Digital Product
I’ve been designing and releasing digital products for over a
decade. For the past 5 years I’ve mentored junior designers, managed
developers, and led research. At Morgan Stanley my designs for a new
travel website increased surveyed user satisfaction with the
application by 75%. On the same application we reduced the time to
complete critical tasks by 60% and by working with developers and
leveraging existing development assets we reduced the development
effort by 20%. With good collaboration these are typical gains
through the design cycle. With Dive the Data, collaborating with
stakeholders resulted in growing sightings data to 5 regions
globally. My designs have processed billions of dollars in
transactions and served millions of users.
Gather
It starts and ends with solid research. Typically this is where we
discover the largest gains, for example the travel app at Morgan
Stanley, three quarters of all users reported the same process
complaint. Preplanning with the developers at Advisor Software
allowed us to release a white label system with a small team in a
record timeline of 4 months. Working with the dive centers while
developing Dive the Data allowed us to reduce friction and increase
enrollment in the program by triple. Research should be woven
throughout any project. It’s an ongoing task during the product
design cycle to guide direction and ensure you are meeting goals.
The requirements for new design will come from this research, and
can be informal interviews, in depth observation sessions, workshops
with the product's users or developers, technical analysis...
there are many options.
Alignments
When I begin work with an application team I seek alignments between
the technology that stands up the application, the business that
drives it, and users that use it. Alignment comes from many
directions and can be discovered through interactions, meetings,
forms, interviews, or workshops with a diverse group of people
orbiting the product. At Morgan Stanley finding alignments between
the design systems team, the users of the application, and the
application developers led to driving efficiencies in usage and
development saving thousands of hours in employee effort. That works
out to hundreds of thousands of dollars saved through collaboration.
Design
Producing design of the product is typically the majority of my
engagement with clients and employers. I both lead and produce
designs of the product. Design could take the form of presentations,
mockups, prototypes, systems components, interface development
specifications and guidelines. But fundamentally, design artifacts
should guide and aid development of the product. There is no formula
for which of these artifacts will be most useful or necessary for a
project but my work almost always includes some interactive
prototyping to enable pre-development testing. Static screens
usually are in the mix as well to guide internal discussions. And
design always includes anything necessary to guide the development
process and reduce developer lift which typically means some kind of
spec or systems library.
Develop
It’s through working with cross functional teams that I help achieve
cross functional results in reducing the necessary efforts of the
product implementation. Planning with the development team can save
a lot time in implementation. And a good design system, built as a
developer library multiplies the savings in effort. Leveraging
existing Design Systems reduced the development time of my
applications at Morgan Stanley. Working within the constraints of
existing tools allowed me to launch Dive the Data with a tiny team
on a tiny timeline. Leading development of the design system at
Enrollment123 streamlined modernization of their existing
application. Development is where things get real, so anything I can
do in my work to aid development is a win for the product.
Test
Testing is my forever friend. I observe the product in use. I
analyze statistics. I test in the field. I test screens, I A/B
funnels, I time workflows. I listen. I find frustrations. I find the
beating heart of the product and give it blood. I heal. I find the
successes and the joys in the product so we can enhance them. You
can call post project research testing, or pre project testing
research. The key is to do it often. At Piper computers I
established relationships with nearby schools, tutoring services,
and families bringing our software and hardware prototypes in-front
of our users which led the design for PiperOS. At Dive the Data I
visited centers around the world observing them in their workplace
and leading to the design of new physical products. At Morgan
Stanley I led workshops with users globally driving innovation
across the many applications I developed for the firm. Always,
always, test.
