Career path
Everyone's journey to a design career is different. It's our experiences that give us perspective and a unique point of view. My journey began as teenager that liked to draw and build HTML websites. Today I manage a wonderful design team at Jack Henry that is working hard to make banking apps improve your financial wellbeing.
Education
I received a drawing and painting scholarship to begin my college education. I quickly learned that I wasn't good enough to make a living as a painter, nor did I have a genuine interest in pursuing fine art professionally. As I had an interest in computers and making HTML websites, I changed my major to graphic design. I was fortunate enought to join the graphic design program at USU and finish my undergraduate degree with a study abroad design program in Switzerland. The Swiss design philosophy of systematic, rational design had a big impact on my own design philosophy.
McKay in Lucerene Switzerland, June 2008.
Graphic design
After graduation, I worked for a couple design agencies. Because of my background with HTML, I picked up a lot of the web design work. I wanted to try more traditional graphic design and finally got an opportunity to work with a nationally recognized branding agency. Their work was featured in Comm Arts several times and obviously recognized regionally as well. I learned a lot more about graphic design (the owner had over 30 years experience and literally teaches graphic design history at the U of U) but we did not win any national awards while I was there. Only a regional AIGA 100 for a self-promotional t-shirt. I decided that graphic design wasn’t for me. The work was too ephemeral and advertising driven. I went back to working on increasingly more complicated websites and eventually apps.
Notable projects from McKay's time with design agency modern8.
UX design
I left modern8 and went on my own for a short time before I ended up contracting and eventually joining Sling TV as a UX designer. Sling has just released their first streaming app and was in a period of tremendous growth as they scaled to cover all possible platforms. This gave me the opportunity to work on several platforms, including Android, iOS and Apple TV. I designed the initial Sling app for Apple TV and had my screens featured in Apple's WWDC conference that year (2016). Truly, a surreal highlight for me. I also worked closely with Google partners to implement Chromecast in our Android devices.
After Sling, I worked on Facebook business pages as a contractor with Salt Lake design agency, Underbelly. I split my time between two teams and two offices. One in Menlo Park and the other in Seattle. The opportunity of working with a large tech company was a great learning experience, especially in regards to the organizational structure and the cross functional collaboration.
Highlights of working in the UX and product design industry.
Fintech
The final, or current phase of my career has been focused in the fintech industry. It began with a small startup called Acima, a lease-to-own company. I was the first and only designer on a fast paced team, which was also a great learning experience. I had some unusual opportunities to impact the business that I hadn't considered before. When I joined MX, I had a new world of possibilities opened up to me. As the first and only UX researcher at MX, I had the opportunity to lead research efforts internally and also external partners.
Companies and organizations McKay has worked with in the Fintech industry.
Through a series of conferences and partnerships, I worked with behavioral researchers at the Financial Health Network, and The Common Cents Lab at Duke University. The potential of helping people improve their wellbeing through design and psychology is where I found me true mission.