, and travel plans for interpreters (SAP).
Education
Master of Science
University of York, UK
September 2019 – September 2020
MSc Human-Centered Interactive Technologies
Bachelor of Arts
McGill University, Montréal
September 2012 – August 2015
Major: Psychology
Minor: Economics
Skills
Qualitative research methods
Usability testing, user interviews, heuristic analysis, card sorting, focus groups, thematic analysis.
Quantitative research methods
Web analytics, A/B testing, statistical analysis
Design
Wireframing, storyboarding, Sketch, Figma, Adobe suite
Programming languages
Basic proficiency in Python, C, JavaScript, R, HTML+CSS
Academic Projects
User-centered design of a campus navigation app
Group project to design a campus navigation app, involving user interviews, prototyping, heuristic and usability evaluations.
Effect of ‘loot box’ warning labels on parents perceptions of video games
Empirical survey, statistical analysis in R.
Designing frictions to regulate
mindless browsing
MSc Dissertation, exploring various design strategies to help people manage time spent browsing mindlessly.
Languages
- English
- French
- Spanish (Conversational)