My name is Melissa Strader, and I’ll be your instructor for the Sketch course. I’ve had many different job titles over the years as the UX field has matured, including UI designer, interaction designer, UX researcher. Now that I’m later in my career, I spend more time leading UX teams.

I’ve worked at both big companies and startups. I led UX teams at both Google and eBay, and I’ve also worked for multiple startups in Silicon Valley. The first startup I did was in 2010, and I’m currently at a series B life sciences startup.

Although I dabbled in design and art for many years, my first official role doing digital product design was at Google, where I was initially a UI designer and eventually my title changed to interaction designer. It wasn’t until I started working at startups in the 2010s, and my second time at Google in 2013, that Sketch came on the scene. Now I’m not particularly tied to one tool - currently I use Figma, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Sketch all for different things.

I’d summarize my career as fusing design and technology to make products better for people. The main disciplines that I’ve drawn from are psychology, human-computer interaction, and computer science. My favorite business sectors are those that help people live their best lives - healthcare and education are especially important to me because they span the entire human experience.