Simona Brusa Pasque

Unfortunately, after the passing of my father in July 2013, I've been going back and forth from Italy to take care of my father's legal and business matters. I'LL BE DONE at the BEGINNING of JULY 2014 and after that I'll be able to begin working full time again.
Drop me a line if you have an interesting position that you want me to consider.

At the CEO request I successfully took the Executive Team through my "Lean Branding Workshop" to redesign and redefine the brand core statements (Positioning, Promise, Essence, Personality, Vision, Mission, Unique Value proposition, Experience Pyramid of Needs).
Re-designed in house the entire website, created iPhone and iPad apps from scratch.
Brought a mobile and tablet first approach to the site redesign process.
Led the Merchandise team in the creation of a Video Shooting Bible to collect patterns and winning strategies in the item video selling presentation.

Soba was a start up we created around the idea of revolutionizing the world of mortgage buying. The concept was an all online transparent marketplace where users could upload all their info and documents, make truly informed decisions, evaluate all alternatives and closing the best deal. I researched and designed the entire experience, from market research to the mortgage selection algorithm logic. The product launched an alpha but came to an halt due to legal problems and lack of a market insider CEO.

TikiTaki Studio is a design duo and an experimental space to tinker with new technologies and create interesting applications.

Key projects:
LBW - LEAN BRANDING WORKSHOP
In my long experience working with start-ups the need to put together a solid articulation of a brand idea & identity in an agile way has surfaced over and over. To that end I have developed and iterated on a 2 week process in which Executives can generate collaboratively the MVBK (Minimum Viable Brand Kit). The MVBK defines the brand core statements: Positioning, Promise, Essence, Personality, Vision, Mission, Unique Value proposition, Palette and Experience Pyramid of Needs. The process has been successfully applied so far to Joyus.com and Team Maxim Consulting.

STREET SMART – Thomson Reuters iPad App
iPad app for fast access to real time market data (Thomson Reuters API). The simple and uncluttered interface allows access company fundamentals, real-time Tweets, Wall Street news, and events. WINNER in the Thomson Reuters Street Apps Challenge.

FIFANEWS and IN THEATERS – Vodafone Mobile Widgets
FIFA News brings football related headlines on your phone in a fun interactive picture gallery.
InTheater shows location based movie theaters programming and Rotten Tomatoes ratings. A list of favorite theaters generates updates on what's playing.

FLICKRBOOK – Facebook App
Flickr photos + Facebook accounts. The app avoided double posting for photos and allowed to tag Facebook friends on Flickr photos directly from Facebook.

E-PAPERTRAIL.COM – Web App
Responsive interface designed to cut through the overwhelming amount of government data and bring a clean presentation of the most relevant information for the user. Votes on the latest legislation, words of the user's representatives and tracking of representatives' actions are organized in a friendly interface connected to Facebook and with live mobile updates.
WINNER in the Apps for America Contest and MotoDev Widget Challenge.

Key projects:

INDI JEANS – UEX Design Project.
Performed an in depth user research and redesigned the jeans customization flow.

eBay BUSINESS INCUBATION GROUP – Web Strategy & UEX Design Projects
- Project Curio: Re-envisioned the approach to trading & evaluating collectibles.
- Project Mavens: Created the vision & strategy for a new tablet product for the Fashion community.
- Project Gifts Nearby: Designed & prototyped the experience of the new local commerce application that led to the Milo acquisition.

POLYVORE.com – Web Strategy & UEX Design Project.
Redesigned key flows to enhance community participation and enable a better consumption of user generated content. Clarified opportunities and possible strategic directions for the different user roles.

HAUTELOOK.com – Web Strategy Project.
Provided strategic evaluation of the entire user experience and improvement opportunities focusing on ease of use and learning process for new users.

WIZE.com – Web Strategy & UEX Design Project.
Redesigned the entire website to achieve a more effective search experience. Clarified and informed the new strategic direction and product roadmap in collaboration with the CEO and CTO.

SHOPPING.com – Web Strategy Project.
Provided blue-sky concepts to inform the redesign of the new search experience, to maximize and optimize the search scenarios, focusing specifically on the broad and vague searches.

INTUIT.com – Web Strategy & UEX Design Project (Web Application).
Designed a new member of the Intuit online family: Intuit PaymentNetwork Online. The new payment application was design from scratch in agile mode through a series of quick iterations and strict collaboration with the development team.

SKYFIRE.com – Web Strategy & UEX Design Project (Mobile browser).
Envisioned a next-generation mobile browser to ensure a compelling and easy customer experience. The concepts are being used to gather new business partners and to inform a new product road map.

Skillfully executed high profile vision projects such as working with executives to define eBay long term strategy and leading the redesign of the Media Buying Experience.
Consistently delivered innovative solutions to simplify the UI of the new Homepage, Global Header, and Dynamic Landing Pages. Key player in the definition of the eBay Personas, of blue sky concepts for eBay 3.0 and in the formalization of the process of collaboration in cross-disciplinary teams.

Designed a cutting-edge e-commerce kiosk application for The North Face. Collaboration with Microsoft to fully exploit the new Windows Presentation Foundation features. Developed concepts, personas, customer experience flows, user scenarios, application architecture, and wireframes.

Part of the first graduating class of the cool but short-lived Interaction Design Institute in Ivrea, Italy. When I joined I had already more than 2 years of experience in the web industry. At Ivrea I sharpened my old skills and learned new ones, including basic electronic prototyping. My thesis work on wearable computing for expressive application in the fashion industry has been very well received by peers, faculty and a wide audience around the world.

Designed information architectures, managed communication direction, developed a rapid usability evaluation method (“icebreaker” with clients such as Peugeot and Credito Italiano Bank), developed and presented concepts to clients (such as Peugeot, H3G, and Enel, the Italian Electricity Board).

Developed concepts, information and content design for clients from the Mediaset group (Mondadori, Edilnord, PagineUtili), defined job descriptions, roles, and required competencies for the production team.