Building exciting teams that people want to work on is my primary task day to day. Creating experiences for team members that enable creativity, exploration and fun every single day.

Understanding the requirements placed on your design team, from the type of work expected to the volume of work that will be assigned, requires full engagement in executive planning. 

Developers and Directors alike know the names of the designers and researchers assigned to their products. The goal is to be inclusive. Everyone participates in designs with the UX team as a leader. Deep integration allows for responsive and fast design while enabling full transparency with engineers.

Planning and Staffing

In the beginning of 2014 when the DPX team was created, it was necessary to examine the product portfolio and, in partnership with directors, attempt to identify shortfalls in staffing. The exercise was quite effective and visual presentation worked to communicate the need.

Role: Original concept, art direction and information architecture
Designer: Rick Hudson

 

Though much of the chart above is proprietary (the project names have been replaced).  

I only hire the most exceptional design and research talent. People that will fit the team culture and create more excitement for design. Apply to my teams here. 

In 2014 I presented "Managing Creatives" in a local flash technology series. Great designers are not disposable gears in an unforgiving machine, they are irreplaceable and I build teams to find and retain them.

Identity

Identity allows a team to form with common purpose. The creation of logos is always collaborative as we build the idea of design and research.

The Data Platform Experience team has many challenges. The logo reflects the humanity and style we were bringing to the developer software for the division.

Role: Director, Art Direction, Team Name, Creation of this version
Human Concept Design by Josh Keckley

The CRM team had different challenges. The software segment was in a state of rapid consumerization. Our product, however, was lagging. We needed to express the artistic nature of the design team and provide a futuristic style representing the Microsoft Modern Design Language (Metro).

Role: Director, Art Direction
Final logo by Ted Cyrek

 

The Dynamics CRM Research team wanted to express the commitment of creating a bridge between product engineering and our customers.

Role: Director, Art Direction
Final Logo by Wayne Higgins

User Experience Principles

Experience principles are the foundation of good design. In 2013, the CRM team released our product version code named "Orion".

As part of the release, we openly discussed design principles with our customers. Originally developed through research and interviews,  this was the first time we discussed our principles openly without NDA.


Role: UX Director, creator, collaboration with Program Management and Engineering.
PM Acknowledgement to Derik Stenerson

Creating Fun

The DPX team participated in creating our new work spaces.  As part of the project we looked at upcoming plans and created several proposals for customizing these collaborative work environments to make them fun and exciting for all of our team members. 

We proposed a system of customization for these work spaces that created an opportunity for personalization through design, integrating Facilities, Flair and Fun. Below represents a small sampling of this work.

Role: Director, Art Direction, Original "Boards" Concept, "Facility, Flair and Fun" Concept
Illustrations by Rick Hudson
Designers: Carl Thoma, Josh Keckley, Miguel Solorio, Rick Hudson

boards.jpg



Creating a Design Culture

A real, measurable connection to our customers is the beginning of the process. Starting with generative research and culminating with acceptance testing. Understanding what our customers truly need and want, rather than taking anecdotes from a few select and well connected customers, is vital to creating emotionally amazing experiences.

Generative Studies

In CRM, large quantitative studies, paired with deep ethnographic research techniques, led to opportunities to tell the stories about our customers that moved our products in unexpected and profitable directions. Leapfrogging the competition rather than following along.

Role: Director, poster concept and layout, research studies, interviews and structured questionnaires
Illustrations and finals: Ted Cyrek, Naveen Sethia, Monil Dalal
Researchers: James Johnston, PhD, Mary LaLomia, PhD

Establishing Design Thinking

In order to impact the larger division with a smaller team, it's necessary to adopt a customer focused approach. In 2011, we began the process of Scenario Focused Engineering, a narrative design approach within the CRM enterprise group. With UX acting as the advocate and focal point, the CRM team fully adopted the storytelling approach and the design team continues to focus on the stories of our customers today.

User Acceptance Testing

Once designs are underway, it's necessary to validate the experiences with real customers. Nothing can take the place of experiencing the product through the eyes of your customers.

The results speak for themselves. Though the product names have been obscured, there are four products being compared and measured against our baseline in 2012. Changes to the customer experience were determined to have significant impact. Acceptance testing executed before shipping uncovered several high value low cost deliverables that were fixed and then retested (in yellow).  

The product measured in 2012, and then again in June 2013 was the same product and showed a usability increase of over 25% in success and satisfaction, the highest of all products tested.

Product names have been redacted.

Role: UX Director, Designer, Research, Study Creation, Concept Creation
Designers: Vineet Gupta, Monil Dalal, Naveen Sethia, Ted Cyrek
Researchers: James Johnston, PhD, Mary LaLomia, PhD

Experimentation

The final piece of the design puzzle is experimentation, the freedom to try things and invent. When developing the our CRM mobile app, code name "MoCA", we tried many different possibilities before we settled on the final design you can see here.

 

Role: Director, Art Direction, Functional Design, Technical Design, Strategy, Designer
Designers: Vineet Gupta, Ted Cyrek, Anna Paushkina

The point is moot if we don't find a way to communicate with engineering and get our designs to our customers. To make that happen, design becomes an indispensable part of engineering.

Processes for Transparency

When are the designs done? How do we know we got it right? It's all about the communication. From the red-lines and the tools we use to get the word out, building the right tool set is a critical part of building a UX team.

DPX is a small team and influencing the larger engineering organization required some process. Getting the tools in place so that developers know what it takes to get the job done was critical for our final efforts.

Role: Director, Functional Design, Information Architecture, Management Design, Designer
Designers: Carl Thomas, Josh Keckley, Miguel Solorio & Kaivalya Hanswadkar 

Processes for Excellence