Professional Experience

Auric | Head of Experience Design, Advisor

October 2023 - Present

Auric is an intelligent diffuser designed to deliver hyper-personalized wellness experiences by syncing with users’ biometrics, moods, and smart home environments.

Leading experience design of a mobile app paired with our essential oil diffuser. Responding to research by adding features and adapting designs on a continuing basis. Advising on all design and brand matters as we bring the product to market and continue capital raises.

Flux Academy | Design Educator

October 2022 - February 2025

Flux Academy is an online education platform helping designers build the skills necessary to succeed. With over 950,000 subscribers on YouTube and 10,000+ students enrolled in their courses, their impact in the design community is world-wide.

Created virtual educational content for design students, both on YouTube and under Flux’s paid course platform. Most of my content centered around Figma, covering best practices and real projects. The course I taught was called ‘Figma for Web Designers’ and received an average of 4.8/5 stars with over 500 students enrolled over its 2-year lifetime.

Lunchbox Technologies | Product Designer

October 2021 - June 2022

Lunchbox is the modern ordering system for restaurants to offer app and web ordering, loyalty, and order aggregation.

Redesigned the design system to improve design and engineering implementation and scalability. Collaborated with UX researcher, engineers, and fellow designers to overhaul the customer experience for mobile restaurant ordering to improve navigation and usability.

Adobe | UI/UX Resident

April 2020 - April 2021

As one of two creatives selected from thousands of applicants for this full-time residency at Adobe, I designed and pitched future-focused experience design projects, conducted UX research, led design workshops, mentored emerging creatives, and created content about Adobe Xd, my design process, and the importance of ethics in technology and design.
Projects included: Smart Diffuser, Food Scanning, and Cycle Syncing

Branding Brand | Junior UI/UX Designer

December 2017 - October 2018

Branding Brand builds apps and mobile commerce sites for top 1,000 e-retailers including CVS, BJ’s, Kroger, Ralph Lauren, Burberry and more.

Designed e-commerce experiences for retail brands such as Party City, Arcadia Group, 4Ocean, and Chubbies. Worked directly with Thermofisher Scientific on their design system and served as the liaison between the design team and the product team.

Selected Freelance Experience

Teachery Course Creation Platform

2022-2025

Teachery helps creators build outstanding online courses and fully customizable branded digital products. I’ve collaborated with the co-founders intermittently for the last several years, working through UX challenges and delivering interface designs for new features they want to add to the platform.

Testimonial from Teachery’s co-founder: “We've had the pleasure of working with her on our B2B SaaS and she's exceeded all our expectations. Maddy's ability to mold to our existing design system AND add her own unique flare and expertise is just what we needed with our new homepage and a year's worth of new features for our software. Her attention to detail, critical thinking, and experience makes it a no-brainer to work with her. Plus, she a great communicator and ALWAYS delivered her work ahead of deadlines.”

Floutwork Browser

2023

Floutwork is a browser-based workspace designed to streamline your workflow by bringing everything you need into a single, distraction-free window. Working directly with the founder, I first completed a detailed audit of the beta version, and then ultimately overhauled the platform to deliver more features, a more intuitive user experience, and an elevated interface design. See a walkthrough of the project here.

Testimonial from Floutwork’s founder: “Maddy exhibited a keen eye for detail, swiftly identifying multiple areas for improvement within my initial designs. Her proposed solutions were not only visually stunning but also functionally sound, greatly enhancing the overall user experience of Floutwork. My collaboration with Maddy has been incredibly positive. She is prompt in her responses, thorough in answering questions or fulfilling requests, and consistent in meeting deadlines. Her transparent communication ensures that I'm always in the loop, a quality that eliminates any potential stress or uncertainty.”

Webflow: Hometown Homepages

2022

Webflow is a platform that allows users to design, build, and launch responsive websites without coding. I was hired by Webflow to create a 6-part video series showcasing how I use the tool. The series premiered on YouTube and featured 6 different homepage designs I designed and built for small businesses in my community. The series garnered over 16,000 total views.

See the series here: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, Episode 5, Episode 6

Bubble Video Commenting

2021

Bubble was a social sharing startup that intended to give users an easy way to record and share video comments on all different kinds of media, bringing to life the ‘comment section’ in one dynamic place. I worked as the designer with two co-founders and an engineer, owning everything from branding to web and especially the interface design. We got as far as a v1.0 fully built and released in the iOS app store before moving on to bigger and better things. See a case study on what we built here.

Online Instruction

Intro to UI/UX for Graphic Designers

Published on Skillshare, Awarded as a “Staff Pick”
2021-Present | 10,000+ students enrolled

Write, Design & Publish a UX Case Study

Published on Skillshare
2022-Present | 3,000+ students enrolled

UI/UX Design: 6 Tactics for Getting Organized in Figma

Created in collaboration with Skillshare
2022-Present | 1,600 students enrolled

UI/UX Design: 6 Tips for Streamlining your Process in Figma

Created in collaboration with Skillshare
2022-Present | 1,200 students enrolled

Figma for Web Designers

Published on Flux Academy
2023-2025 | 500 students enrolled

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Testimonials

Received 145 positive reviews between the four Skillshare classes. A few can be read below:

“Maddy made this so simple to follow. I never thought I would be able to complete a project like this from one Skillshare class! I highly recommend her class to all beginners. I hope she continues to teach!”

“I can't say enough great things about Maddy and this course. Not only did this launch me into the UI Design career, but I learned a whole new program (Adobe Xd) AND skyrocketed my confidence level. I wasn't sure what to expect from my first SkillShare course but WOW WOW WOW!!!!! I am so thankful for this course. EXCELLENT!!!”

“It's fantastic how well structured, and the strategic approach of this course. It brings down the barrier that some designers have (even seniors) when building their portfolio.”

“Amazing short and insightful class. The teacher is engaging and gives helpful resource and real life examples. Maddy you're amazing! 10/10 recommend to any Designers looking to improve their overall organization of figma.”

Speaking

Adobe Awards

Talk: Streamline your Freelance Workflow, part of Adobe’s Career Essentials speaker series
August 2020 | 412 live attendees

5 to 9 Conference

Competed in a live “Design Battle” in Figma
August 2020 | 72 live attendees

Kin + Carta (now Valtech)

Talk: How & Why To Strive For Mindful Design, for the product team at Kin + Carta
September 2020

IxDD: Culture & Sustainability

Talk: Designing for Digital Wellbeing
September 2020 | 4,000+ total conference attendees

AIGA San Fransisco

Talk: Foundational Research Basics
October 2020 | 164 live attendees

Wacom

Talk: UX Process
October 2020 | 500+ live attendees

Pre-Adobe MAX

Workshop: Nine to Thrive, part of their Career Bootcamp series
October 2020 | 578 live attendees

AIGA San Fransisco

Talk: Design More Mindful Products
October 2020 | 105 live attendees

Duke University

Portfolio Review Session
November 2020

In/Visible Talks: Re:Design

Talk: Design More Mindful Products
January 2021

SCAD

Panel: The Future of Portfolios
February 2021

Festival of UX (London)

Workshop: Designing a Website in Adobe Xd
March 2021

Published Works

Should you learn spatial design before the launch of Vision Pro?
Published in Bootcamp, August 2023

Moving from a Sales-First to User-First Design Approach
Published in Design Thinking by Adobe, September 2020

Colorado Creative Series: Maddy Beard
Published in AIGA Colorado, May 2020

Design more mindful products that promote digital well-being
Published in Adobe Blog, January 2020

Internships

Wray Ward | Design Intern

Summer 2017

Wray Ward is a creative marketing agency for leading home and building brands. Along with assisting senior designers on a variety of marketing projects, I collaborated with a multi-disciplinary team of interns to pitch a marketing campaign for Sunbrella. The campaign, called ‘Inverwoven,’ included graphic design deliverables such as banners, a magazine spread, and social media content, as well UI/UX components, namely a virtual fabric try-on experience designed for mobile.

Notorious 111 | Design Intern

Summer 2016

Notorious 111, formerly HZDG, is a creative brand studio based in Rockville, MD. During my summer at their Santa Cruz, CA satellite office, I worked on logo designs for a real estate company, a graphic mural for a corporate office, event collateral and more.

Blink | Design Intern

Summer 2015

Blink is a creative advertising agency that tackles branding, web design and development, and video production. During my summer working at their Pittsburgh location, I shadowed senior designers, pitched logos to a restaurant client, delivered banner ads for a fitness center client, and more.