Alexis Finch

Alexis is Defenestration Expert – yes, that’s ‘UX-er’ or ‘Applied Anthropologist’ – at Seed&Spark, working to close the loop between funding and distribution of independent films. She works with content designed for the biggest screens out there and delivers it to people’s pockets.

Previously she consulted for startups, helping them recognize and eliminate feature creep and zombie users. She’s also been the pencil behind GraphiteMind, turning complex problems into visually engaging sketchnotes, making obfuscated ideas relatable and actionable. She founded #XXHack, now part of CWDevs, and continues to act as UX Mentor for WIM, Parisoma and DevBootcamp, while making time to sketchnote the odd tech conference.

Pieces

This sketchnote is shown within an open notebook. It is black and white, and titled: Jen Myers, Developers Can't Design. It has a sketch of the speaker saying: I am a designer - One who thinks about the making of things. It has a progressive flow of how design works, with small sketches of users along the way, and questions that illustrate how to think about the design process: What emotion or personality are you communicating? Ask why. Do you do wireframes? On the opposite page, the sketchnote lays out: The Basic Tenants of Design. This includes repetition, which shows a number of small flowers lined up; balance, which shows two small dinosaurs next to each other; emphasis, which shows a dinosaur roaring; contrast, which shows a progression of increasingly dark tiles; and negative space, which shows stars in the sky and an arrow pointing to the space between them. Then there is an image of a person in a computer screen, reaching outside of the monitor with the title: The digital native designer. The sketchnote concludes with a sketch of a wireframe and the text: If you consider these the whole time… You can't just refactor design. In the very bottom there are a few people gathered around a box with a question mark, but what they are saying can't be made out.

Amplifying Voices

When every speaker on stage is a white guy, doing sketchnotes of what they're saying looks like betrayal.

by Alexis Finch

Support Feminist Tech Media: Give A Small Amount For Each Issue We Publish