My Process

Having deep experience working with diverse clients, I've developed a scalable approach to systems design

Step One

1. Discovery & Research

Aligning business, user, and team objectives, as well as gathering data to influence design.

Step Two

2. Prototype & Design

From testing assumptions and iteration, to developing a cohesive design system.

Step Three

3. Launch & Iterate

Rolling out designs and driving iterations through ongoing conversations.

Step One

1. Discovery & Research

The first step to solving a problem is having clarity and coming up with a plan of action that the users, stakeholders, and team are aligned on—before designing or building anything.

Discovery

Aligning Business, User, and Team Objectives

A successful launch begins with a healthy alliance of users, stakeholders, and teams working toward a unified objective.

Business Goals

I seek to understand business goals by conducting stakeholder interviews, striving to understand the underlying why and not just the what or the how.

Team Alignment

I gather input from all team reps who are working on the project so that we create a single source of truth. Team alignment is maintained through physical proximity (even when remote) and constant dialogue.

One of the most beneficial activities for a designer when starting a project is to define the design/solution constraints by inviting perspectives from other teams that will be working on the project. What will you learn?
Learn more about my guiding principles

User Research

I validate assumptions by conducting user research. My favorite ways of gathering information on what users like and don't like is in form of conversation (video when possible), surveys, and analytics.

Research

Gathering Data to Influence Design

While it's easy (and fun) to attack a problem head on, we must first make sure the team has a clearly defined scope and timeline to work against.

Product Roadmap

Takeaways surfaced from competitive research, user, stakeholder, and team interviews give us guidance for coming up with a few possible solutions to the problem.

After gathering feedback, design, engineering, and product teams are to come up with a clear scope of work on a single solution and creates a roadmap.

Information Architecture

At a 30-thousand-foot level, pen meets paper to establish a hierarchical diagram that establishes requirements, priorities, the sitemap, and userflow.

Zooming in closer, the sitemap is broken down into wireframe sketches that include page details that establish connections between how each experience feeds into the rest.

One of my strengths is being able to design microinteractions, while maintaining a high-level perspective of the entire brand.

Step Two

2. Prototype & Design

After having a clear understanding and a sound approach, I roll up my sleeves to build a functional prototype while gathering feedback, making iterations, and getting closer to launch of the actual product.

Prototype

Testing Assumptions & Gathering Feedback

In today's competitive market, going from a design to a functional prototype shouldn't take months or years, but weeks (sometimes days). I believe in elegant simplicity, using existing frameworks, as well as partnerships to solve problems instead of building proprietary solutions.

Of course, this isn't always possible, but for the sake of testing and validation, a minimal viable product (MVP) is a must.

Interactive Prototype

Giving people something to play with as soon as possible is one of my primary objectives as a designer. Assumptions can be crushed or validated, and this step is critical for rapid iterations that lead to a timely product launch.

Usability Testing

Usability testing with users, stakeholders, and team provides the best opportunity to identify problems, uncovering opportunities and learning about target user's behavior and preferences.

During this step, we continue to calibrate our approach to align with how users are actually interacting with our product.

Design

Developing a Cohesive Design System

The skeleton has been built, and now it's time to put some meat on the bone.

Over my 10 years as a digital experience and product designer, I have spent a lot of time coming up with the best workflows for converting static designs into functional products.

I have experience with the waterfall method (handing design files over to a developer), as well as creating "redlines" (tediously speccing out every aspect of a flat design file that a developer can reference during their build).

Having conducted over two hundred workshop sessions dedicated specifically to teaching designers a practical level of HTML/CSS so they can turn their ideas into reality, as well as teaching front-end developers design, I believe this approach is the future.

Design Direction

I love collaborating with other designers to come up with the best possible solution. I create working environments in which people are comfortable sharing ideas and feel de-centered from their egos.

There are no bad ideas, only ideas that lead to better ideas—sourced from the whole team while creating a design champions.

Brand Identity Design

Brand equity gets built on top of a sound brand identity.

Brands need to give people an easy way to express their emotion, and as a designer, it is my job to help them relate their feelings (stemming from interaction with our digital product) with a brand identity that's consistent through all brand communications and touch points.

Component System

Being fluent in HTML/CSS enables me to create visual component elements that make it easy for a developer to build out pages/functionality quickly through simple "dragging-and-dropping".

Having these semantic, "live" component elements at their disposal allows developers (and even designers!) to build pages out at a fraction of the time, all while creating a more design-consistent product.

These live component elements seamlessly scale across all web platforms, as well as viewport sizes (desktop, tablet, and mobile).

Step Three

3. Launch & Iterate

Once the latest iteration meets our design standards, it's time to procedurally roll it out to users and gather real world data that will drive future pivots and design decisions.

Launch

Rolling Out the Design

I have experience launching products live to millions of users, as well as creating experimental MVPs to test assumptions—either way, I believe in agile iteration and constant communication.

Agile iteration builds the highest quality relationship with users, and creates the most sustainable working environments.

Constant communication provides a pulse on what users like and don't like, providing insights that fuel the product roadmap.

Quality Assurance

Given the state of digital product development, building a product sometime feels like building a house of cards—many components, visual and technical, are tied to others. So, by changing one thing, it will likely affect others.

Having a quality assurance process enables the team to run through the product in depth, testing various use cases and workflows, while doing so on various devices. This allows the team to catch bugs in time and release a solid product.

I am a believer that each member of a pod should conduct QA, from each of their own perspectives. Each pod would also benefit from a dedicated QA resource.

A/B Testing

Between product, design, engineering, and marketing, great ideas are likely in abundance. This can be on visual design, marketing copy, as well as UX functionality.

One of the better ways to test assumptions pertaining to "face-value" decisions would be through setting up A/B tests.

It's always a good idea to run A/B tests, since one option always outperforms the other—wouldn't you like to know which?

Launching a design Update

There are two ways to roll out a design update. One could be en-masse—the old way of doing it—where a redesign is kept behind closed doors for months until it is perfected (no such thing). Then, one day, a user logs in, and something they've been so accustomed to has now completely changed.

This can be infuriating to the user.

The other way—the right way—is to roll out a redesign through rapid iterations. These iterations are rolled out in small chunks, to smaller subsets of users, allowing them to get acclimated with the changes, little at a time. This also allows our team to gather feedback and roll out updates.

This also allows our team to gather feedback and roll out bug fixes without tainting the entire user pool.

Rapid iterations allow users to feel heard, and allowing the product to solve for real needs—instead of operating on assumptions without validation.

Iterate

Driving Iterations through Ongoing Conversations

Work doesn't end at launch. Gathering feedback through constant communication with users and stakeholders continues to drive the product roadmap.

Despite the commonly used term "sprint", product design feels more like a marathon and should be paced accordingly to avoid burnout.

Qualitative Data

All feedback is valuable. Not only from users, stakeholders, and your immediate team, but also from social media, marketing, sales, customer support, and community support teams.

Every contributor to the overall brand has a unique perspective to the overall mission through their own conversations with users, and their feedback should be collected and discussed.

These unique perspectives could be on industry-specific needs, competition, and information on bugs and users.

Quantitative Data

Every new product enhancement is an opportunity to acquire new users and to advance existing ones further along the customer lifecycle.

Having access to quantitative data is a great way of getting to know how the product is being used. For example, when considering a onboarding process redesign at CBS Sports Fantasy, having data sets on how users are using the product allowed our team to decide what features to include and exclude in the redesign.

We learned that deferring new league customization options to post-signup was the best way to reduce onboarding fatigue and increase new signups.

Continunous Improvements

If a project makes it this far, congratulations!  🎉

And in many ways, this is only the beginning of the product design journey.

The growth-driven design process of continuous improvements is a cost-effective approach which puts user experience at the heart of the design process—where it belongs.

There is no such thing as perfection. In a world that's constantly in motion—where status quo cannot exist—product design teams must adopt a lean, nimble, and iterative process for creative problem solving.

Interested in working together?

I’d love to add value to a company using my experience leading remote design teams, as well as building fintech / investments / real estate products.

Let's Chat