Annalisa Recio

Purveyor of Delightful User Experiences

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Visionary Product Design leader with 15+ years of experience shaping enterprise product experiences across SaaS, workplace tech, and mobile platforms.

Proven success building and scaling UX teams, implementing design systems, leading digital transformations, and aligning user experience to business outcomes
Known for connecting strategy to execution, mentoring cross-functional teams, and driving measurable impact through user-centered design
Expert in UX & Product Strategy, Design Systems & Governance, Design Leadership & Team Building, Native Mobile & Responsive Web, Lean UX & Design Thinking
Skilled in Conversational UI & Accessibility, User Research & Usability Testing, and Scalable Design Operations
Award-winning designer: Zeroheight Design System Finalist for Best Design System Governance (2023), 1st Place Cox Annual Hackathon (2017), AT&T Dev Summit Awards (2015)

Core Expertise

Executive Product Leader. Design Systems Advocate. User Experience Expert.

UX & Product Strategy
Design Leadership & Organizational Growth
Lean UX & Design Thinking
Scalable Design Operations

Generative AI & Conversational Interfaces
Design Systems & Governance
Native Mobile & Responsive Web
User Research & Usability Testing Methods

Digital Transformation
Cross-Functional Collaboration
Data-Informed Design & Insights
Cross-Functional Collaboration

Design Thinking

Designing with the user in mind

Empathize

Understand users’ needs, emotions, and pain points through research methods such as interviews, observation, and journey mapping. The goal is to build genuine empathy and uncover the “why” behind user behavior.

Define

Synthesize research findings into clear problem statements or user insights. This phase reframes challenges from the user’s perspective and identifies opportunities for meaningful design solutions.

Ideate & Test

Generate a wide range of creative ideas and potential solutions without constraints. Techniques include brainstorming, sketching, and co-creation sessions to explore multiple possibilities before narrowing down.

Prototype & Test

Turn ideas into tangible representations (from low-fidelity sketches to interactive prototypes) and test them with users to validate assumptions, gather feedback, and refine the design iteratively.

Portfolio

A Collection of My Work

SAAS Product

Skeleton Load Animation

Cox Automotive Mobile App

Safe Driving iOS app built to help promote safe driving via gamification.

Greeting Animation for iPad Inspection App

Auctionmate

Mass Notification Mobile App

Responsive Design for Audio Player

Event/Task Management Responsive Design

Organizational Process Flow

Diagram of How to Build Products

Customer Journey Map

Aurasma

User Personas

360 Survey

HireNow

Internal Talent Aquisition Application for Hiring Managers

Pharos Design System

Design System for SAAS Company

Serebro

Systems Health Monitor App

HP Marketing Optimization Website

Defining UX Process

Cox Automotive App

Design for Vehicle Transport App

Cox Automotive App

Vehicle Inspection iPad App

Design System

Cox Automotive Sticker Sheet for iOS

Design System

Cox Automotive Sticker Sheet for Android

Design System

Sticker Sheet for Responsive Web

Cox Automotive App

Repair Estimation App

Home Depot Order Management System

Product Search

Cox Automotive App

Vehicle Maintenance App

Cox Automotive App

Design for Customer Analytics App

Kelley Blue Book Android App

Instant Cash Offer Mobile App

Colt International

Flight Planning iPad App

Work Experience

Eptura

Vice President of UX | November 2021 - Present

Senior Director of UX | April 2021 – November 2021

Demonstrate aspirational storytelling by proposing and selling a vision for the future to position the organization as the premier leader in its market

Infuse the culture with a design thinking mindset—a creative approach to solving business, product, and user problems

Align UX processes, resources and tools to promote efficiencies, deliver on business priorities and demonstrate cost-savings

Unify products and create a best-in-class, industry-leading design systems across all teams

Hire, train, coach, and grow the next-level of design leaders and foster a collaborative, productive, and positive environment through up-skilling, and scaling the UX Design team

Provide strategic design assistance on key client projects leading to customer confidence and sales bookings

VMware

UX Manager

May 2020 - April 2021

UX Vision + Influence: Define, prioritize, and execute a clear UX vision roadmap in concert with the overall VMware strategy and effectively present to and influence designers up to senior executive management.

Team Building: Hire, mentor, and lead a team of highly effective designers and researchers.

Design Process: Elevate and oversee the design process, being fluent in user-centered design and generate UX requirements.

Pattern Library: Build and implement pattern library to promote and maintain design patterns across suite of products.

Research-Based: Propose scientifically-sound experiments and design release plans based on observations and hypotheses.

Anthem

UX Art Director

June 2019 - May 2020

Digital Transformation: Set the vision and demonstrate success by building products that are data-validated, hypothesis- driven, and experiment-tested solutions.

Team Building + Mentorship: Lead, mentor and provide guidance for cross-platform designers within the Digital Experience and Product Engineering team to set the tone and advocate for frictionless experiences across the associate and customer journey.

Data-Driven: Partner with all levels of the organizations to review the reporting of key metrics, and drive to solutions tested and measured against corporate KPIs.

Product Management: Act as the enterprise product owner for the solutions assigned; understand product, business, and competitive landscape.

OnSolve

Director of User Experience

October 2017 - June 2019

Design Leadership: Hire and manage a mix of 8 full-time and contracted UX designers, across 3 continents and responsible for creating teams, leading designers and fostering design culture.

Project Management: Negotiate issues with top level technical and operational staff and executive leadership on ideas and solutions that impact industry and/or corporate results. Oversee budgets, resource allocation, multiple-year roadmap, and addressing/balancing customer needs.

UX Research: Speak to users and synthesize data to determine current, short and long-term needs. Lead the creation of user personas, customer journey maps, pain point identification, UI/userflow audits, interviews and key finding summaries.

Design System: Evangelize, build and provide influence on the production of a scalable company design system that elevates legacy products to a unified user experience that impacts industry and corporate results.

Cox Automotive

Lead Mobile User Experience Architect

October 2016 - October 2017

Coach team of new and veteran UX designers across multiple projects to develop scenarios, use cases, user profiles, workflows, and mental models based on business requirements and market research

Establish guidelines and design core elements for Cox Automotive design system for Android, iOS and responsive web

Estimate and prioritize design tasks based on business and user needs and align to development cycles

Collaborate with UX Research Team to conduct surveys and interviews to inform product design and persona development and persona development

Conduct user research, perform competitive audits, and analyze findings to understand and validate product ideas

Design and evaluate visual human interfaces using the most current of Apple's Human Interface Guidelines and Google Material's Design Guidelines

Deliver presentations to key stakeholders on conceptual diagrams, wireframes, and prototypes

Educate product and engineering teams on UX best practices, processes and techniques

IBM + 

Lead iOS User Experience Designer

May 2016 - November 2016

Work in partnership with Apple as part of IBM’s MobileFirst iOS team to build iOS enterprise applications

Exercise a deep understanding of Apple's HIG, and UX best practices such as color contrast testing, dynamic type optimization, iOS appkit framework standardization, and abiding by accessibility guidelines

Conduct in-person user workshop to obtain the golden thread, pain points and understand what a minimum viable product looks like

Design the end-to-end user experience for iOS applications through information architecture, user flows, low fidelity comps, high fidelity mockups and interactive

HP Inc.

Lead User Experience Designer

July 2015 - December 2015

Oversee UX design efforts for features and products from concept through development as team lead and Scrum Master for HP's Emerging Technology Group

Build relationship with key stakeholders and store operation groups to identify and resolve business issues

Provide well-thought out and strategic design direction by defining the user experience for our new and existing software products

Effectively communicate design ideas, develop interaction models, create wireframes, and build mockups and prototypes

Slalom Consulting

User Experience Consultant

August 2014 - July 2015

Create high fidelity wireframes and convert to working prototypes for mobile and desktop applications

Generate effective screen designs and visual mockups that meet business and user needs

Freely ideate and conceptualize via sketches and concept models

Create annotated wireframes and functional/interaction specifications

Identify and communicate design trade offs and alternatives, as needed

Present findings, design concepts, and rationale to clients

Maintain up-to-date understanding of technologies and best practices in website navigation, browsers, and usability