Category Archives: Experience-Design

Projects where my role was experience design

Content Strategy, Creative Direction, Experience-Design, Video, Writing

Adding Revenue With Google AdWords

Challenge:

Google, a leader in Internet and ad tech products and services, needed to grow engagement and online advertising spend among millions of small businesses–starting with the 2.8M small business owners who had created an AdWords account.

Given that small businesses spend less than 3% of their marketing budgets on online advertising, and AdWords is a complex product that businesses large and small struggle to master, increasing spend among  the nearly 3M small business AdWords account holders was be no small feat.

Strategy:

Make it simple and accessible. We developed a series of videos and worksheets to complement an email campaign and small business events that Google hosted in select cities.

The videos provided answers to the most frequently asked questions (based on interviews with Google’s customer care teams). We selected video as the medium because our research indicated that the medium made learning seem complex things “seem” simpler to our target audiences–since they were already searching or working online and because they often had their hands full in their businesses (literally and figuratively).

The style and tone of the videos–from the script to the voice over and the images–projected simplicity and approachability. We used straight-forward, descriptive titles, familiar metaphors and analogies (…”using this feature is like…”), and graphics and images that mirrored the Google brand’s bright, no-fuss, elegance.

To account for a variation in learning styles and to provide an opportunity to practice, we paired the videos with downloadable worksheets. The worksheets featured space for note-taking and provided supplemental information that small business owners could take with them.

Finally, we designed a website to serve as an “online classroom” and toolkit for small business owners. The site featured all of the videos and worksheets and provided a framework to help users navigate the content in a way that helped them solve specific challenges and achieve desired goals.

google_awoc_video_guide_what is Adwords_storyboard1_v0-0-1

 

Links to Learn With Google/AdWords Online Classrooms Around the World:

Americas:
EMEA:
JAPAC:

My Role In The Solution:

I led a team of talented UX and visual designers, developers, program and project managers. To this team and project I contributed…

  • Developed the creative strategy and provided creative direction for all of the content
  • Developed the content strategy for the video, worksheets, and website
  • Partnered with the client teams to conduct customer/user research
  • Analyzed data to identify actionable insights
  • Partnered with UX and visual designers and back and fronted developers to deliver the website
  • Wrote all scripts and worksheet and website copy
  • Directed videos
  • Named the hub Learn With Google
  • Partnered with vendor and client to modify and adapt scripts for use in 15 videos for use in 19 countries and 12 languages

Results:

The website launched as part of a larger promotion. The video content was leveraged as part of email and web campaigns, used on Google’s YouTube and other owned channels, and were used a reference materials to which customer service teams referred customers/users seeking help.

Content Strategy, Experience-Design

Taking Charge of AMEX Corporate Card Programs

 

BSF
Early design comp of solution finder
Corporate Payment Services Solutions Finder

Challenge:

American Express(R) is known for its iconic charge cards but few knew that the world’s largest card issuer provided more than cards. The Corporate Card division of American Express introduced several new and complex products  and services as a way of growing its relationships with enterprise and mid-sized clients.

American Express Corporate Cards needed a way to explain and grow adoption of its Supplier Payments Solutions.

Strategy:

American Express cards are recognized by all and their value proposition is fairly simple–we’re not the cheapest or the easiest to get but rich rewards (e.g. travel points, priority access to event tickets, and status) accrue to our card members.

Our Approach: Leverage the recognizability and reputation of the cards to introduce and grow adoption of new products and services and make the rewards of adding these new products and services as simple to understand as American Express’ other rewards.

My Role in The Solution:

I developed a “Business Solution Finder”, a simple interactive tool that focused on WHY customers might need one or more of AMEX’s Supplier Payment Solutions not describing WHAT the solutions were. The tool is part of the business.americanexpress.com website.

I developed the questions and workflow and then designed the experience: The customer identifies their business need and answers a few questions about their business to reveal the solutions that can meet their needs.

I also developed the interaction flows, initial prototype (see below), wrote all copy, and provided creative direction to the visual designers who designed final images, icons, and other assets.

 

Workflow
Select Business Needs
Revenue Question
Dining & Entertainment Question
Travel Question
Recommendations
Contact Form

Results:

AMEX significantly grew adoption of its Supplier Payment Solutions.

Experience-Design, Product-Service Design

A Walk On The Wellness Side With Kaiser Permanente

KPWalk! App How It Works screens
KPWalk! App Connect Fitbit
KPWalk! App Promo poster
KPWalk! App brochure
KPWalk! App brochure

Challenge: 

Kaiser Permanente is committed to preventive care for better health–for its members, customers, community, and employees. The health care provider and payer holds an annual fitness challenge for employees. This year, Kaiser Permanente wanted to grow participation and use the challenge to test new products/services.

I prototyped a mobile iOS app that allowed the health care organization’s employees to link their wearable fitness devices and share their activity data.

Strategy: 

Over 40,000 employees participated in past fitness challenges but participation was waning. To attract new participants and motivate repeat participation, we needed to add something new and valuable.

At the same time, Kaiser Permanente, like most health care companies, was testing and developing mobile and digital health and wellness products.

The annual challenge, the CIO’s passion for wearable fitness devices, and an unfinished fitness app sparked an idea…

  • Leverage the popularity of mobile health and wellness apps and fitness devices to allow fitness device users to participate without giving up their beloved fitbits(R) and Jawbones; and
  • Use the annual challenge to pilot new APIs and gain insights from user activity data.
  • Retain a familiar experience for re-upping users

Solution:

Ultimately, we modified and completed an iOS mobile app, integrating APIs for fitbit and Jawbone devices and KP’s own APIs for sharing activity data. We brought fitbit and Jawbone activity data into the KPWalk! app so users wouldn’t need to leave to get their data fix and could “donate” their steps and miles to their teams’ efforts to amass points and win the challenge.

For users without fitbits or Jawbones, we retained the manual logging capability and allowed users to use the app’s stopwatch feature to track activity minutes, convert minutes to steps, miles, and calories, and automatically transmit data to a website where they could view individual and team stats.

My Role In The Solution: 

I was part of a great team of talented designers, developers, program and project managers. To this team and project I contributed…

  • Prototyping the mobile app flows, functions, and design
  • Providing experience design and creative direction for the app
  • Writing copy for instructions, alerts, tutorials, and collateral
  • Developing and executing a communications plan, including marketing collateral

 

KPWalks How It Works Fat Frames
KPWalks Logging Activity Fat Frames
KPWalks Fat Frame Active/Inactive States

KPWalk! app mockups

Results: 

Thousands shared their activity data via the app and hundreds linked their fitness device accounts to the app to share their data. The best of what we created in KP Walks! was integrated into KP’s Every Body Walk! app, a publicly available version of the app for which we also created an Apple watch app.

Content Strategy, Experience-Design, Product-Service Design

Coaching Users to Better Health With WebMD

WebMD Health Assistant dashboard personalized
Health content included in health assistant
WebMD Health Assistant dashboard
WebMD Health Assistant dashboard
WebMD Health Assistants choose their activities
WebMD Health Assistant exercise
WebMD Health Assistant
WebMD Digital Health Assistant pop-up alert
WebMD health assistant triggers
WebMD Health Assistant Meal Selection
WebMD offers My Health Assistant as part of Health Services

Challenge: 

WebMD is a leader in health media and provider of health services to insurers and large employers. WebMD wanted to build upon the success of its Health Coach product, which provides health and wellness advice to users via telephone, and to grow its ROI on owned and licensed content.

Strategy:

The strategy was simple: Leverage underutilized content, smart but light technology, and insights from the most effective practices of telephone coaches to create a lower cost digital health coach that could be extended to thousands of additional customers.

Solution:

We evaluated the telephone coaching offering, interviewing coaches, customers, content managers, and other stakeholders to meet the most effective coaches; understand what customers found valuable about the service; learn what types of advice, communications, and coaching led to behavior changes; and identify the most often requested information.

We inventoried, evaluated, catalogued, and organized thousands of pieces of owned and licensed content.

Based on our findings, we designed an extension of the Health Coach product and WebMD’s health media offering. We organized the content such that it created “an interactive relationship between WebMD and users, one that approximates that of WebMD Health Coaches and their clients.”

We brought the thousands of pieces of content to life as a digital health assistant. We connected written, video, and graphical content and interactive tools via an intricate taxonomy and ontology, and activated it via an elegant series of triggers that created the impression that the digital health assistant was responding to users action and inaction, communications, successes, requests, and preferences.

My Role In The Solution: 

I was part of a great team of talented designers, developers, program and project managers. To this team and project I contributed…

  • Conducting the stakeholder research and identifying actionable insights
  • Assessing and cataloguing and all content and identifying gaps
  • Prototyping the digital health assistant
  • Developing a taxonomy, ontology, and tagging for all content
  • Developing the content strategy for the digital health assistant
  • Defining triggers to create interactions between the digital health assistant and users
  • Writing copy for alerts, emails, instructions, pop-ups, and managing copywriters, designers, and HTML developers who produced content for the assistant

Results:

WebMD launched the digital health assistant as “The Digital Health Assistant” and are currently selling it via insurers and large employers seeking to lower health care costs associated with smoking and conditions such as diabetes and obesity. The product has evolved a bit but it’s largely unchanged–and it’s having significant positive impact on users’ health and wellness.

WebMD My Health Assistant prototype
WebMD My Health Assistant prototype
WebMD My Health Assistant tutorial prototype
Preferences Flow
Alerts flow

Digital Health Assistant Prototype and Flows

Experience-Design

Experience Design

Experience design. User Experience Design (UX). Interaction Design (IxD). User Interface (UI). Human-Centered Design. Human Factors Engineering…By any name the practice is both table stakes and transformative.

Every project, product, and interaction between a brand and its consumers and customers can benefit from an investment in the practice of experience design.

So here’s what I mean when I talk about experience design.

Ex-per-i-ence De-sign

The practice of designing products, services, processes, events, and environments with a focus placed on the quality of the user experience and the relevance of solutions.

The Role of Experience Designer

  • Create and direct user research to define users and UX success criteria and ensure all projects are driven by user needs and business outcomes
  • Partner with visual and product designers, product managers, content strategists, engineers, and QA to ensure that teams produce highly usable/valuable/feasible products aligned with user needs and perceptions
  • Passionately advocate for the end user
  • Generate deliverables including research reports, personas, scenarios, conceptual models, site maps, functional flows, and annotated wireframes

The Work

Building a Business by Deepening Developer Relations

Want to exponentially grow the usage and reach of your product? You could go it alone and build one app, one bot, one solution at a time—or you could enlist the capable minds and hands of a motivated community of developers whose interests align with yours. That’s exactly what my client, the head of IT for a large health IT organization, decided to do when he found that his software and the services that he and his team designed for his healthcare and IT clients were not meeting adoption and usage targets and were being outpaced by lesser solutions with better marketing. I designed the interface and experience for a developers’ portal where app developers can research, test, download, and buy APIs and SaaS products—and share and collaborate with other developers. The portal and the accompanying developer relations campaign that my team and I developed grew adoption and usage by allowing developers to self-serve, test, ask questions, and use the portal’s analytics dashboard to track the health of their apps powered by our APIs.

Framing Up A New Experience for American Express Corporate Cards

I don’t always use “the right tools” for designing an experience–but it doesn’t matter as long as I can convey the idea, how it meets user and business needs, and how it works!

Over the years, I’ve honed my own methods like creating “fat frames”–wireframes with just a bit more meat on the bone to provide clients a higher fidelity prototype of their sites, apps, and other experiences. Here are the “fat frames” I used to help American Express redesign the online experience for their corporate business prospects.

Homepage with fewer cards cross-promo payment solutions
Homepage with all cards and related content
Corp Cards Category page with carousel
Corp Cards Category page with grouped cards
Corp Card Detail page with filters and tools
Corp Card Detail page with nested content

See how my “fat frames” contributed to the redesigned American Express Corporate Cards experience.

 

Coaching WebMD Customers to Better Health

Again, I employed tools that were familiar and accessible to the client. I mean, everyone can work in PowerPoint!

This time I wasn’t designing a website; I was designing a digital health assistant that would help users stop smoking, lose weight or manage a chronic condition.

WebMD My Health Assistant prototype
WebMD My Health Assistant prototype
WebMD My Health Assistant tutorial prototype
Preferences Flow
Alerts flow

See how we used a bit of “magic” to bring a bunch of articles, calculators, tags, and alerts to life!

 

Kendall Jackson’s Perfect Pairing: Content Strategy & CMS

With Kendall Jackson, we developed content and functionality matrices to design online experiences for the wine distributors portfolio of more than 30 wines. See the results of our work with Kendall Jackson parent, Jackson Family Enterprises (JFE).

JFE Content Matrix
JFE Content Matrix

 

A Walk On The Wellness Side With Kaiser Permanente

Kaiser Permanente is committed to preventive care for better health. I prototyped a mobile iOS app that allowed the health care organization’s employees to link their wearable fitness devices and share their activity data.

KPWalks How It Works Fat Frames
KPWalks Logging Activity Fat Frames
KPWalks Fat Frame Active/Inactive States

See how Kaiser Permanente employees fared with their new fitness app.

 

Imagining Care Anywhere With Kaiser Permanente

Kaiser Permanente wanted to share its vision of the future of health care with clinicians, health IT professionals, and others in the health care and consumer health industries–and get these insiders’ input and partnership on brining that vision to fruition.  I designed a solution that was mini but mighty. Check it out!

Storyboard for Imagining Care microsite
Homepage of Imagining Care microsite
Entry to virtual tour of Imagining Care microsite
Content Strategy, Creative Direction, Experience-Design

Putting the X-Factor In XMatters

XMatters homepage
Why XMatters page
IT Communications page
Proactive Communications Solutions page
XMatters Community homepage

Challenge: 

XMatters creates “Relevance Engines” that deliver relevant information about business interruptions, disasters, ad community alerts to individuals and group audiences based on their geographic location, job group, availability, channel preferences, and other key factors.

Their Relevance Engines have myriad uses for organizations across industries. However, XMatters needed to clarify their offering in order to grow their customer base and increase value to existing customers.

Strategy: 

There are few industries and few professions that couldn’t put XMatters to use but we needed to start with their Super Fans and Early Adopters–groups for whom the use cases were apparent and the success metrics and stories were easy to share.

We also needed a simple way to share the learnings of XMatters’ existing customers, Super Fans, and Early Adopters–and to leverage this to grow value with new and existing customers.

This was the basis of our content strategy for the XMatters website and the online community.

We ultimately delivered…

  • A redesigned website with completely new messaging and content that was targeted to Super Fan/Early Adopters and easy for like audiences to understand;
  • An elegant UI, taxonomy, and ontology that made the information easy to discover–and “breadcrumbed” site visitors to contact XMatters; and
  • An integrated community that allowed current and prospective customers to share their XMatters knowledge and experience.

My Role In The Solution:

I was part of a great team of talented designers, developers, program and project managers. To this team and project I contributed…

  • Developing the initial design concepts (sketches) for the new visual design
  • Leading visual and UX designers to design a new visual design, information architecture and interface.
  • Developing the content strategy for the redesigned website and community
  • Writing copy and managing copywriters, designers, and HTML developers who produced content for the site
  • Providing creative direction for the website and community
  • Developing IA and UX for the website and community

Results: 

Increase in the percentage of website visitors who engage with video and other interactive content and who complete a lead form (demo, contact sales, request info). Growth in number and percentage of website visitors who join the XMatters community. Lower percentage of level one questions being escalated to higher level support.

Content Strategy, Experience-Design

A Portfolio Approach To Contented Customers With Kendall Jackson

 

JFE Brands Marketing Mix
JFE Content Matrix
JFE Content Matrix 2
JFE Content Matrix 3
JFE Functional Matrix
Murphy Goode Content Strategy
Murphy Goode Audiences
Murphy Goode Audience Attributes
Murphy Goode Primary Audience Profile
Murphy Goode Audience Behnaviors
Murphy Goode Audience Wine Consumption
Murphy Goode Content Strategy
Murphy Goode Content Recos By Page
Murphy Goode Content Recos By Page
Murphy Goode Content Recos By Page

Challenge:

Kendall Jackson, or Jackson Family Enterprises (JFE), owns and distributes award-winning wines from vineyards large and small. JFE takes a portfolio approach to managing their many wines, allowing each brand to stand alone and to establish its own customer base and reputation while leveraging their distribution network.

Operating as separate businesses and brands works well in terms of selling in the aisles of grocery stores, and at restaurants, bars, and wine stores. But, noting their success at leveraging shared customer relationships and distribution, JFE sought a similar solution for managing their owned and licensed content across all of the web properties for all of the wines in their portfolio.

Strategy:

JFE owned many valuable content assets and had invested in developing online properties, features, and functionality for some of the web properties they owned but had not leveraged those investments across all properties.

Our approach: Inventory and evaluate all content assets; assess their relevance/appropriateness for all wine brands, their audiences, and all JFE web properties; and identify and configure a CMS to make sharing assets across properties possible.

The content strategy was built upon two guiding principles:

  1. Each JFE brand must retain its own unique branding and continue to appeal to its core audience
  2. We can leverage owned and licensed assets, content, features, and functionality across all web properties

We ultimately created a map of all assets, content, features and functionality and used it to develop content strategies for each of JFE’s websites, starting with one of the company’s most accessible wines–millennial-targeted Murphy Goode.

 

Murphy Goode homepage
Murphy Goode Lifestyle content
Murphy Goode Eats
Murphy Goode Wines

My Role In The Solution:

I was part of a great team of talented designers, developers, program and project managers. To this team and project I contributed…

  • Developing the content strategy
  • Writing copy and managing copywriters, designers, and HTML developers who produced content for the sites
  • Developing a taxonomy and ontology for the content
  • Conducting audience and market research
  • Developing customer personae
  • Devising a tagging strategy for the Sitecore CMS

Results:

Improved efficiency and increased ROI on assets and systems.

Content Strategy, Experience-Design

Growing Customers And Value For American Express

American Express Corporate Cards homepage
“Fat Frame” AMEX Corporate Card homepage
AMEX Card Detail Page
“Fat Frame” for Card Detail page
American Express Solutions Finder

Challenge: 

American Express, a global financial services corporation and the world’s largest card issuer, needed to grow the number of qualified leads they acquired via their website corporate cards and services websites–and to grow the lifetime value of their existing customers.

“Selling” corporate credit and charge cards and commercial payment tools is a complicated business with a relatively long purchase path that requires multiple stakeholders and approvals and a complex account setup process–none of which can be completed online.

Strategy: 

Given that we were asked to sell a product online that can’t be sold online, we focused on what we could absolutely deliver–more traffic, more engagement, and more lead forms completed.

Our approach was simple: Target, measure, and optimize.

We identified the primary, secondary, and tertiary audiences for the sites, analyzed the data to understand how those audiences responded to existing website content, online ads, and micro sites driving to the website.

We discovered four insights about our audiences:

  • Virtually all had completed at least some, if not a significant amount of, research prior to visiting the AMEX website
  • The primary audiences visited the site to validate that AMEX products/services had features superior to their existing payment solution
  • While executives would make the final purchase decision, program administrators and managers reporting to those executives gathered the lion’s share of the information on the executives’ behalf
  • Executives were less likely to visit the website for general content but were more likely to read/watch/download more technical or expert content

My Role In The Solution: 

I was part of a great team of talented designers, developers, program and project managers that ultimately developed a new visual design for the website, revised the messaging, copy, and CTAs; identified and included relevant written and video content AMEX already owned; designed landing pages and lead forms; and defined and tagged paths within the website to understand traffic patterns and paths to conversion.

To this team and project I contributed…

  • Leading the creative strategy
  • Developing the content strategy for the redesigned website
  • Writing copy and managing copywriters, designers, and HTML developers who produced content for the site
  • Developing an interactive recommendation tool to help site visitors identify the right product/service
  • Devising a tagging strategy for Sitecore CMS

Results: 

Marked increase in qualified leads generated via sites’ landing pages. AMEX grew their business with us.