Notes on what I've learned.

AI & MACHINE LEARNING

Identifying innovation opportunities with human-centered practices.

I have experience working on projects to build and/or utilize AI And ML technologies. My role on these projects was to help the team identify the key workflows that would benefit most from the introduction of these tools. I also lead the mapping and modeling of the data so the team could clarify what and how the expected experience would function. Finally I also lead evaluative research efforts to identify where in a person’s workflow we could intervene and what behaviors could/would need to change for the user to adopt the solution and find value.

I approached this work using human-center AI principles which involves understanding the core tasks (or Jobs-to-be-done) a person may be trying to accomplish and then reframing them as cognitive tasks that can be supported with common data science methods. Much of the processing and interaction of these tools is hidden which requires understanding user behavior and how that behavior can be supported (or if it requires a change the people will be open to) by the tool to provide value.

DESIGN SYSTEMS

Sensemaking and wayfinding for digital shoppers.

I have lead and worked on many design system projects through out my career. Including building a design system that would be shared across 8+ brands, to improve a family of brand’s speed to market and management of ecommerce efforts. I’ve worked on a design system that required extra consideration as a productized offering that a company would white label and sell to other companies in their industry.

Throughout all of these initiatives my primary role was to define a process for the creation, testing, and documentation of new components as they needed to be added to the system. This role was often performed alongside other product management and design duties to prioritize, build, or enhance new experiences.

A well documented design system improves all business functions, not just the design and developers. It should help research identify what to learn more about, it should help product managers prioritize work, it should help everyone in the business understand what objects exist in the system and how are people able to interact with them, plus much more.

ECOMMERCE & MARKETPLACE

I have a lot of experiences working on implementing and enhancing ecommerce and digital marketplace experiences. I’ve worked on creating strategy and content opportunity maps to increase new customer acquisition, as well as loyalty and account experiences designed to address customer retention. This type of work also requires a heavy dose of taxonomy and sensemaking efforts so that customers can find what their looking for, figure out if it's right for them, and complete the transaction.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

Organize information for clarity & impact.

People are overwhelmed and learning new systems only adds to this stress. Digital spaces need Information Architecture, the practice of structuring information to make it easier to use.

A system’s ability to label, organize, display, or anticipate, impacts a person’s ability to understand it. These attributes are enabled by the architecture of the information layer and define the true success/failure tipping point of any project.

If your business is going to be successful it must connect the information layer to the back-end and interface layers in a way that enables people to complete their tasks. And this all needs to be informed by the business goals.

OBJECT ORIENTED UX

A cross-functional approach to managing complexity.

I am a certified OOUX strategist and it had become an integral part of the way I think about and perform my work. OOUX is designed to help digital product designers create naturally intuitive user experiences, even for the most complex domains. Using a repeatable framework, teams synthesize UX research and create a structure for the objects that will be represented in the system. Leading cross-functional teams we then create a unified map of the objects, their data, and how they can be interacted.

I’ve used this approach with internal and client teams and it has proven to be a successful way to gain alignment and create a source of truth the whole team can use.

PRODUCT MANAGEMENT

Organize information for clarity & impact.

In my consulting career I have found myself often filling the product management role on projects. I’ve performed these responsibilities for large projects with 5 or more development teams and smaller 3 person teams. In these roles I was primarily responsible for the research, design, and planning portion of the work.

My core responsibility was communicating with project stakeholders and business leadership to understand the business priorities and building a strategy to identify opportunities that would facilitate those goals. This was done through organizational and user research with the goal of identifying opportunities that could be vetted for viability. We’re building an understanding of the various areas of impact so that we can accurately decide what to prioritize and work on.

RESEARCH

Talking to people to discover opportunities.

Throughout my career I have primary performed three types of research in support of building software experiences.

Organizational Research: I kick off each new engagement with some form of organizational research. This typically looks like a 1 or 2 day in-person workshop but can also be performed digitally. This is our chance to learn more about the subject matter and determine what drives the business. This is an important first step because the viability of the work is informed by the overlap of desirability (what the business’s users need) and priority (what the business itself wants to accomplish). The reality is that no project is viable until it solves a business problem and organizational research is designed to help us create a list of business priorities that can be prioritized for work. The tools we use for organizational research are stakeholder interviews, surveys, and a wide range of design thinking activities that I tailor to each type of project.

User and Customer Research: After gaining a better understanding of the business priorities user research comes into play to enable the creation of hypotheses that can be tested through experimentation. The goal is to understand the true needs and priorities of the target customers/audience/end users. To make the right decisions and deliver real value we need to understand the context in which the users will interact with the system and replace assumptions (what we learned during organizational research) with actual insights. After we learn what tasks the users are trying to accomplish we can analyze those alongside the business priorities and any overlaps are opportunities to solve problems. These opportunities are what get turned into actionable development work. Some of the tools we use for user research are interviews (in-person or remote), surveys, usability testing (of their current process), customer service shadowing, and quantitative analytics.

Evaluative Research: Often referred to as usability testing, Evaluative Research is all about understanding how well the solution works. Does it work for the intended audience and with the intended purpose? Or do we need to make adjustments to better serve our users. This is the research that a product team should never stop doing, especially after a product is released. My preferred approach to this form of research is to have your target audience interact with the system and provide feedback. The goal is to gather quantitative and qualitative data that can be used to improve the current experience or added to the backlog as future enhancements that will delight your users. The primary tools for this type of research is moderated or unmoderated observation. Asking the users to perform a key set of tasks (based on what you learned during customer research) and analyzing how they perform. I’ve performed moderated usability testing but also have experience using tools like UserTesting , Hotjar, Userlytics, and more.

PRODUCT STRATEGY

Clarifying the 'why' behind the work.

As a product strategist I’ve lead teams, projects, and clients through the process of deciding what to build and why. The value I add is in the definition an implementation of research experiments. The decisions and trade-offs made, the discarded ideas that lead to better solutions, and navigating within the given constraints the business has chosen to live with. As the person responsible for defining, clarifying, or prioritizing a roadmap of work it’s vital to tailor any argument or decision based on the given context. Being intentional is all about the ‘why’ and being clear about what evidence, signals, metrics, or lack thereof, inform that why.