The data the client shared with us showed:

Working with the UX researcher and strategist, I came up with suggestions for quick wins, ways to highlight their educational content and long-term growth with an AI assistant.

Chain of Command

Three personas were created to verify incoming data, have a digital paper trail and overall improve transparency within teams.Maria is a sustainability manager, the big picture person in decarbonization initiatives to see whether or not a target is on or off trajectory. She often tests the "what ifs" for initiatives.Maria gets her data from Carlos, the Project Lead, who supports and provides relevant information to support Maria's initiatives. He works closely with Dani, a Sector Lead, who is the boots on the ground manager talking to her team and fostering cross collaboration in keeping up to date with the latest data to send to Carlos.She discusses and executes decarb projects with her team based off of initiatives given by Maria, resulting in her creating roadmaps for projects within their budget.The three work together with a collective goal to drive company sustainability performances and demonstrate the impact through KPIs.

Synergy From the Start

The client came ready with what they needed from us and were very communicative with our team. A quote from KPDH may have helped with this. I vibed with their head of UX so well that she felt I was reading her mind at times.

Loyal Fanbase = Unfiltered Truths

This project was one of the few where I was able to speak directly with IBC's customers. They were all very helpful with their suggestions, feedback on our design proof of concepts and very straightforward.

Taking The Lead

I took on the principal designer's role after he had an unexpected medical emergency. I worked closely with our strategist, product managers and UX researcher from India. It was a challenging but very fruitful experience. My team was very supportive during this time.

Trust Your Gut

When our client wanted unexpected deliverables a part from of the original agreement, the project manager said not to mind it; my intuition said otherwise. A few weeks later, the PM asked me how long it'd take to create said deliverable; he didn't know I already did 2/3 of the work during sprint downtimes. The remainder was passed onto the UX researcher to flesh out before presenting. The Client Partner rep on our team jokingly said I should predict lottery numbers.

AI Saved Our Butts

The strategist and myself were up to our eyeballs on user interview data. Were it not for Copilot helping us with summarizing common points, suggestions, competitive analysis, and ranking based on urgency, we wouldn't have been able to work as fast as we did.

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Global Safety Organization

Three personas were created to verify incoming data, have a digital paper trail and overall improve transparency within teams.Maria is a sustainability manager, the big picture person in decarbonization initiatives to see whether or not a target is on or off trajectory. She often tests the "what ifs" for initiatives.Maria gets her data from Carlos, the Project Lead, who supports and provides relevant information to support Maria's initiatives. He works closely with Dani, a Sector Lead, who is the boots on the ground manager talking to her team and fostering cross collaboration in keeping up to date with the latest data to send to Carlos.She discusses and executes decarb projects with her team based off of initiatives given by Maria, resulting in her creating roadmaps for projects within their budget.The three work together with a collective goal to drive company sustainability performances and demonstrate the impact through KPIs.

Sustainability is Cool and Vast!

This was a huge learning experience in the sustainability space and how carbon footprint is measured.

Chasing Waterfalls

Before joining this team, they were used to working Waterfall. Most of them understood Agile as a concept and it was hard to find a balance sometimes.

Analysis Paralysis

When I shared the list of interview questions to review, the product owner's replies would either spiral down a rabbit hole or the question was "too broad" to ask. A UX Researcher was brought onto our team to take over this task.

Context is Important

Due to the complexity of sustainability, some necessary information we needed to know were told to us after the fact.

Too Wide A Net Casted

The product owner reached out to anyone and everyone who they thought would be a good fit as a cohort. As a result, it was a scramble to get user interviews scheduled when we barely had responses.

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Rogers Communications

FAQs are condensed into accordions showing only most commonly asked questions. Users interact with it to see the answer they want to see help reduce cognitive load. I highlighted to the clients the potential of internal collaborations and workshops with internal customer reps to help better tailor support content.

Accessibility Baked In!

When the project lead told me the client wanted "accessibility first," I was locked in. In previous projects, accessibility was always a sprinkle in and not part of the ingredient list.

Learning from the Past

While drawing up the HiFis, I referred back to the Juniper pitch in simplifying the design and put the spotlight on the products, not the page layout.

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Global Safety Organization*

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Global Automotive Company*

Press the play button above to view the experience.

To better understand the consumer's journey post-purchase, we created a journey to reflect how a new MyCar** owner might experience the refreshed app from onboarding to lease renewal.

1. Awareness and Exploration
David purchased a new MyCar** R-Model and downloads the app with the dealer onboarding him with app features. As he clicks around, he opts into in-app notifications, which highlight service perks when needed.2. Personalized Rewards
Each time David services his car, he earns points to use on accessories or future services. On his 1-year anniversary, the app sends a fun recap of his year with the R-Model.3. End of Lease
As David neared the end of his 3 year lease, the app sends him a notification 2 months in advance, with an incentive to either extend the lease or purchase a new vehicle, beginning the loyalty cycle anew.

There's such a thing as too useful

I'm all for streamlining and making things to work better, but there's a limit to that.

Visual data nerd unlocked

Full disclosure: I've only started using Spotify last year and got the year in review to see what the fuss was all about. I get it now. Why hoard all that data from your users and not make use of it into something fun like a year in review? Possibilities are endless!

Collecting car points

I'm always up for gameifying basic tasks and getting points. It's just so rewarding. I wish other companies would do that more; they do it with credit cards.

A refreshing, straightforward project

Having worked with this company's Canadian branch 2 years ago, these clients were so easy to work with and voiced their requests clearly. They were such a pleasure.

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Rogers Communications

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Juniper Networks

Press the play button below to view the experience.

1. Awareness and Exploration
Matthew scans for trends to guide a business transformation and encounters a thought leadership article by Juniper and clicks through to the website via CTA. He begins exploring the relevant content and interacts with an embedded widget that offers a deeper look into Juniper's potential.2. Contextual Personalization and SharingAs Matthew continues engaging, the site personalizes content of strategic insights and case studies based on his role and industry. He shares a persistent, unique link of the content to his colleague Vihaan over Microsoft Teams.3. SME EngagementVihaan joins via Matthew’s link, connects through LinkedIn, and uses the chatbot to ask about open architecture. His activity tailors the content to highlight specs and documentation for project scoping.

First time pitching

This was the first time I was involved with a project pitch. It was exciting to see how strategy and our client partner teams worked together with us.

Healthy competition

While I went the more traditional tech route in concept, the director went for a sleeker, more minimalist design. I felt like a toddler doodling non-sensical lines on paper compared to his design. I learned a lot from this experience and realized still how much I have to learn.

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Global Automotive Company

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Hackathon 2023: Holiday Voices

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Juniper Networks

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EqualPrice*

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Hackathon 2023: Holiday Voices

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Understand the Science

Oh God. It's Out There.

Whenever I work on something, my brain subconsciously blocks out the design will be seen and used by everyone around the world. It's humbling, exciting and nerve-wracking all at once.

This AI Won't Take My Job

This was my very early interactions with AI just as genAI were up and coming. I heard of IBM's watsonx from years ago while watching the French Open, where they used it to analyze player stats, play challenges and more.

Pushing the Envelope

When first approached with this project, UTS' website was extremely bare bones. We were able to approach this with a blue-sky while stress testing the AI.

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Hackathon 2023: Holiday Voices

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Echo

Pre-save is trying

Most of the people I interviewed never pre-saved music, but some managed to click through some CTAs leading to the pre-save during testing. When asked how likely they were to pre-save Echo’s single, the answer averaged 5 out of 10 on a scale of 1-10 (1: No way; 10: Smashing button hard now).

Through the looking glass

A lot of artist websites don’t provide much of an experience nowadays. I was surprised to learn fans want to learn more about the artist and build a more intimate connection.

Achievement unlocked

I finally got to try out Adobe Xd. It was a software I was constantly putting off to use because I had no reason to until now.

The group dynamic

Having worked in smaller teams at my last two positions, I really missed that collaborative energy between designers and mentors.

Presentation jitters

It’s been a minute since I had to do a proper presentation when Elizé was selecting people to present to the RCA Records stakeholders. All of my bad speaking habits came out; I cringed so hard after hearing the recording🤦 Even though I wasn’t selected, it was still a good experience and I know what I need to work on.

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Understand the Science

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Local News Lab

First time for everything

This was the first opportunity in testing my mettle in UX/UI. It was uncomfortable, nerve-wracking, and challenged my brain to re-wire itself in redefining what “design” is and can be; it was amazing.

Running workshops are hard

Leading my first workshop was a pivotal challenge and was grounded by our Community Lead’s guidance. While I learned how to build an engaging session, my biggest lesson was the need for restraint. Overfilling the itinerary crowded out organic pauses showed me that leaving room for open discussion is just as crucial as the content itself.

Be more transparent

This was the first time LNL had done a cohort like this and there were a lot of things we were figuring out as we went along, like roadmap alignment with our partners.

Discomfort = Growth

Even though I knew ahead of time the position was more research heavy, I secretly hoped to flex more of my Figma skills for this role, but I ended up learning Miro in the process. Little blessings in disguise.

Ask better questions

I often found myself asking similar questions that were worded differently. Were it not for the Product Advisor and Community Lead imparting me with their nuggets of knowledge, I’m sure the workshops wouldn’t have been as fruitful.

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Echo

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Wine & Spirits Magazine Website

I prioritized competitive research on similar publications, like Wine Spectator, Decanter, and Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, subscription tiers, and paywalls. A key finding was their use of follow-up stories and prominent placement of wine reviews in navigation and homepage features to keep readers engaged.While I focused on improving the site’s navigation, the developer worked on the subscription checkout.

Feature stories from the print magazine are now behind a paywall on the site, requiring subscribed users to log in or subscribe for access.

The subscription model had 6 tiers: print-only and print + digital (a browser-based PDF by a 3rd party company), media subscription, wine industry subscription and a friends and family subscription.While testing:

We updated our subscriptions to match standard industry pricing, rolling out a three-tier setup with a digital-only plan to replace our old PDFs. To make sign-ups easier, we clarified the perks for every level and introduced a free tier so new readers can easily get started.

Inspired by The New Yorker and Roads & Kingdoms, I moved away from the classic list-style archives for a more engaging experience.

While A/B testing, I found:

Grouping restaurant reviews under “Drink & Eat” by establishment type helped connect the content better.We swapped the map for a text cloud showing cities by number of reviews, making the site simpler and unified.

Take each issue one at a time

This was my first real-world UX/UI project. The amount of feedback I received was overwhelming at times being the sole designer. My brain would split into three different directions with endless questions and theory crafting.

The devil was the details

I was so focused on how the UI would affect certain elements on the page from a coding standpoint, I briefly lost sight of how the user flow should be. The web developer had to reel me back to take a breath and reset.

Happy accidents

While adjusting hex colors on the site post-launch, I accidentally made it color-blind friendly (one of our editors can’t see red and green). This was way before I knew what accessibility design was a thing.

The last page

As of May 2024, the magazine has ended its print publication. Everything from hereon would be published via the website, tasting notes and all.

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Local News Lab

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Other Design Work

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