Frank Mellana III
Senior UX Designer & Adjunct Professor of UX Design
Summary
Senior UX Designer with 7+ years of experience designing mission-critical systems across rail infrastructure, automotive, defense, and aerospace, including real-time telemetry platforms supporting New Glenn launch operations and 990K+ concurrent users. Proven track record of improving delivery speed and operational efficiency through AI-assisted design workflows, prompt-driven prototyping, and scalable enterprise design systems in complex, high-stakes domains. Focused on reducing cognitive load and minimizing friction in high-density, data-rich interfaces.
Skills
UX Strategy & Design: Interaction Design, Information Architecture, Complex Workflow Design, Design Systems, Journey Mapping, Prototyping, Wireframing, Systems Thinking, End-to-End Product Design
User Research: Mixed-Methods Research, Usability Testing, Heuristic Evaluation, Rapid Validation
AI-Accelerated Design: AI-Assisted Prototyping, Prompt Engineering, Workflow Automation, AI-Enabled Design Systems Governance, Human-AI Workflow Design, Design-to-Code Acceleration
Leadership: Stakeholder Alignment, Product Roadmapping, Requirements Definition, Mentorship
Tools & Platforms: Figma, Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Jira, Supabase, GitHub, PyCharm, Vercel
Professional Experience
- Architected a transit automation tool that replaced legacy manual scheduling with intelligent interaction models, driving a 90% efficiency gain in mission-critical shift planning.
- Lead UX strategy for a global rail-infrastructure platform used by dispatchers managing large-scale transit operations, designing mission-critical workflows under real-time constraints.
- Drive a 40% reduction in design-to-engineering rework by architecting an enterprise design system leveraging AI-assisted component generation and automated governance.
- Accelerate concept-to-build time by 14 days per cycle by delivering high-fidelity, AI-powered prototypes and reusable component libraries, compressing validation from weeks to days.
- Led the end-to-end UX/UI design of real-time 3D telemetry visualization tools for the New Glenn NG1 & NG2 launches. Optimized data-density for 990K+ concurrent viewers, ensuring sub-second readability of critical flight metrics.
- Improved accessibility by 60% across public-facing program pages for New Shepard, New Glenn, Engines, and Club for the Future through research-driven design and rapid prototyping.
- Built and governed a scalable design system spanning customer-facing web experiences and multiple Blue Origin programs, accelerating design delivery by 35%.
- Created rapid wireframes to reduce stakeholder decision-making time and accelerate cross-functional alignment on complex workflow requirements.
- Improved task completion rates by 60% for enterprise web applications by optimizing complex workflows and interaction design for large-scale user bases.
- Partnered with cross-functional product and engineering teams to align UX strategy with business objectives, delivering WCAG-compliant workflows, wireframes, and validated prototypes.
- Redesigned mobile-first product pages resulting in a 40% increase in unique page views through iterative usability testing and user-flow optimization in Figma.
- Established and documented cross-platform navigation systems and design patterns to ensure UI consistency across the global rental ecosystem.
- Designed and launched Hertz's EV education hub, translating complex EV concepts into intuitive educational experiences that reduced adoption friction and improved customer confidence.
- Delivered high-fidelity e-commerce designs and prototypes under aggressive deadlines, focusing on streamlining user journeys to drive customer engagement.
- Partnered with diverse clients to deliver production-ready assets and usability-tested interfaces for web and mobile platforms to improve conversion rates.
AI Projects
- Directed a cross-functional team across systems engineering, art direction, and business strategy to launch an AI-powered career platform for 60 graduating design students.
- Designed AI-driven workflows including real-time skill translation, career gap analysis, and match-scoring systems across 82 production-ready components with full WCAG AA compliance.
- Accelerated feature delivery from weeks to days using prompt-based development workflows with Claude, Next.js 15, and React 19.
Mentorship
- Achieved a 100% portfolio passing rate for 60+ junior and senior UX design students, driving intensive mentorship and rigorous critique on complex user flows, advanced prototyping, and end-to-end design system architecture.
- Directed full-lifecycle UX frameworks and emphasized systems-thinking to transform ambiguous, real-world problems into high-fidelity, production-ready case studies that accelerated portfolio development and career readiness.