UX Designer · Brooklyn NY · Available August 2026

Designing With Purpose. Building With Craft.

Research first, tested three rounds deep, shipped with intention. I design end-to-end products that are grounded in research and proven through usability testing, so every screen earns its place through evidence rather than opinion.

Resume
Currently at Google · Open to Opportunities
Crystal Richardson, UX Designer

About Me

I Design With Purpose. I Build With Craft.

Hi, I am Crystal — a UX Designer focused on building digital experiences that are accessible, intuitive, and genuinely useful. My background spans education technology, enterprise systems at Google, and consumer apps, with earlier years inside healthcare and public service that taught me how real people use complicated tools. Research drives every decision I make, and craft carries it through — so the work is not only functional, it is beautiful.

Selected Work

Four Projects. Real Problems. Real People.

Each project below is a full design cycle — discovery, research, testing, iteration, delivery. Research drives every decision and usability testing proves it before anything ships.

Enterprise UX — Google
Admin
Editor
Viewer
Enterprise UX · NDA Protected
NDA

Google Access Management Platform — Enterprise at Scale

Thousands of employees were filing tickets just to navigate a fragmented permissions landscape that had no plain-language guidance and served two entirely different user types. A single portal unified discovery, troubleshooting, and access requests — collapsing a process that used to take weeks down to minutes, and cutting support volume significantly.

ImpactDual user design · Plain language system · Significant reduction in support volume

All project names, internal identifiers, and metrics have been fictionalized per NDA. Designs reflect real process and thinking.

View Case Study
General
Notifications
Data
Enterprise UX · Google

Google — Enterprise Settings Redesign

Designing a scalable Settings framework — proven by shipping Notifications first. A design sprint, 13+ competitive teardowns, and a tightly scoped MVP became a reusable pattern published org-wide through the GCBP design-system library.

Impact15 reusable component templates · 1 unified pattern published org-wide
View Case Study
Side Projects & Concept Work
NaviLearn — Learning Made Accessible
EdTech · UX Case Study · Concept Project · Public

NaviLearn — Learning Made Accessible

Adults aged 18 to 70 — including ESL learners, seniors, and first-time tech users — were abandoning the original learning flow at step six of nine. Three rounds of usability testing reshaped the architecture down to just four steps, with zero task abandonment in final testing.

ImpactCore flow reduced from 9 steps to 4 · Zero task abandonment in final testing
View Case Study
Tyo's Auction App — Trust Through Design
E-Commerce · UX Case Study · Concept Project · Public

Tyo's Auction App — Trust Through Design

A mobile art auction platform redesigned for trust, transparency, and seamless live bidding. Two rounds of usability testing with real art collectors surfaced 5 friction points — each one fixed through iterative design. Result: 100% task completion, 60% lag reduction, and zero drop-offs in the final prototype.

Impact100% Task Completion · 5/5 Issues Fixed · 60% Lag Reduced
View Case Study

What I Bring

A Full-Stack Design Skill Set Built for Real Products

I own the full process — first interview to final pixel. These are the tools and methods I actually use day to day.

User Research
Usability Testing
Empathy Mapping
User Interviews
Competitive Analysis
Information Architecture
Wireframing
Prototyping
High-Fidelity UI Design
Figma
Design Systems
Interaction Design
AI-Assisted Workflows
Cross-Functional Collaboration
Accessibility Design

Research That Listens

I run interviews, synthesize the findings into empathy maps, and turn those into design decisions a PM can actually defend in a roadmap meeting.

Design That Scales

I move from low-fidelity sketches to production-ready Figma files with documented components — design systems engineers can pull from without needing to ask questions.

Collaboration That Ships

I sit with engineers during the build, pair with PMs on tradeoffs, and stay close enough to research to catch what would otherwise get lost in handoff.

Impact

Design Is Only as Good as What It Changes

Pretty is the floor, not the ceiling. Here is what the work actually moved.

9 → 4
Steps Reduced

NaviLearn's core flow cut from 9 steps to 4 through three rounds of testing.

0
Drop-Offs in Final Testing

NaviLearn and Tyo's Auction both hit zero task abandonment in final usability rounds.

3
Rounds of Usability Testing

Every project gets at least three rounds of usability testing before final delivery.

Experience

Where the Work Comes From

My perspective wasn't built in a classroom — it was built inside the Department of Education, healthcare, and public service, watching exactly how systems break for the people using them.

  • Google — UX Designer

    Feb 2025 – Present

    End-to-end design across two product areas — covering research, information architecture, high-fidelity Figma work, and production handoff. I run daily working sessions with PMs, engineers, and UX research to ship designs that survive contact with real users.

  • Freelance Visual & Digital Artist

    April 2018 – 2025

    Seven years of independent work in visual design, digital art, photography, and brand identity — and that craft is the reason my UI files look like UI files instead of wireframes with color applied on top.

The Through Line

Public institutions to Google — every role sharpened the same skill: building systems that work for the people using them, not just the people who built them.

Certifications

  • Google UX Design Professional Certificate
    2025
  • Google AI Essentials Certificate
    2025

Let's Talk

Ready to Build Something That Actually Matters?

I'm looking for UX and Product Design roles where design has a seat at the table when decisions get made, not a revision request afterwards. If your team ships products that touch users beyond the typical demo persona, we should talk.

Available August 2026 · Open to relocation · Remote or Hybrid

crystalrichardson690@gmail.comlinkedin.com/in/crystal-richardson-508798363
View My Portfolio
Open to Opportunities · August 2026