About Me
Kamusta ka!
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Hope to hear from you soon!
Sharleen Benalvo here! I’m a UX/UI designer based in the boogie-down Bronx, NY, with plans to move to Tampa, Florida to chase the sun and work by the beach. I’m passionate about identifying complex problems and solving them in a simple and intuitive way that makes users fall in love with products.
My experience in digital marketing and analytics amounts to eight years. I developed and obtained skills like conducting market research, synthesizing and analyzing data, optimizing websites based on research, and creating and presenting Powerpoint decks. Much of my work focused on how and where users engaged with my clients’ content. As I devised each report and prepared to present my findings, I mentally dubbed myself “the People’s Champ” because my focus was to ensure people were finding and reading the client’s content how they want and where they want.
I’ve always enjoyed functional, but beautiful design whether it’s a really cute coat for women with a hidden breast pocket or DuoLingo’s eye-catching but addictive gamified language app. What actually got me interested in UX design was Crunchyroll. Crunchyroll is a streaming platform for anime. I was watching Naruto Shippuden and was really frustrated with the overall Roku and AppleTV app experience. I would have to manually exit to go to the next episode. Additionally, the app would not track episode history properly across each device. I needed to memorize the episode number in order to watch consecutive episodes. In general, the overall experience was super clunky and it got to the point that I was daydreaming of solutions for these irksome stopgaps that I was missing the entire story plot for each episode. Interestingly enough, I ENJOYED thinking of solutions for each obstacle. I had shared this odd conundrum with examples of a few “it would be so much better if the app could…” solutions with a colleague who is a UX designer. She suggested that I look into a career in UX design because what I had described was a large aspect of what she does for her clients. After much Googling, I realized that I found my calling.
Ideally, after I graduate from this program, I would love to work in a collaborative environment that encourages critical thinking, personal growth, values work-life balance, with a hint of silly. Even more, ideally, I’d like to work as a junior UX designer for Crunchyroll to whip their app into shape.