About Lisa Murnan

I graduated with a degree in English and thought I’d write for a living. I started working at The News & Observer out of college as a news researcher (Reporter: “Get me everything you have on ________!” Off I’d go).

Then in 1994, the Web happened. I moved into the New Media department, got a crash course in HTML and Photoshop, and helped put the online version of the newspaper up every day.

That’s how my career took a left turn into the Wild West of the internet. I left the N&O for a terrifying job as a webmaster at a software company, then to IBM as a web lead (where I took my first usability class from Jared Spool in 1997). In 1999, I moved to NYC and joined an “e-business consultancy” called Scient the week it went public.

After the dot-com bubble burst along with my stock options, I moved back to my hometown, Charlotte, NC, and took a job as an information architect with Bank of America, working on their corporate intranet, Flagscape. From there, to TIAA as their first information architect (the job evolved into “UX Lead” by the time I left – my first job title with “UX” in it!), then to Ally Financial as an information architect/interaction designer.

IBM, Bank of America, and Ally all had in-house usability labs and dedicated researchers on staff, so I benefited greatly from having my designs tested regularly. There’s nothing like usability testing to keep you humble as a designer.

I met my husband in 2011 and moved to San Diego to be with him. I started working as an interaction designer at ACTIVE Network when I got to California, then transitioned into full-time UX consulting a year later. As a consultant, I worked with Ally again plus a number of startups.

In 2014, we moved to Colorado (more room for our 10 dogs!) and I started working as a UX Designer at Dell Secureworks, which is where I am today. If you REALLY want to stay humble, work as a designer at a cybersecurity company for a while. I still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface.

I’ve moved up the ranks into design management but still roll up my sleeves and do design and research regularly. After so many years as an individual contributor, I was initially skeptical about management but turns out I love it – it’s still design, I’m just designing a team (and processes, frameworks, product vision, etc.) instead.

I also take on side gigs because they help me learn and grow so much as a designer. In 2017 & 2018, I taught the UI/UX Design Certificate Program at Boulder Digital Arts. I consulted with autonomous vehicle startup Outrider in 2019 & 2020 and designed the MVP for their Mission Control software (that lets dispatchers tell robotic yard trucks what to do). I currently do one-on-one UX career coaching and teach online courses focused on UX career development.

In 2012, I wrote a dog sport training book called The Beginner’s Guide to Flyball, and in 2018 I wrote How to Get a UX Design Job to help UX designers take their careers to the next level.

At one point How to Get a UX Design Job was sitting on the Amazon bestseller list (in the UX category) at #3 next to Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think. A little surreal!

Please get in touch with me on LinkedIn if you’d like to connect! We can talk about UX or dogs.