I've been working in the fields of digital strategy, customer experience, design and information architecture since 1997. I have built, led and mentored teams of digital and experience strategists while providing strategic and tactical support for major global companies and organizations.
My background is in philosophy. I've studied it and taught it for close to 20 years and consider it essential to the person I am.
In retrospect, philosophy has influenced my approach by providing me with
Clarity of thought and expression
An analytic, incisive approach to problem-solving, and
An inclusive approach to leadership
These represent a selection of accounts and projects I have worked on at, both, strategic and tactical capacities. My typical engagements run across the spectrum - from initial research through strategic insights culminating in experience design and optimization.
During my 8+ years working with T-Mobile USA, I have collaborated with T-Mobile stakeholders across multiple business units and influencing e-commerce, account and bill management, digital retail, business services and merchandising experiences.
In addition to designing and specifying key interaction and transactional paths online and in retail, I have organized and conducted key customer experience strategy workshops with T-Mobile to develop roadmaps to guide the evolution of their digital experiences.
Ranging from brand engagement experiences all the way to complex financial transaction experiences, my involvement with T-Mobile has allowed me to influence a significant number of customer touch points with the brand.
In addition to engaging in nitty-gritty design of information architecture and user interfaces, I have led a team of user experience professionals who continue to provide T-Mobile with experience strategy and design excellence.
Partly as a result of our team's efforts, customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores associated with account and bill management rose 8 points - nearly matching the top of the category.
As part of the revitalization of Philips Healthcare's digital marketing strategy in the B2B space, I introduced the need to generate a sustained flow of content that was genuinely informative, educational and of value to their target audience beyond traditional lead generation campaigns. Commonly referred to as "content marketing," these activities and programs rely on a sharp understanding of target audiences and on strategically placed content assets that feed this hunger over time.
I worked with Philips Healthcare to generate strategic content marketing roadmaps for two key programs. DoseWise, which is Philips Healthcare's newly minted set of innovative technologies and services to better manage medical radiation exposure to patients and healthcare professionals and Imaging Systems, which provides key technology and consulting services for major healthcare networks when it comes to MRI, CT, X-Ray, Ultrasound and other imaging technology. I also worked with the Emergency Care group to plan, design and launch the HeartStart AED demo iPad app with additional value-added CPR content.
These engagements relied on audience, market and competitive research and insights that helped ground the identification of content themes and items designed to activate key segments: the C-Suite, clinical leadership, purchasing managers and first responders.
By designing and conducting a series of content strategy workshops with key Philips Healthcare stakeholders, I facilitated consensus and delivered a coherent content marketing strategy that is now fueling their sustained outreach to these audiences. Philips is now well-positioned to develop strong thought-leadership in this space.
I consider this an important case study since it demonstrates that experience strategy and design should not only be thought of as applying to digital, interactive experiences such as web sites and mobile apps, but is also vital across the entire spectrum of touch points where your audience consumes content about your brand, products and services.
Being the .com arm of the largest tire distributor in the U.S. (ATD), Tirebuyer needed to create a stellar e-commerce experience that would provide consumers with confidence that non-traditional online products (i.e., tires and wheels) could be bought, shipped and installed with ease.
I worked with product and marketing managers at Tirebuyer to identify key audience insights, effortless user flows and interface design prototypes to make the journey from research to selection to installation effortless. In addition to crafting key artifacts that defined the experience (e.g., user flows, requirements, prototypes), I also directed a team of user experience professionals throughout the process.
As a result of our redesign of their original site, key transaction conversions rose by 50% and revenue goals during the launch year were surpassed.
The folks at Rick Steves' Europe knew that a revitalization of their online presence should not rest content with a new visual and interaction design model. They knew that a coherent traveler experience strategy that was sensitive to newly emerging digital habits was essential.
To that end, I organized and led a series of traveler experience workshops with the Rick Steves team to not only identify key needs and triggers of their target audience, but also to challenge any long-held assumptions held by the team. These experience workshops created a space where target audience needs were clearly identified and became our north star when formulating ways the new ricksteves.com would serve those needs. The new site weaves in the dual goal of serving as a travel education hub and as an e-commerce experience allowing travelers to equip themselves.
As travelers move across the experience journey from inspiration to planning, and from exploration to post-trip reminiscing, the new Rick Steves' Europe site is tailored to meet them at every step.
In addition to the strategic planning for the site, my team of user experience professionals crafted an impeccable content model, metadata schema and information architecture that made serendipity and inspiration possible.
The new site has performed beautifully and resulted in Rick Steves meeting their yearly goal for European tour bookings by the end of the first quarter -- causing them to scramble and find more tour guides...a nice problem to have.
18 years ago, the bulk of my work focused on classic information architecture and visual design tasks. Over time, the practice has evolved to encompass the broader fields of user experience, customer experience and service design.
A short list of the types of engagements I have undertaken and directed include:
- Audience research
- Persona development
- Customer journey mapping
- Workshops
- Multi-channel roadmapping
- Content marketing strategy
- Digital marketing consulting
- KPI and metrics frameworks
At the root, the essential concern is to understand target users and present them with experiences that add genuine value and promote business goals.
Whether inheriting strategic direction and key design requirements or setting these myself, I have collaborated with and directed teams to generate the necessary artifacts to bring these to life. The line-up of usual suspects apply:
- Content models
- Metadata schemas
- Site maps
- User flows
- Wireframes
- Interactive prototypes
- Sketches
- Annotations, etc.
However, I believe that generating artifacts for artifacts sake is often wasteful. It is vital to identify at an early stage which artifacts will be essential to the design process and whether these should be completed in low- or high-fidelity. A lean and humane approach to the design process tends to preserve clarity and keep teams happy.
A well-bonded molecule composed of wonderful UXers, visual designers, writers, developers and strategists tends to produce stellar work once the direction is clearly laid out.
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