Hiya, I'm Michelle!

I specialize in UX research and design leadership — with deep experience in accessibility, inclusive design, and regulated, high-governance environments.

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Selected work

Scoring Vendor Accessibility Claims Before Procurement

Product Design | Accessibility | AI | Government
The Vendors page in the VITA Accessibility Evaluator, grouping each vendor’s product, PDAA and roadmap evaluations with their status and recommendation.
3
Independent Evaluationsproduct, PDAA, roadmap
7
Policy Hard Stopseach routed to a human
50
WCAG Criteriaindividually reviewable

Co-Designing Emotional Care for CI Recipients

Inclusive Design | Participatory Research | Healthcare
A cochlear implant study participant speaking to Michelle through a Teams video call. (For illustrative purposes only.)
197
Applicants Screened6 selected co-designers
8
Journey Stagesrevised
0→1
Peer Frameworkco-designed

SafeWatch: Community-Powered Trigger Tags for Twitch

Product Design | Inclusive Design | Trust & Safety
The SafeWatch public database, headed “Know what’s coming before you watch.”, with a game search field and a row of recently tagged games shown as box art.
0→1
Working Pilotfrom a speculative concept
2-stage
Community Review5 reports, 15 votes at 80%
5
Roles Designedviewer to owner

COVA Design System Rebuilt in USWDS

Design Systems | Accessibility | Government
COVA Design System showing colour palette and applied components including the Virginia.gov homepage
WCAG 2.1 AA
Compliantsystem-wide
40
State Agenciesaudited and themed
1
Design Systemacross agencies

DevOps Infrastructure for Accessibility Compliance

Accessibility | DevOps | System Design | Government
ITC accessibility triage register issue page in Azure DevOps
75
Applications Cataloguedinventoried & triaged
~1,275
Issues Loggedavg. 17 per app
0→1
Compliance Systembuilt from scratch

Building a Qualitatively Data Rich Playtest

Game UX Research | Qualitative Methods | Research Ops
Four players sharing their gameplay via a Discord group call during playtesting.
60
Hours Recordedacross 3 groups
15
Transcriptssynthesized
0→1
Qualitative Playtesta first for the studio