MY ROLE
As Director, Web & Digital Experience, I manage a wide portfolio across the company’s digital ecosystems, including B2B and B2C web and mobile properties. My role leads to develop and manages enterprise-wide strategies that impact the customer’s experience with companies. My role delivers to all digital initiatives including large-scale web implementations, micro-sites, landing pages, and more. My role also scopes new initiatives, including defining and tracking each initiative and its relation to financial performance (ROI).
UI/UX Leadership
• Serve as a strong advocate for the end-user, armed with quantitative and qualitative data that provides analysis and insights into ways to continuously improve and innovate the digital customer experience
• Use the voice of customers to champion customer-centric optimizations
• Lead Web Design team members in developing wireframes, concept design mock ups, and clickable prototypes to illustrate the design approach, gain stakeholder buy-in, and ultimately support customer engagement
• Mentor a UX/UI team that conducts experience research
• Manage design resources and external vendor partners to deliver on-time and on-budget
• Project manage all web-related projects and liaise with business units to ensure we need their needs
• Champion, evangelize and educate CXC stakeholders on best practices in UX design and Web Product Management that drives engagement, conversion, and customer loyalty
Web & CX Strategy
• Develop and own the Digital CX Strategy aligning with business unit and corporate strategy maps
• Create a digital product vision, strategy, and business cases that continuously improve the digital user experience and achieve our business objectives
• Develop a web governance strategy including the implementation of technical systems, policies, and procedures to maintain an orderly web presence
• Define requirements and source enterprise technology to meet the needs of the business and enhance our capabilities
• Partner with IT to ensure strategic plans are aligned across organizations
UI/UX Development
• Architect end-to-end web product experiences and enhancements across all digital customer touch points, implementing enhancements that drive customer satisfaction
• Interact with business unit stakeholders to define design and functionality
• Define, test, and validate new product ideas and features working with key cross-functional team members in marketing, product, sales, and IT/development
• Develop and document streamlined UX processes
• Develop web guidelines and procedures working with external vendors and internal stakeholders
• Collaborate with IT technical teams to create and roll out new web and mobile products and on-going enhancements
• Ownership and optimization of onsite search and customer journey
• Maintain full ownership of all web and mobile properties
• Own and drive all UAT regarding web deployments and enhancements
My Management Philosophy
Poor Management = Mediocre UX Design
Weak management support for UX and lack of UX leadership and role models correlate with unexceptional designs. We must encourage our employees to be themselves at their best, building their skills in:
• Creative Leadership – by setting up the right design process, fostering creativity, and a passion for UX
• Managerial Leadership – by building a design Center of Excellence, inspiring the team, and motivating people to push boundaries
• Operational Leadership – by tracking goals and fostering growth
Know York Staff
Conversations with the boss often revolve around the job and expectations. You don’t get to know a person if you only talk about work. You need to get to know their hobbies and goals, where they traveled. This type of conversation can’t be a one-off. There is no better way to build a solid foundation of trust than getting to know your staff. This leads to managing with empathy and accountability.
Be Visible and Transparent
When leaders pro actively schedule a time to interact and connect with employees often feel empowered to speak up. This step can optimize decision-making because it provides insights that may not be obtained otherwise. People want to see the leader; they want to know they’re there, leaders who get in front [during] a crisis, even when they don’t think they have the answers, read as being honest and transparent.
Show Respect
Respect can impact employee engagement more than any other leadership behavior, but what behavior gets you excited to come to work? As a leader, it’s imperative to show respect. It’s easy to treat people with respect when things are going well; it’s not when bad news comes in but showing respect means treating employees with respect. You’re getting paid to take the bad news and figure out what to do with it. You can’t control what’s coming, but you can control how you react. Anger and disrespect change the dynamics in a room. Create a positive and encouraging environment, and you can position each team member to be successful.
Be Optimistic
A leader’s attitude can give employees hope that goals are within reach and good things are possible. An optimistic leader creates confidence in the greater cause, which can inspire trust in the leader even in uncertain times. It can be difficult to maintain optimism when things aren’t going well, you can’t always be optimistic and upbeat; there are times when you must grieve. Great leaders maintain optimism but don’t minimize danger. Don’t be dishonest, but be a source of hope.
Recognize Good and Poor Performance
Recognizing employees can deliver a disproportionate return on investment. When you acknowledge good work, employees will be more engaged, productive, and trustful. But you have to take the good and the bad. Ignoring poor performance puts leaders at risk of losing respect, confidence, and trust. If we are on the same team, and you are working hard and I’m not and the boss never brings me to their side to address it, you will think less of the boss.
Keep Learning
Being a good leader means being a lifelong learner, continuously working on leadership skills, reeducate and recommit to understanding leadership development, be willing to change the way you lead. If you don’t relearn or reintroduce new methods, you could slip into bad habits. Reading, listening to podcasts, talking to other leaders, and seeking out new information at all times grows skills and humility. By examining the impact of their behaviors, leaders are more likely to act in a caring way, especially when challenges arise.
My Design Review Process
While feedback is a valuable part of the overall process, sometimes the process of getting there is complicated and unwieldy. Facilitating a flawless design review takes commitment on the part of the leader and team participating in the review. You can help establish a set of ground rules and process to help make each design review more valuable for everyone at the table, resulting in a better design project.
Figure Out the Logistics
There’s a time and place for design reviews. Some teams plan them on a schedule with the rest of the project to catch up on milestones, while others meet every month like clockwork. While the timing of your reviews may vary, it is a good idea to build them into the project timeline. The designer always needs to be at the design review (if there are multiple designers working on the project, the lead designer should be there at a minimum). The lead designer should be the point person for the review and run the meeting. The group should not be too large; think five to eight people to keep the conversation manageable. Everyone involved in the discussion should have some understanding of the project, but should be somewhat independent as well to provide the most broad spectrum of understanding. Participants may include the developer, client, sales team member, company president or CEO, marketing or branding team member, designers not working on the project or anyone else who might touch the project or company in any way. Make sure to find a space that’s comfortable for everyone and provide a place to go over the visuals. You’ll probably need a room with a large screen and internet connection. Set a time for the meeting and create an agenda in advance so that everyone stays on task.
Send Invitations and Set Ground Rules
Try to remind reviewers about the meeting well in advance. Even if the dates and times are outlined in the project file, send a reminder at least a week in advance of the meeting.
Make sure to include everything a reviewer would need to come to the meeting ready to talk.
• Time and location (or call in number if the meeting is virtual)
• Outline of project goals and constraints
• Specific goal of this review meeting
• Project timeline (and where you are in the process)
• Materials to bring (such as phones or tablets to view the design)
Prepare for the Meeting
The lead designer or art director should be running the design review. Prepare accordingly, especially if this kind of event is intimidating. (The more you go through this exercise, the easier it gets.)
Be ready to facilitate the conversation. Plan to ask questions that help get targeted results:
• Do the color and typography palette reflect the tone of the content?
• Are there missing elements in the design?
• Does it work as anticipated?
• Did you stumble on any parts of the design?
• What things did you like?
• What things did you not like?
Anticipate questions and concerns that might come up so that the discussion can keep moving forward. Know that reviewers might be thinking ahead of where the design is in its current iteration and try to keep the discussion focused. Be prepared to stop the meeting if the group isn’t ready to discuss the design. Sadly, this happens all too much and just holding a meeting because it is on the calendar doesn’t benefit anyone.
Check Your Feelings at the Door
This might be the most important – and most difficult – step: You have to check your feelings at the door. Designers tend to be passionate about projects, but this is not the time or place for it. You need to step back and listen to feedback. Not every bit of feedback will be useful. There’s probably a lot of it that actually won’t be useful at all. It’s ok to disregard some ideas from the design review. What you really want to look for are recurring themes in the feedback that might indicate a potential stumbling point in the design. Remember: You are not the design. A design that is not liked is not a personal attack or reflection.
Start the Review with a Recap
Breathe. Walk in the room (or start the video chat) with confidence. Start the design review with a recap:
• Outline design goals
• Explain the problems that needed to be solved
• Describe the timeline and made milestones
• Explain what happens next
• Walk through the design and explain how it meets goals and solves problems
Once you break the ice, open the floor for feedback. Try not to let any one person dominate the conversation and have a process for allowing everyone to speak if necessary. Allow the conversation to continue until there’s about 10 minutes left for the meeting or comments come to a natural conclusion.
Speak Honestly and Respectfully
Reviewers will speak open and honestly if you do the same thing. The way you act will set the tone for the entire review. Make a point to take notes and ask questions as well. This shows that group that you care what they think. Pay particular attention to areas where there is a lot of people who not the same issue or areas where there’s a lot of discussion. There are places design flaws often lurk. As the meeting winds down, recap the feedback you found most useful and invite the team to provide further feedback or ask questions within a certain time frame. Don’t commit to changes during the design review; you never know what will and won’t work until you get back to working on the project.
Follow Up After the Review
When you have a quiet minute, collect notes from the design review and follow up with a thank you to the team and next steps. Remind the team when the next milestone will hit and what they should expect to see at that time.
Our Framework
Conduct research, ideate, prototype, test with users, then repeat
Link business objectives, strategies, UX inputs with consideration into:
skills
STRATEGY
I build out a road map for the ideal path to engagement by understanding what drives your users and where these overlap with your business goals.
Effective solutions are born from insight: I take the time to learn about the business goals, ask the right questions to understand your business, your users and your competition and the problems or opportunities that you are seeking to address. I then conduct heuristic and competitive research and analysis, apply the principles of user-centered design and assess all relevant factors impacting the project to define the correct business goals, the user needs and challenges to be addressed.
IDEATION
Workshops
Blue Sky Projects
Green Field Projects
Campaign Development
Product Requirements
Rapid Prototyping
Card Sorting
DISCOVERY
Product Strategy
Monetization Strategy
UI/UX Assessment
Focus Groups
Competitive Analysis
Technology Assessment
Usability Study
ANALYSIS
User Research
Market Research
Competitive Analysis
Usability Testing
UX & Funnel Analysis
Application Analytics
Campaign Metrics
DESIGN
I work with experienced and collaborative teams to create experiences that will delight your customers through innovative user experiences and interfaces. I have been doing this for more than a decade.
UX DESIGN
User Stories & Scenarios
Persona Definition
Customer Journey Mapping
UI Design
User Experience Style Guide
Test Cases
Usability Audit
UI DESIGN
Information Architecture
Interaction Design
Wireframe Design
Visual Design
User Interface Specifications
Clickable Prototypes
Usability Testing
MARKETING
Brand Identity
Marketing Automation
Social Media
Presentation/Video
Paid/Earned Media
Product/Content Marketing
Experiential/Event
TECHNOLOGY
I work with technology teams on a wide variety of solutions and are always evaluating for the best tools for the project. From consumer mobile apps to enterprise-scale business applications, my work is always built for reliability, flexibility, and scale. No two projects are the same, and no two products are built exactly the same way. I work closely with each client to identify the right technologies for the job.
TECHNOLOGY
HTML5
AngularJS
Sencha EXT JS
JQuery
D3.js
Backbone.js
iOS/Objective C
Android
QT
PhoneGap
Netbiscuits
WP8
DreamFactory
SalesForce
Box
Firebase
Mule
WS02
PHP
Java
Redis
C#/.Net
Node.js
Apache Flex
PROVEN TRACK RECORD of designing experiences
I lead and coordinate teams of User Experience Researchers, Strategists, Designers and Technologists who are passionate about software and dedicated to helping customers solve complex business problems through expertise in human-centered design and software development. I create both enterprise and consumer experiences and apply over a century of expertise to each project. My technology platform experience is extensive and I'm agile to the core. I’ve worked on more than 100 technology projects for companies big and small, ranging from Consumer Brands, Enterprise Software Companies, Corporate IT, Financial Services, Entertainment and Media Destinations to Disruptive Technology Start-ups. If it involves a phone, website, cloud-based application, consumer electronics, remotely operated vehicle, or internet of thing; I’ve built it, often across omnichannel experiences, and if I've haven't, I'm dying to.
what's USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN?
• A way to listen and ask great questions, knowing the answers can be found in a better understanding of our audience
• A safe environment for unsuccessful solutions with the understanding that these often lead to the best solutions
• A way to advocate for consumers and remind us that no business priority can be an excuse for a mediocrity
• The force that considers the unique needs of the user and device context, but contributes to and is a reflection of the broader cross-platform design system
• A way to create extraordinary products by working with engineering, project management, product, consumer research, and brand design
• A way to leverage qualitative consumer insights (ethnographic, usability) and quantitative (analytics, a/b testing) data to drive the design process
• A way to cultivate a collaborative working environment in which teams can maximize design potential while learning
• A self-motivated way to take charge, yet constantly seeking opportunities to collaborate
• A developer and refiner of systematic solutions and design patterns in consideration of visual brand while evangelizing UXD within the organization
• A way to maximize creativity and minimize process overhead while advising on agile design and software development
• A way to understand and consider the intricacies of a high-traffic, consumer-facing, responsive web and native applications