In her role as Gard’s Director of Web & Digital, Julia provides strategic planning and design for large, complex web projects for clients in mission-critical sectors, such as government, healthcare and energy. This involves creating the information architecture, user experience and user interface design – all three of which she considers her craft – and conducting usability testing.
As a user experience designer, Julia’s mission is to understand and advocate for her clients’ audiences, because meeting those audiences’ needs and goals is crucial to a successful interactive experience. She’s also committed to elegant design, and her background in visual art makes her sensitive to the power of aesthetics on the web.
Julia joined Gard in 2015 after running her own successful web design company. Originally from New Zealand, she has lived in Portland for more than 25 years, and every spring she falls in love with the flowers all over again. Julia has degrees in visual art and philosophy, and both disciplines inform her web design work. She’s a former college professor, and she’s also a published novelist and visual artist.
Read Julia's latest post: Web design usability mistakes
When you make something for someone to use, it’s important to remember that they’ll always approach it differently from you. Always. My motto is, be kind to the user. Make their interactive experience as easy as possible, so they can focus on the content and not on how to navigate it.
Colleagues Say
“Julia Stoops is a genius at creating beautiful websites that are user friendly. This is both an art and a science, but she really brings the art to it more than any other web designer I’ve ever met.”