intro by Lynn Priestley

Lynn, with their light brown hair in a top knot and a fade around the sides. They have a septum piercing and are smiling widely, looking off to the left. They are wearing a green button down shirt, a necklace with a spoon charm, and green computer chip earrings.

about

I am a University of Pittsburgh graduate, with a B.A. in Digital Narrative and Interactive Design (Online Media track) and a certificate in Disability Studies. Through this education, I gained a hybrid skillset that includes writing, design, coding, and data analysis— which helps immensely with communicating across multidisciplinary team roles.

Currently, I work in design education as a freelance digital designer. Whether the topic at hand is theoretical or technical, I love creating engaging learning experiences through playful instructional design. I mainly create and facilitate workshops and guest lectures for the University of Pittsburgh, and I am also co-director of the DISCO/"Design a Spaceship" inclusive design OER toolkit project alongside Dr. Jessica FitzPatrick. Regardless of the specific project, I bring my focus on accessibility to everything I do.

Since graduating, I have continued my education around freelance projects. I recently passed the International Association of Accessibility Professional (IAAP) exam to become a Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC). In addition to the Continuing Education now required to stay certified, I spend my spare time reading my way through a never-ending list of books on disability studies, design, and the intersection of both fields. You’ll find some of my main interests (and perhaps a couple of book recommendations for each one) below.

I’d love to bring my passion for accessibility and playful design to the digital work you need designed. Go to my connect page to get in touch with me.

accessibility

As a disabled designer, my biggest passion is making my work inclusive to the disability community. In both my work as an educator and as a designer, I believe in accessibility as more than a checklist. Beyond having an understanding of accessibility standards, I aim to be mindful of the complexities of access intimacy and create holistic, emotionally-considerate access (which is an ever-evolving and imperfect practice). I also firmly believe that accessible design doesn’t have to mean "boring design", and I love nothing more than creating experiences that are both accessible and aesthetically pleasing.

Inspired by books like Mismatch by Kat Holmes and What Can a Body Do? by Sara Hendren, I strongly believe in co-design practices to create designs that adapt to bodies’ diverse ways of being, rather than forcing bodies to adapt to the design.

design

My skillset currently includes Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Figma, Twine, and Audacity. I am also skilled in generating accessible PDFs of my designs through use of Adobe Acrobat. Outside of software skills, I have formal training in typographic principles. But I’m always looking to expand.

During my time studying DNID, starting a podcast, and working as an intern for Pitt's Digital Media Lab, I developed the skills required to be constantly learning new tech/software.

But design is about more than the things we make. It is about who our designs include or exclude. With this in mind, I also pursue self-guided education into the ethics of design, with the help of books such as Design Justice, written by Sasha Costanza-Chock and Extra Bold, written by a brilliant collective of designers including Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Tobias.

writing

Whether it is a program or a narrative, I really enjoy the writing process. Specifically with coding, I “speak” (WCAG compliant) HTML/CSS, Python, and Java. At times in my work, like the Panopticon simulator I made for my Digital Humanity class (featured in my design portfolio), code meets narrative quite directly.

With creative writing in mind, books like Brand Thinking by Debbie Millman and User Friendly by Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant have shown me the link between narrative and how we understand design. My work as host and producer of Welcomed by Design (refer to my teaching portfolio) has allowed me to put my understanding of this connection into practice. I am endlessly fascinated by the power of the stories we tell ourselves through our words and design. In my postgrad life, I aim to work on more projects where I can hone my own storytelling abilities.