The Art and Science of UX Design

Anthony Conta's career in design began when he was four years old, thanks to the carelessness of another student at his school. His mother, Christina, was the school nurse for a K-12 school in New York City. One day, a student forgot their Game Gear in his mother's office. After a month of asking every student who came in if it was theirs and no one claiming it, she gave it to her son and opened his world.

From that day, Anthony knew he wanted to design experiences like the ones he played on that video game system (and many others). But at college, he found that coding those experiences was a lot more difficult than he expected, and he instead focused on understanding behaviors rather than understanding code.

Anthony graduated from Binghamton University with a master's degree in financial economics, a bachelor's in quantitative economics, and a bachelor's in mathematics. His first job was at a law firm, helping uncover illegal anti-competitive behavior by analyzing the economics of market sectors. Two years later, he moved to a consulting firm, where he did similar work.

Bored out of his mind suing people, Anthony pivoted back to what he loved- games. He started his own game company, producing tabletop games with his then girlfriend (and now wife), Carrie. From concept to completion, they came up with game ideas, prototyped them, crowdfunded them via Kickstarter, and eventually published them with large game publishers such as Mattel.

Eventually, Anthony moved on to digital education and entertainment at Nickelodeon, creating interactive television episodes of Blues Clues, Bubble Guppies, and Team Umizoomi. It was there that he gained prolonged exposure to (and interest in) the concepts of user experience (UX) design.

He attended General Assembly's UX certificate program, a three-month intensive learning bootcamp, where he met fellow aspiring practitioners and grew with them as he deepened his knowledge and love for UX. From there, Anthony worked at several companies-Kaplan, Food Network, Vimeo, and Amazon-where he further developed his skillset. As of this writing, Anthony works for Amazon Music, designing digital experiences for millions of customers.

In his spare time, Anthony still educates those who come after him. He writes on Medium, he teaches at several colleges, and he mentors through various services. You can find him in a lot of places-feel free to reach out and say hi!