Hello, world! My name is Joel Acevedo!

About Me

As a UI designer, I create simple, intuitive, and functional user interfaces with focus on the users' visual and interactive experience, making sure the design is consistent, coherent, and aesthetically pleasing across devices.

As a UX designer, I conduct users research and evaluate requirements, generate ideas to solve problems, prototype designs and test these with users, in order to deliver a great user experience while balancing the business goals.

Over the past 15 years I’ve had the immense privilege to work in lots of web, print and multimedia projects for many exceptional companies, including Verizon, Nationwide, and Transamerica.

Achievements

Recognized with 6 Verizon Spotlight Awards, including one for Customer Excellence and one for Innovation.
Rewarded with 2018 VPS & VES Technology Kickoff Recognition for creating a game changing tool for Enterprise Service Teams that increased response rate up 132%.
Recognized 2 times with S.T.A.R.S. awards, designed to recognize individuals and teams who have demonstrated above-and-beyond effort on a specific project or a high degree of consistency in delivering valued services.

Skills

I have a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Puerto Rico. I have an obsession for accuracy and consistency. I am a team player with cross-cultural working experience. I am fully bilingual (Spanish - English).

I have been hand coding HTML5/XHTML and CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) for years now and love enhancing the user experience and layout presentation by using jQuery and jQuery UI. I'm also very proficient developing powerful web blogs and working with content management systems.

Proficient with web-oriented graphic design and multimedia tools to create layouts, templates, graphics, icons and overall visual designs for both Web and rich internet applications.

HTML5

CSS3

JavaScript

Here’s a summary of technologies, software and programming languages that I’ve worked with:

HTML, XHTML, HTML5, CSS, CSS3, ASP.NET (Master Pages and Skins), JavaScript, JSON, jQuery, MySQL, Bootstrap, Some basic knowledge of other frameworks like Angular and React, Wordpress, Drupal (very minimal), Blogging, Web Design, Web Development, Flash, User Interfaces, User Experience, Wireframing, Prototyping, Mobile Design, Responsive Design, Illustrations, Photo Manipulations, Video Editing

Experience

Verizon: First Big Break

15 years ago, I joined Verizon as a contractor worker. Working at Verizon was a career-defining experience that helped me grow as a designer.

That's when I met Sijo Kuriakose. Sijo was more than my supervisor. He became a friend & life coach - always believing in me and encouraging me to be the best I could be. Sijo is also a great human being and has always been there for me, particularly in 2007, when I almost lose my newborn baby to meningitis.

Clients loved his design. It is very difficult to find an engineer with technical and creative background.

Sijo Kuriakose (Verizon)

Verizon: GENSS

One of the coolest projects I have ever worked on. I was asked to create or design a robot. My manager wanted a robot that should be hip, young, energetic but not arrogant, friendly and capable. Inspired by mecha cartoons, I was able to come up with a design that exceeded expectations.

More impressive is the fact that everything was done with a mouse.

GTEFCU: Cruise for Kids

Another great company I worked for is GTE Federal Credit Union, now known as GTE Financial. I had fond memories of projects like working on the marketing website (which was the first major redesign ever by the company) and Passpoints (a portal where members could redeem their points for prizes). These two projects were really gratifying to work with.

But nothing tops working with Cruise for Kids project. I had the priviledge to work on multiple mediums: web, print and multimedia. I even designed the event shirt (I still have the shirts).

He is consistently focused on producing high quality, user friendly designs and has an impeccable attention to detail.

Sally Bielen (GTEFCU)

HPS Brokers Portal design for Nationwide

HealthPlan Services

At HPS, or Health Plan Services, my main role was to design brokers, employers and members portals, tailored by customers’ brand and identity. Most of these customers were in the health and insurance industry. I worked for giants like Nationwide, Principal and CIGNA.

I had the great responsibility to create documents for HPS Coding Standards, HPS UI Design Guidelines, and HPS Design Specs. I also created a portal (all hard coded) to document errors found, while testing and reviewing developers code, making sure the code was aligned with the Coding Standards.

He makes the user interface as simple and ergonomic as possible to final users without giving up on features.

Iqbal Addou (HPS)

Savtira

Savtira has been by far the best company I have ever worked with, because of the diverse types of projects. Savtira was a startup company that had an ambitious goal: provide products for the marketing, selling, and distributing of digital content including movies, video, internet, software, books, games, and music, as well as physical goods including consumer electronics.

I worked in so many cool projects, including the interface of a streaming app where users should be able to access their digital goods. I designed everything on it: an eBook reader, a Video/Audio player, a media library enhanced with social media features.

Unfortunately, the company went bankrupt and the app was never launched to the public.

Joel has great knowledge and understanding of the technology and has the ability to look at a requirement or issue and think creatively on how to resolve it.

Brad Taylor (Savtira)

Transamerica

Aproximately 8 years ago, before Bootstrap or Foundation were even a thing, I had to come up with my own CSS framework and CSS reset in order to create fully responsive interfaces. And while this CSS framework was not as robust as today’s Bootstrap, my personal favorite, I am proud on how well it worked at the time.

In fact, this CSS framework was used in multiple projects I worked on, specially while I was in Transamerica.

I recall a knowledge sharing session once where he taught our entire team how to create a custom Wordpress theme and another time where he showed us a custom living style guide he'd created. He's a fantastic designer and an asset to any team.

Holly Reynolds (Transamerica)

Verizon: VECRM

5 years later, I end up back with Verizon. Sijo, the best manager I ever worked with, called me to re-join his team as fulltime employee. I couldn’t say no to him. So back to Verizon, where I spent 7 precious years working on two main projects: VECRM and ETMS.

VECRM, Verizon Customer Management, has been the most robust/complex portals I have ever worked on. My role was to design UI components, make enhancements, new process and automation developments, and drive utilization to the employee tools.