- My Role: Senior Manager, UX Research

- Project Type: UX Research; Comparative Study; Edutech

Project Overview

As the Senior Manager of UX Research at Nabler, I led a team of two researchers (one junior and one senior) in a comparative study of Wiley's website and one of their competitors, 2U, using UserTesting and relying on data from Optimal Workshop. The study was therefore part of a mixed method approach that combined qualitative and quantitative data, with additional quantitative data gathered from Google Analytics. Our team analyzed the initial metrics shared by Nabler's SEO team for UX perspectives and included them in the study design. The study resulted in identifying the best features of both websites to improve the performance of click-through actions (CTAs) and the total Net Promoter Score (NPS). I managed the team's timelines, delegated tasks, reviewed the research and provided feedback to the researchers, and presented findings (design and research recommendations) to stakeholders.

- Product Type: B2B & Internal Business; Data Visualization; Automotive

- My Role: Senior Product Designer and Researcher

Project Overview

As a Senior Product Designer and Researcher for Ford's Global Service Analysis and Reporting (GSAR) product, I created a successful solution for this data-intensive internal product worth billions of dollars. The project involved a cross-functional team with a Product Manager, Product Owner, and several experienced developers with knowledge of both back-end and front-end programming. I worked closely with the Product Owner using an Agile model and created my own user stories pointed according to difficulty. After two weeks of understanding the business logic, a brief UX research process, including moderated interviews and stakeholder interviews, was conducted to create multiple User Personas and Journey Maps. The application involved an interactive form that expands based on how the questions are answered, with results displayed on a dashboard view and previous questions answered shown for reference. By the end of the iteration, Ford had a working application and a better understanding of the business user environment from a systems thinking and interaction design perspective.

Team, Culture and Organizational Style

I was part of a cross-functional product team. The team makeup included a Product Manager (active duty military), Product Owner (senior data scientist), and several very experienced developers with knowledge of both backend and front end programming. I worked most closely with the Product Owner, meeting him several times a week 1:1. We used an Agile model. I created my own user stories and pointed them according to difficulty.  

Methodology

This project and the Sysco project below are very similar. You can use the assets from both as a combination to see how I would approach a project like this (a data visualization backend internal business app). The IA portion is here and the screenshots of a data visualization product are in the Sysco project below. If you are the type who prefers diagrams to text, you can find those below this description as well.
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‍Ford needed to manage a complex data-oriented product. This product was to be used internally. It involves complex forms and large tables. Prior to launch, the product had two failed launches and the client needed this to be successful effort as billions of dollars are on the line. There were no existing designs on this product, so I was the founding designer.

After 2 weeks of understanding business logic pertaining to the product, there was a brief UX research process (due tight deadlines). This consisted of a design plan, moderated interview script, and the moderated interviews themselves. Stakeholder interviews were also conducted. Afterwards, multiple User Personas and Journey Maps (for each persona) were created. The Sketch template from the Chess CMS case study in the portfolio was used for the Journey Map.
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I confirmed his insights later with user/stakeholder interviews with the business users and usability test over Usertesting.com.
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‍Initially these diagrams (a mind map, a simplified flowchart and a more intricate view) were mental models in the Product Owner's mind, but we went through an initial stakeholder interview and collaborative design session, during which I produced these visualizations. This was during the first month on the project.
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‍The goal was to allow Ford to ask for a money for parts given to dealerships (a recovery). When that company wanted to make a recovery, and if would be for the first time, they would pull data from a database called "GSAR data". They would then land on a page called the Recovery Page (basically the most important function of the application).
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The Recovery page was an interactive form. The user would start to answer questions at the start of the form (manual user actions ie interactional design), and based on how the questions were answered the form would expand (the automated processes in green boxes that you see) and ask more questions. When all questions would be answered then they would see all the relevant data.
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The data was displayed in a results table, as part of a dashboard view of the data plus analysis and a view of the previous questions answered (so these wouldn't have to be memorized). Once they exited out of the results table, they could see all the recoveries displayed on a page similar Trello's task board style (you can see an example of how I do dashboard from the Sysco app below).
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This is a high level overview of the Ford Business app as a mindmap (can be clicked to zoom in):

A flowchart of how the application would be used at a high level:

This is a detailed view of how users would go through the application, as well as the interactions they would experience. Automated interactions (to help users and simplify their work) are shown in green.

Design Impact at the End of the Iteration

By the end of my contract, Ford at a working application that the business user's had access it to. It also had a much better of understanding of the business user environment from a systems thinking and interaction design perspectives. UX research was conducted which shaped the customer journey. This journey was individualized for each user role/persona, with personalized drillable dashboards and reduced the time to onboard new users by an average of 27% (based on A/B usability testing).

- Domain: B2B; Data Visualization; Food Warehousing

- My Role: Lead UX Designer and Researcher

Problem Statement

Sysco is a Fortune 100 company, a multinational powerhouse of food storage and distribution, with 100+ warehouses of varying sizes across America. Each warehouse is known as an "Opco", short for Operating Company. As indicated by the name, each Opco has different operating procedures. All of these are accounted for in an enterprise warehouse management system. On this project, Sysco had already lost over a billion dollars with a large-scale project that did not complete, partnering initial with a large technology firm for a more productised solution. After that did not work out (it went over budget), they hired me and a small team from Infosys with cross functional roles to conduct a redesign of the twenty year old legacy software system.

Team Makeup, Culture, and Organizational Style

Sysco has great retention rates so I was able to work with many of the original managers and stakeholders from 20 years ago, which was an wonderful experience. There was not much awareness (and an initial skepticism from some stakeholders) of UX. Agile was new to Sysco but there were at least design sprints. Agile as a practice at Sysco was still a work in progress. I had to do Design Thinking workshops to get the senior leadership on the project (a Director was a part of the oversight group) up to speed. Initially, there was a lot emphasis on visual design but I managed to persuade the team of the necessity of UX research through the Design Thinking workshops, which changed the organizational perspective within the broader team. Once I finished the UX iteration shown here, they went back to a visual design focused model, the ROI heavy UX work had been delivered. The team included 4 core members (myself for all UX, a junior BA, a technical lead, and a visual designer). There was also a broader range of very senior stakeholders that were involved on a weekly basis.

Project Methodology

My role in the project was a UX Lead and researcher. Everything concerning UX was my responsibility and deliverable. The warehouse redesign project (otherwise known as "SWMS") started after the application itself had been in existence for roughly 20 years. It was initially created before the time before the hardware technology behind a mouse existed. Therefore, there were Human Computer Interaction (HCI) considerations. There were also Human Factors considerations: users had to lift heavy objects and move equipment. Primarily the focus was on the administrative users (often working with people accomplishing the heavy lifting tasks but not directly involved). Therefore, while these factors were accounted for, they were not a large part of the application.

Our task was to redesign an application all the various users (5+ personas accounted for in the UX project) with varying roles and responsibilities depending on each Opco. I lead the user experience research and heuristics inspections on 150+ pages and popups and created a prototype. I managed to reduced the complexity of the project and made it more efficient by arranging the pages into layouts. Below you can see a couple examples from the work including a login screen (not the final design) and an example dashboard (also later iterated). For close examples of how the application flow was handled, please see Ford example above, which was a very similar project.
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Sysco Login Page Screenshot

Sysco Warehouse Receiving Dashboard (personalized)

Project Impact

At the end of the project, 150 pages of a 20 year old legacy system were redesigned. These were complex pages with often dozens of columns per table per page included. For business reasons, these tables could not be simplified through obvious means such as breaking them up or eliminating data. Instead, I focused on created individualized experiences for personas and created drillable personalized dashboards using data visualisation. Not all users need to see the whole application at once, and by reducing what they would see, I prioritized the information and reduced information overload. The overall time to onboard new users was drastically reduced.

- Project Type: UX Strategy & Leadership; 133 app redesign; SaaS;

- My Role: Principal Designer

Problem Statement & Research Objective

Infosys is a Fortune 500 multinational software agency of 280,000 employees. I was employed by the Infosys CEO for a highly confidential project to revamp the UX of internal applications across the company, with UX Research studies directed at organizational and Service Design perspectives: Social, Organizational, and Software. The software included a redesign of 168 apps across 2 platforms. This is because the company was at the time of this writing facing a 31% attrition rate within the US. The purpose of the project was to gather company data to improve the user experience of using all internal applications. The CEO wanted the research to be conducted from a UX research perspective.

Design & Project Impact

My role in this project was as a Principle Designer. I managed a small development team of two developers/QAs (for Tableau data as a backend to the surveys) and a team of 12 UX designers. In addition to tackling UX internationally (in India and the US), the project also consisted of a redesign of two platforms containing 168 internal apps. By removing redundant apps, we were able to reduce the total number of needed apps in the platforms to 133. We conducted user surveys (of employees) to assess which apps were most impactful and had the biggest opportunity for improvement. Of those, we picked three apps to focus on per quarter, which we split up among my team of designers. I created pods of four people (including a senior UX designer per pod). Of course, it would take years to finish all the apps, but by focusing on the highest priority applications first, we were able to maximize ROI to the company and deliver on the applications that mattered. The following is an example of a survey done of former employees of Infosys to gather some of the background information to allow us to choose three apps.

- Project Type: Healthcare; AI; Computer Vision; Interaction Design

- My Role: UX Director/CEO/Cofounder (Research and Design)

Problem Statement

This project occurred toward the end of my role at NiiD/Akon as UX Director. The UN was trying to measure participants in decade long study for various parts of their body. This could not be done consistently, was mainly done through tape measure, and could not be scaled to work with the number of participants the project entailed: 100,000 users across the world. Any solution prior ours entailed a prohibitive cost, because tape measuring would take about 45 minutes per person. The United Nations employed a kinesthesiologist to solve the problem who in turn hired me and my team deliver the project.

Methodology

My role in the project was as a UX lead, although I functioned as UX director within the company (I have always been a hands on leader). I worked with the kinesthesiologist to conduct UX research. The UX research hypothesis was based off data from the kinesthesiologist. I also designed the interface in the app and lead the design and worked with the development teams. We created an app that uses computer vision technology (which is a type of machine learning technology) to measure a person. Computer vision technology is used to help a computer understands what it sees in an image or a video. The app requires two users: one to measure and the other who is being measured. The video below is a walkthrough we created for our own team to document the app and its performance towards the end of the project ~ ie 95% complete. The final 5% improved the scanning speed and ability of the box to bound the user.

Design & Project Impact

By the end of the project (roughly about 5 months) we managed to reduce the amount of time per person from 45 minutes a person to 1 minute per person. The usability testing (moderated, in person) helped iterate the project.