Jessi Willey | Senior Conversational AI Designer

Senior Conversational AI Designer with 6+ years designing human-centered experiences across regulated healthcare, banking, and med-tech environments, spanning chat, IVR, automated voice, and multimodal interfaces. Brings a foundation in product taxonomy, data integrity, and operational workflow design to complex conversational systems. Designs empathetic, human-aware experiences that recognize not only what to automate, but when to step back, recover, or hand off—supported by hands-on LLM evaluation and NLU optimization. Strategic partner to Product, Engineering, UX, and NLP teams modernizing enterprise AI experiences.

Skills

VUI Multi-Modal Interaction Design UX Strategy Analysis and Planning                 Sketch, Adobe CC, Figma, Invision

Amazon Alexa Conversation Design                 Information Architecture      User Flows / User Personas      

User Research / Usability Testing                         Interface Design                       Brand, Voice, and Content Strategy

Professional Experience

Sr. Conversational AI Design Lead & Consultant, CDI Global | September 2022 - Current | Clients: Infosys, Dexcom, Optum, UnitedHealthcare

  • Lead interaction, flow, and content design for enterprise conversational experiences across mobile chat and IVR, translating complex banking and healthcare workflows into clear multi-turn journeys, recovery paths, and escalation logic — including a reusable account-opening flow architecture adapted dynamically across product types (deposit accounts, money market/CDs, mortgage and loans) rather than rebuilt from scratch for each.

  • Recently took on LLM evaluation for an Amazon Lex implementation, reviewing roughly 140 conversation instances across 26 intents every two weeks to assess classification accuracy, recommend reclassification, and identify recurring model failure patterns for optimization.

  • Advocate for and design human handoff and escalation points within conversational flows — for example, identifying gaps in the contact-update journey where a member's adjacent need (e.g., paperless preference during a mailing address change) falls outside the bot's scope, and defining fallback or escalation paths rather than forcing an incomplete or incorrect resolution.

  • Design and redesign complex transactional journeys spanning account servicing, fraud, disputes, transfers, transaction search, contact updates, and new-account support — accounting for API constraints, edge cases, and human escalation.

  • Build and maintain low-to-mid fidelity conversational prototypes in Voiceflow (v3.5/4.0, pre-agentic per bank AI policy), using walkthroughs and iterative stakeholder validation to test turn-taking, comprehension, error handling, and implementation readiness.

  • Propose and build out standardized prototyping conventions with development partners — restructuring intent-naming taxonomy and establishing a color-coded status system (ready for dev, API call pending, prompt change, WIP) to improve handoff clarity between design and engineering.

  • Partner with Product, Engineering, UX, Business Analysts, and NLP teams to convert requirements and user friction into prioritized design improvements, production documentation, and release-ready conversational behavior.

  • Identified a gap in the "Find a Provider" experience at UnitedHealthcare through call center data — frequent requests for doctor gender preference, particularly among OB/GYN patients and those seeking gender-affirming care — and advocated for and designed the feature into the bot, recognized by leadership as an empathetic, high-impact design choice.

IIS Interoperability Specialist, Wyoming Department of Health Immunization Registry | January 2022 - October 2022

  • Conducted regression testing for iterative health-information-system releases and translated defects into actionable engineering feedback, strengthening system stability and release quality.

  • Led taxonomy and data-quality initiatives across an immunization registry, eliminating 1,000+ uncategorized patient profiles and improving clinical data integrity and operational workflows.

  • Synthesized user research, usability testing, and field analysis to improve UI and interoperability across HL7-coded systems and encrypted provider EHR data exchange.

  • Partnered with vendor UX/data teams and state agencies to resolve systemic record duplication and design a multi-state cleanup strategy for fragmented emergency-care records.

Retail Coordinator, City of Boise Arts & History – James Castle House   Jun 2017 – Oct 2018

  • Created an end-to-end visitor interaction framework and operating procedures across museum tours and retail touchpoints; designed storytelling campaigns that increased store revenue by 30%.

  • Delivered accessible educational experiences and supported artists-in-residence with linguistic, cultural, and technical guidance.

Merchandise Specialist, Nordstrom Merchandising Group (NMG)| June 2015 -  March 2016

  • Managed and audited product taxonomy, merchandising attributes, and promotional pricing data across assigned categories, supporting accurate product discovery, presentation, and B2C fulfillment.

  • Partnered with buying teams, site operations, distribution, and vendors to identify and resolve product-data discrepancies across interconnected commerce and fulfillment systems.

  • Documented recurring system issues, recommended process improvements to managers and business analysts, and trained new employees on data-quality standards and operational workflows.

Vendor Operations Specialist, Zulily | October 2013–June 2015

  • Partnered with UX, buying, and operations teams to automate bundled purchase-order creation and support the workflow from vendor purchasing through warehouse receiving and picking—enabling bundled items to be processed accurately and fulfilled on time to Zulily customers despite added warehouse complexity.

  • Helped define how bundled quantities and inventory levels were represented across purchasing, receiving, stocking, picking, distribution, reconciliation, and accounting workflows.

  • Addressed a compounding data-integrity problem in which receiving errors created downstream inventory and order-picking errors.

  • Improved the clarity of English-language receiving instructions and numerical inventory information for a predominantly Spanish-speaking warehouse workforce.

  • Maintained and reconciled product and purchase-order data across operational systems, supporting more accurate receiving, fulfillment, and product-loss reporting.

Education & Credentials

BFA, Theatrical Technology — University of Idaho

UX Design Certification — General Assembly, Austin

Conversation Design Certification — Conversation Design Institute

Recognition: Winner, "Best Audio Experience" — Amazon Alexa Conversations Skills Challenge

Download Resume