Leadership Approach
Shaping Strategic Vision and Aligning UX Practice
I believe a core responsibility of a Director of UX or Director of Product is to help company Leadership create a Strategic Vision, by providing guidance to possibilities and pitfalls in the digital product landscape. I help CEOs and their colleagues in the leadership suite align the company’s Digital Product Roadmap to its core business goals. I help ensure the roadmap has been prioritized to best support the delivery of high value features to users, on a consistent cadence. I then work to align UX team efforts to that plan, to most efficiently deliver high quality design to developers and other team members.
UX Process and Best Practices
Understanding and implementing UX best practices into a team’s normal process is crucial for the ongoing success of that team. Effective process provides team members a structural lattice on which to build their work and helps ensure they can focus on the core UX problems to be solved. I work to establish effective process to eliminate inefficiencies like incomplete requirements, duplicate work, or over-specifying features compared to actual needs. There are also times to know when to deviate from standard practice. In short: know the rules, to know when to break them.
Positioning Individuals for Success & Professional Growth
Leadership of a team requires understanding each team member as a unique person. Each team member has a unique combination of capabilities and challenges, and supporting that individual in doing their best work requires fully understanding their unique fingerprint. Supporting the people who work for me in their professional endeavors has always been a core mission for me. I believe that getting team members to fully invest themselves in the future of the company requires that one reciprocate that investment in them as individuals. I work tirelessly to ensure that my direct reports are positioned to do their best quality work, and for individual, professional success.
Design Practice
Empathy
Good User Experience stems from an understanding that users are actual human beings, with emotions, hopes, knowledge, and misconceptions. Anticipating users' needs requires understanding how all of these inputs shape expectations, and how interfaces can acknowledge that complexity with both structure and nuance. With that cognizance of perception as a guiding principal, I try to create fluid, intuitive, and whenever possible, joyful experiences.
Clear Goals
A successful project requires a clear understanding of the 'why'. What are the business goals for a project? What is a core goal, and what is secondary? A methodical approach to mapping and prioritizing goals provides focus on the core problems to be solved, and lays the groundwork for finding creative, effective solutions to them.
Design Best Practices
The landscape of Digital Products Design is an ever-evolving ecosystem with constantly emerging standards for how best to solve various common problems. Understandinghow to use proven design patterns as the building blocks of an experience is critical for advancing the design process from initial concepting to iterative improvements. Conversely, knowing design best practices is also critical to understanding when existing design patterns are not appropriate. You need to understand the rules to know when to break them.
Testing and Iteration
The proof is in the pudding. Testing in front of actual users is the only way to check our assumptions, about what the interfaces we design, and the language that we use, means to users. My favorite part of my job is watching and listening to users interact with a prototype in Usability Lab. It's satisfying both to see designs perform as predicted, but also to gain a critical insight as to how they could be improved further, based on a user's comment. Users are every bit as much a part of the experience as the interface itself; listening to them is critical.
Recent Work
CANDID WHOLESALE
WHOLESALE/RETAIL B2B PLATFORM
Director of UX | Product Management
UX Design, Product Management & Product Strategy for Candid Wholesale, a startup in the wholesale B2B space. Projects included a complete overhaul of multiple Onboarding sequences, a re-architecture of Product Catalog management tools & the Catalog Editor, Orders list features, changes to tier/subscription architecture & associated messaging, dashboard data visualizations, CRM tools, and improvements to Settings, Marketing tools and numerous other features.
GOOGLE CLOUD DATA MANAGEMENT & VISUALIZATION PLATFORM
UX | Digital Product Strategy
Developed UX for Tools used by ELS Group (Energy Land & Strategy) managers for long range planning & project management. These tools are used to make business decisions related to the expenditure of billions of dollars for worldwide Google Cloud Data Center expansion. Business workstreams supported include land acquisition, capacity projection, government incentives, and physical infrastructure build out costs.
CLOROX SMART PACKAGING DISCOVERY
UX | Digital Product Strategy
Clorox Digital Innovations’ exploration into IOT and smart packaging. Developed on-boarding, connection experience and digital communications strategy for wifi-connected cleaning supplies smart dispenser prototype. Detection of low level of supplies prompted communications regarding resupply and subscription to test users.
Case Studies
MACY'S
STAR REWARDS
UX Architecture | Product Strategy
Complete overhaul of Macy's Star Rewards Loyalty Program, extending to all users program enrollment and benefits previously available only to Macy's credit card holders.
LEAPFROG: SCOUT Personalization Mobile site
UX | Digital Product Strategy
Mobile-optimized personalization site for Scout and Violet toys: easy customization of toy via mobile device audio output, used by over 2 million users to date.
candid wholesale:. Feature development & overhaul
Director of UX Design | Product Mgmnt
Comprehensive site overhaul and rebranding, overhaul and improvement of core app features, design and development of new features.
CAMELBAK: BRAND & CATALOG SITE REDEsiGN
UX | Digital Product Strategy
Complete overhaul of Camelbak.com, including Bite Down branding campaign, product line catalog architecture and information and interaction design.
WELLS FARGO: Mobile customer support pages
UX | Digital Product Strategy
Conceptual interaction design explorations for Wells Fargo’s Customer Support pages: responsive strategy, targeted search auto-complete, content strategy, etc.
GOOGLE: google mobile youtube channel
UX | Content Strategy | Project Mgmnt
3D video content discovery experience for Google Mobile’s YouTube brand channel. Agency: Teak; video content developed by Google Creative Labs
CLOROX/GLAD: TRASH SMART MOBILE APP
UX Design | Product Management
Location-aware Recycling guide iOS app allowing users to find the nearest locations to recycle any item or material being discarded, developed as part of Clorox Corporations Green Initiatives
Truth on call: sms medical survey site
UX Design | Product Management
Service to get real-time survey results from physicians via SMS, for healthcare, pharma and medical device industries.
LEAPFROG: LEAPSEARCH KID-SAFE BROWSER
Product Strategy | Interaction Design | UX Design | Content Strategy
LeapFrog’s Epic tablet. Visual navigation for 10,000 pieces of curated content. Includes favoriting for kids and custom curation & content controls for parents.
Skills
TEAM LEADERSHIP
I lead design and cross-functional teams in the creation of innovative digital products. Working to articulate and execute the company’s strategic product vision, I strive to position my team members to produce their best work, and support them in achieving personal and professional success.
User Experience Design
20 years of experience designing, testing, iterating and delivering a wide variety of intuitive, user-centric digital products.
Digital Product Strategy
Expertise in helping companies match their digital strategies to their business goals, and identifying new opportunities presented by new digital initiatives.
Digital proDUct management
Long-term ownership and strategic management of digital products over multiple releases, and responsibility for delivery and deployment of digital products via a cross-disciplinary, collaborative approach to product and project management.
usability testing
Authoring of test protocols and scripts to ensure key user insights, development of prototypes, in-lab and video-based proctoring of user sessions, compilation and interpretation of test findings.
interaction design
Nuanced interaction design across desktop and touch screen devices, integrated with core UX and Content Strategy considerations to provide a holistically integrated intuitive user experience.
content Strategy/info. Architecture
Systematic approach to presenting content within new and existing design systems, including: navigation & wayfinding, discovery, tagging, search, naming & labeling, pagination, filtering, and publishing & archiving strategy.
requirements definition
Identifying, documenting and prioritizing product goals to target an attainable MVP, while also considering features adding value, on a cost benefit basis. Development of PRDs and FRDs for ease of use and clarity of content for multiple audiences, teams and stakeholders.
Experience
candid wholesale April 2021 - Feb 2022
Director of User Experience
Product Design, Digital Strategy & Management. Design Pattern System Development, Usability
Led the creation, management of the Product Roadmap for Candid, to best prioritize features with business goals, CEO & COO input, and with maximum value for customers. Led weekly stakeholder input sessions to update product roadmap to map to to changing business priorities. Managed the agile development process to ensure maximum focus on shipping high value features.
Google Cloud Oct 2019 - April 2021
Senior User Experience Designer.
Developed UX for internal tools for Google Cloud ELS Group (Energy Land & Strategy). Worked with key Google stakeholders to execute their strategic vision for the platform. Maverick is used by Managers for long range planning and project management for worldwide Data Center expansion. Tools developed are used to make business decisions related to the expenditure of billions of dollars. Business work streams supported include land acquisition, capacity projection, government incentives, and physical infrastructure build out costs.
Clorox June 2018– Oct 2019
Digital Strategist & User Experience Designer
Brands: Clorox, FreshStep, Pine Sol.
Clorox:
UX and Content Strategy for Clorox.com
Clorox.com worldwide localization effort across 11 languages and 19 international markets
Developed strategy to leverage existing patterns and code into CMS components
Identified additional needs specific to localization effort and intn’l markets & developed UX
Analyzed markets by search patterns and on-site consumer behavior to develop strategy for prioritized content localization
Content Reorganization for thousands of pieces of article content
Responsive Landing Page designs for numerous campaigns and product rollouts
Full heuristic review & recommendations for improvements of Clorox.com
FreshStep: UX and Customer Experience Design
UX & Content strategy for publishing of SEO-driven article content on Freshstep.com
UX enhancements for PawPoints Rewards program (desktop, mobile iOS & Android apps)
A/B test design program development; focus on user retention via point earning and redemption actions
Architected Machine Learning driven program email campaign
Macys.com June 2017– June 2018
Sr. User Experience Architect
Interaction Design, Service Design, User Experience Design
Star Rewards Loyalty Program Overhaul
In Store Service Design
Loyalty Tier Messaging design
Responsive Program home page
Rewards redemption at Bag & Checkout
Modular item availability messaging system
Responsive digital wallet design
Wells Fargo July 2016 – May 2017
Senior Interaction Designer, Digital Experience Division (DXD)
Interaction Design, User Experience Design, Information Architecture, Content Strategy, Prototype Development
Key Projects:
• Spanish Language logged-in customer banking Experience Design and Prototype Development
• GRS Express Send Foreign Exchange estimator tool Redesign and Responsive Strategy
• Social Search: UX for Integration of UGC content from Wells Fargo Community into search results
• Personal & Small Business Customer Service page experience redesign
• Wells Fargo Digital Products Landing Pages experience redesign and Content Strategy
Leapfrog , Inc Apr 2012 – April 2016
Senior User Experience Architect & Ecosystem Producer
User Experience Design, Usability Testing, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Content Strategy, Prototyping, Digital Product Management,
Key Projects:
• Android Kid-safe Browser App: Designed UI for kid-safe browser and associated parent controls. UX for parent controls allowing flexible management of child-facing content and customized parent whitelisting of web content.
• Created Mobile Adaptive/Responsive CMS component library: Designed extensive set of components for the Adobe CQ CMS with adaptive and responsive behaviors to enable efficient publishing across desktop, tablet and mobile devices. Components include: column, carousel, banner, paragraph, accordion, video, docking navigation, popup, slideshow, etc.
• Developed UX for mobile-optimized leapfrog.com, including catalog, PDPs, checkout flow, navigation.
• LeapBand Fitness Monitor dashboard& connection software set up flow, introductory coachmark sequence, user registration, Activity Dashboardand device controls.
• Developed test protocols, scripts and prototypes specification for usability lab tests of catalog way finding and filter mechanisms, and catalog, PDP and Quickview interaction designs. Built clickable prototypes using Axure. Compiled and interpreted findings and developed recommendations.
• Mobile-optimized MyPals toy set up site: mobile site for personalization of electronic toy, utilizing delivery of data and MP3 audio files via analog output on mobile device headphone jack. Includes registration sequence, contextual help, management of device audio profiles.
• Android-based Tablet UI: Parent device controls.
• Developed UX and Content Strategy for improvements to leapfrog.com store: simplifying product-finding interfaces, optimizing and prioritizing user actions to improve conversions from PDPs, new site-wide megamenu-based navigation system, including context-sensitive secondary and tertiary navigation tiers
• Designed overhaul of Support Section, with improved task based navigation
• Conducted series of A/B tests of potential interface improvements across various leapfrog.com sections, generating metrics used to make quantitatively informed decisions
MRM San Francisco
User Experience and Content Strategist Jan – Apr 2012
Client: Intel
Intel in Education Content Platform Transition
Mapped the transition of hundreds of pages, PDFs and video assets of content regarding Intel’s role in Education, to Intel’s new Re-Imagine platform. Re-organized and optimized content to improve user experience, and content accessibility. Identified optimized collections of content to feature, and identified old content at EOL to be archived. Created User Experience Strategy documents, sitemaps and wireframes.
Contact
Jeremy Leeds
Mobile:
415-260-1294
Email:
jermleeds@gmail.com
Linked In:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-leeds