I'm Emily —
a UX/UI designer
who asks better questions.

I'm a UX/UI designer with six years of professional experience — four of those as lead designer at Agathon, a software agency in Grand Rapids building digital tools for mission-driven organizations. I've worked across the full design lifecycle: research, wireframing, lo-fi and hi-fi prototyping, usability testing, stakeholder management, and final UI delivery.

What makes me effective isn't just the craft — it's the curiosity. I ask better questions than the brief provides, I listen for what users aren't saying, and I don't assume I already know how people think.

Before design, I lived in Indonesia doing cross-cultural and NGO work — my degree is in cross-cultural communications. The work demanded that I learn how to read an entirely foreign context: the social structures, the values, the unspoken rules, the language. I couldn't assume anything. I had to observe, ask, hypothesize, and revise.

That's the same process I use in UX research. "Different" was never wrong — it was always just something I hadn't understood yet. I brought that mindset back to the States, into design, and I use it every time I sit down with a user or pick up a new brief.