About

Jonna Buse Profile Image

I have over seventeen years of industry experience on complex systems and large-scale projects, including working as a user experience designer, systems engineer, and embedded software developer. My career objective is to provide technical project leadership and design solutions while maintaining a deep focus on customer needs and usability.

I have experience across multiple industries and love collaborating with other people that have a passion for influencing the user experience. I have worked on product, web, embedded, and mobile design projects and appreciate projects that bring with them a good problem to solve.

Project Approach:

All projects have different needs of course, but getting started on a project with me is easy. Here is how I typically approach starting a new  project:

01

Introduction Meeting

We'll meet to discuss your project including your goals, vision, deadlines, budgets, team members, constraints, and the problems you are trying to solve. My approach is flexible and will be tailored to your needs.

02

Proposal

Based on our initial discussions, I will provide a  proposal with an implementation plan, schedule, and estimated cost. Project rates can be structured as hourly, daily, retainer-based, or fixed pricing depending upon the project.

03

Project Kickoff

We'll have a team kickoff meeting to level-set all stakeholders and contributors around the project plan. If your project is already in-flight, I'll work towards establishing the necessary relationships and jump right in!

04

Implementation

After the project has kicked off, it's time to get to work! I take pride in delivering work of the highest quality on-time and on-budget. I'll do my best to provide regular updates and communication during the project.

View Capabilities

Tools

I have experience with a variety of research, content, design, and development tools and can quickly learn additional tools as needed to support your project.

  • Axure

  • Slickplan

  • Sketch/Zeplin

  • InVision

  • Basic Adobe Illustrator

  • Webflow

  • WordPress

  • Basic HTML, CSS, Vue.js, PHP

  • Source Control (e.g. Sourcetree)

Working with Me

I’ve had the good fortune of working with some amazing colleagues throughout my career. Here is what a few of them had to say about me:

Jonna is one of the most talented, intuitive, and organized people that I have had the pleasure to work with. Her tireless curiosity, her open and authentic demeanor, and her love for breaking down complexity into simplicity have all served her well in helping her become an expert in her chosen profession as a User Experience Designer. Jonna’s breadth of knowledge in a wide variety of UX methods helps her build plans for projects that will uncover the insights needed to put the team on a path for a successful solution....

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Misty Castaldi – Sr. User Experience Designer, CUA

I’ve been working with User Experience professionals for almost 18 years, and I can say without hesitation that Jonna is outstanding in her craft. Her ability to bring structure and organization to complex situations is un-matched. Jonna is a true collaborator in every sense of the word – actively listening to team members and providing thoughtful feedback. She designs and leads thoughtful working sessions, taking in and considering input from all disciplines. She is both driven to do excellent work, and is pragmatic and realistic in her approach. Jonna’s contributions, in every way, have made the work we do better, and it’s been an absolute pleasure to work with Jonna!

Jennifer Ruggle – Sr. Vice President, Digital Solutions

Jonna’s work with the UX team at Vertex has been some of the most well-executed and superbly communicated of any designer I’ve worked with. Her ability to grasp the complexity of any workflow and quickly ideate on fully-functional prototypes has impressed me weekly. She’s a magician when it comes to working with Axure, a huge benefit to any company looking to quickly test the soundness and usability of new product ideas and concepts. Any company should count itself lucky to get Jonna working on their projects.

Tom Lindsley – User Experience Director

Jonna makes everyone around her better. When I had the good fortune to be the PM on projects Jonna worked on, she made my life easy. Through her user research and user experience design, she transforms complicated collections of user needs, business requirements, and strategy objectives into something clear and actionable. Because of Jonna, strategists were smarter, copywriters had frameworks, designers had user-oriented head starts, and developers knew what to build....

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Joey Weber – Producer

It has been my utmost pleasure to work with Jonna these past two years at Sandbox. Her enthusiasm for her craft is unparalleled. She approaches client presentations and interactions with a breadth of outstanding knowledge, understanding and professionalism. Internally, she is always willing to collaborate with developers and account executives to determine the best solutions to problems. She is so easy to work with and will be a fantastic resource in whichever new role she chooses.

Stephanie Bidney – Interactive Project Manager

Resume (PDF)
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Working Together

Think I might be a good fit for you or your team? I am located in the Des Moines, Iowa metro area, but have experience with both local and remote clients. Please send me a message and let me know how I can help!

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Jonna is one of the most talented, intuitive, and organized people that I have had the pleasure to work with. Her tireless curiosity, her open and authentic demeanor, and her love for breaking down complexity into simplicity have all served her well in helping her become an expert in her chosen profession as a User Experience Designer. Jonna’s breadth of knowledge in a wide variety of UX methods helps her build plans for projects that will uncover the insights needed to put the team on a path for a successful solution. She has an ease and comfort in getting stakeholders and users to open up and share information that leads to unique insights in research interviews and testing sessions. She is a natural at planning and facilitating workshops in an organized way that ensures the information coming out of the activity is valuable and actionable (and she makes it fun for all of the participants). Her critical thinking and organizational skills allow her to take very complex problems and systematically break them down in a way that allows the team to keep moving forward effectively and efficiently. Her development background allows her to plan Agile workflows and to collaborate effectively with developers—keeping projects on a track for continuous improvement based on the learning gained in the process. She is a tireless user advocate and authentically cares about making everything she works on a better experience for those users. And on top of all that she is an absolute pleasure to work with. She is calm, level-headed, flexible, empathic, and kind-hearted—and anyone who has the good fortune of working with her comes away the better for it.

I can honestly say that I’m a much better User Experience Designer today because of the opportunity I had to work with Jonna. I would recommend her without reservation.

Misty Castaldi – Sr. User Experience Designer, CUA

Jonna makes everyone around her better. When I had the good fortune to be the PM on projects Jonna worked on, she made my life easy. Through her user research and user experience design, she transforms complicated collections of user needs, business requirements, and strategy objectives into something clear and actionable.

Because of Jonna, strategists were smarter, copywriters had frameworks, designers had user-oriented head starts, and developers knew what to build.

Specifically, two things impressed me the most about Jonna. First, she knows how to work well with and bring the best out of development teams. She’s technical enough to help solve for problems, persuasive enough to insist on great usability, and pragmatic enough to do it all within the scope of the project.

Second, she designs and runs more effective feature workshops than anyone I’ve ever seen. She is able to, in a day, learn more meaningful information and build more client/stakeholder alignment than most projects ever get. After a conversation with Jonna, our team and the client team understand the difference between what we thought we needed to build and what we should actually build.

Jonna will be an exceptional addition to any team who prioritizes, or would like to prioritize, usability, user experience, and effectiveness. I’ve loved working with her. You will too.

Joey Weber – Producer