Product Design

Strategy, Manager, UX/Ix/UI

 

Companies engage me to

  • Create solutions for user & business value
  • Bring UCD & Design Thinking methodologies to product design
  • Foster collaborative ideation
  • Guide & deliver UX design within strategic requirements
  • Steer complex design projects through release and optimization
  • Steward UX/UI/IxD design to enhance usability and effectiveness
  • Extend products to new contexts
  • Create useful, usable and engaging design solutions
 
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Background

I am digital product designer with over 20 years designing with agencies, corporations and startups. My experience with methods and outputs is broad, from user discovery through collaborative solutioning, concepting and prototyping to detailed UX flows, UI and interaction specs. I have designed MVPs, mobile apps, desktop & web apps, cross-platform UXs and funnels, interactive tools, data visualizations, systems etc. I am familiar with different workflows such as Agile release cycles, 0 to 1 product & feature development, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), Growth-Driven Design (GDD), SaaS products. I am skilled in translating business goals into effective user-centered solutions, leading and managing design teams and driving collaboration and alignment across teams.

Work has included:

  • PaaP, SaaS, Mobile, Desktop

  • Data analytics & scenario forecasting tools

  • Freemium & Ad-based revenue models

  • Cross-platform UXs

  • E-commerce

  • Consumer & business products

  • Products for two-sided businesses, B2B+B2C

  • Design systems, guidelines and frameworks

  • Experiential marcom

 

Design approach

Having worked with many teams one thing I know is that a company’s process is always different from another’s but, that design approach can be the same.

Whether it is concepting a new product or feature, solving a usability issues, looking at improving efficiency or any other situation, the approach is the same. Design Thinking is a branded methodology but this design process is a proven, time worn approach that can be applied to any situation when looking to find opportunity to make change.

Discovery and user Research (the Empathize stage in DT) can be a discrete exercise but this phase of learning is also ongoing and always if you think in terms of the broad goal of improving - improving process, improving communication, improving effectiveness. Observing and listening in any situation will most likely surface opportunity to zero in on things that could be made better or at least, done differently. It is important to watch for assumptions, question them, to try to always look at things from different perspectives. An understanding will begin to emerge and key problems or opportunities can start to be indentified (the Define stage).

I have often seen problems in teams or products that originated in these earlier stages; lack of thoroughness here undermines outcomes, particularly when assumptions are left unquestioned and/or alignment on what actually the key problem to be solved is.

Next, brainstorm, workshop and mull (Ideation) to come up with ideas on how things could be made better (i.e. to form a hypotheses). Test your ideas with some form of prototype. Try your idea at smaller scales first to see if you are on the right track. Prototypes build learning, understanding and therefore confidence in direction.

You can then start planning, defining and building something more robust. It is very important to make sure prioritisation is accurate at this stage and also to be employing the most appropriate methods and approaches.

Deploy & Monitor to watch effects (measure) and listen to feedback. You essentially go back to the beginning of the process at this point since you iterate based on what you learn in order to make better, solve new problems and optimize. The loop is continuous.

Top companies know that investing in Design brings businesss advantage.

 

Other aspects of product design

 

Discovering opportunity 

  • Know the user; know the subject landscape
  • Understand users, their goals, the way they think
  • Identify patterns/gaps/obstacles as opportunity
  • Collaborative ideation to explore solutions
  • Evaluate, prototype, test
  • Keep learning and iterate
 

Strategizing according to product type

  • UX Funnel Matrix (conversion) or user journeys (service) or taskflows (tools & processes)
  • MVPs to learn quickly (finding fit), Agile sprints for incremental value
  • Measure KPIs, observe other data, bring learning to next steps
 

Employing UX best practices

  • Consistent layouts, components & interaction patterns
  • Responsiveness
  • Conventions & CTAs/Affordances
  • Guidelines, Design Systems
  • Accessibility
  • The 10 heuristics of Nielsen Norman
 

Growing & optimizing a product

  • Prioritize funnels to conversion/KPIs
  • Behavioral data
  • Continuous testing
  • Build dialogue with users via support & feedback
  • Experiment on user segments, A/B testing
 
 

New Opportunities with AI

  • Integrate new AI tools into the design process
  • Train AI agents for specific design tasks & help
  • Bring UCD principles to AI agent design for correct objectives and good success metrics
  • Interaction Design for AI agent communication interfaces
 

 
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Project clients include

Questions?

Find me on LinkedIn

 
 
 
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