Ovetta Sampson – Biography

Ovetta Sampson is an African American female product manager/design researcher/UX designer, and has a wide array of experience in the design world as well as journalism and marketing. This large range of skills has contributed to her ultimate goal to “amplify the beauty of humanity with design while avoiding practices that exploit its fragility.” From DePaul University, she received her MS in Computer Science with an emphasis in HCI. She got into UX through the desire to build products that didn’t exist, and so she taught herself HTML, CSS, Python, PHP, and Ajax. Sampson has worked at IDEO as a design research lead and now works at Microsoft as the Principal Creative Director. She has worked in transportation and mobility, health care, financial services, and technology specialising in systems design.

One of the key projects she’s worked on that emphasizes her UX Process well is the creation of HomeBase, a tablet application that offers users simple ways to communicate with those around them. Her mother is an analog user who uses technology in a nontraditional way, and so to create for her presented the challenge of finding a way for seniors to accomplish daily tasks with technology, and with minimal help from others. HomeBase populates information automatically for those who rely on haptic controls instead of controlled keystrokes. She and her team performed user research, data analysis, connected data to design principles, made the design features align with data, and conducted usability tests of the interface. As someone who’s spent a lot of time learning about the relationship between data and people, Sampson is a big advocate for ethical design. In her free time, she does marathons, and enjoys swimming, biking, running, and coaching triathletes.

Works Cited:

1. Sampson, Ovetta. “Ovetta Sampson|UX Problem Solver.” Ovetta Sampson, www.ovetta-sampson.com/. 
2. Sampson, Ovetta. “Ovetta Sampson.” LinkedIn, www.linkedin.com/in/ovettasampson/. 
3. Tran, Tony Ho. “IDEO Alum Ovetta Sampson on the Future of Data Science, UX, and…” Dscout.com, dscout.com/people-nerds/marry-data-science-with-user-research-ethical-design-depends-on-it.