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 dogs!) and I started working as a UX Designer at Dell Secureworks. If you REALLY want to stay humble, work as a designer at a cybersecurity company for a while. I spent the next decade there, eventually becoming Director of User Experience and leading design teams through layoffs, pivots, and organizational chaos. In February 2025, Secureworks was acquired by Sophos (a much larger cybersecurity company), and I moved into a Director role there leading UX across their XDR, Endpoint, and AI platforms, plus their central platform and design system.

After six months at Sophos, I realized I was done with corporate America. So in September 2025, I quit and went all-in on self-employment. Now I split my time between two things: building Coolorado (an outdoor gear company where I’m designing products from scratch) and coaching UX professionals through career transitions. I’ve worked with 200+ designers on everything from portfolio reviews to navigating layoffs to figuring out what comes after UX.

The coaching work started in 2017 when I taught the UI/UX Design Certificate Program at Boulder Digital Arts. Turns out all those years of managing teams, navigating corporate politics, and eventually making my own leap out of corporate life gave me useful perspective to share. These days the work I find most meaningful is helping people figure out their next move – whether that’s doubling down on UX or pivoting somewhere else entirely.

In 2012, I wrote The Beginner’s Guide to Flyball, and in 2018 I wrote How to Get a UX Design Job, which hit #3 on Amazon’s UX bestseller list next to Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think. A little surreal!

If you’re a UX professional wondering what’s next – whether that’s landing a better role, surviving a tough market, or figuring out if UX is even still the right path – I’d love to work with you.