Category: Digital

A fintech startup was initiating its offerings with employee family leave management, helping U.S. companies navigate complex legal and financial details that shift over time and vary from state to state. I led design for the self-help leave planner that employees could use to privately explore and determine leave options, and then submit them to HR when ready.

The challenge

What did employees need to know?

What might they want to know?

How would we remove the burdens of navigating a maze of leave options offered by employers, insurance companies and government and at the same time respect the intelligence of inquisitive and capable working people. Too little info could feel patronizing. Too much info could be overwhelming to expectant parents.

The work

I began with an introductory meeting with the founders and engineering team. It was important to understand their unique workflow and handoff expectations. Next came an audit of the existing wireframes and prototype, and immersing myself in founders’ user research.

As the project progressed, I initiated additional UX interviews to iteratively test and advance ideas and solutions. Wireframing was only needed in places where I made major changes to existing interactions. Because I was also establishing overall look and feel, the prototype was completely restyled and interactions updated while I simultaneously began scaffolding a design system.

In writing copy for the leave planner experience, we needed to strike a similar balance, somewhere between calming and authoritative. To that end, I led an accelerated voice and tone workshop with the founders to lay the foundation. I then documented our insights and applied them to the in-app copy.

Untangling complexity

The most interesting piece of this product design puzzle was the core planner tool. Expectant parents face very different leave options for pre-birth, post-birth (the time immediately following a child’s arrival), and bonding leave. This is where companies and states can vary the most widely, and where families need the most support (and privacy) to fine tune their plans.

We provided three widgets for each leave phase, each dedicated to its unique leave options. Choices users made were reflected in real time in a timeline window just below the widgets. They could review the timeline, and then go back and make adjustments as often as they wished, all privately, until they were ready to submit their plan to their employer.

Wrap-up

With base structure for the design system and a working prototype, the deliverables also included assets, interaction patterns, and other documentation for engineering, as well as clear direction for a junior designer.

Because the prototype was also being used as a sales demo tool, I centralized all copy that would mention the prospective company name as Figma components on a separate page. This saved hours of picking through the prototype copy to customize the demo ahead of a presentation.

Above: the launched Global Security Operations Center (GSOC) app.

Cobalt Robotics is a security service powered by robots and human Robot Specialists working together. It’s a new way of using robots and a dramatically new way of doing security.

How Cobalt’s security service works

The ask

When the robot begins a patrol (step 1), Cobalt’s team of remote Specialists monitors it via a video feed and control panel.

Customers quickly let us know they needed something similar.

The work

Based on research the Head of Product and I conducted—sometimes together and sometimes individually—I designed the app for four key priorities: 1. urgent situations, 2. fast decision-making, 3. easy spacial orientation (i.e. where am I and what am I looking at?), and 4. function first (while maintaining our clean aesthetic).

In addition to interviews with security managers on-site and at our offices, I also dove deeply into industry norms by undergoing security guard certification and visiting working security operations centers.

Personas: C-suite Executive, SOC Manager, Security Guard/SOC operator

We learned about the kinds of information they were used to seeing, management’s backgrounds (often in military and law enforcement), and what features we could offer users highly trained in security, but not in robotics.

Wireframes were begun on paper. Shown here are some next-stage (but still early) concepts.

Beyond the essential functions, we also began to get a sense of the aesthetics that would reflect Cobalt’s white glove service, communicate credibility, and earn the trust of an industry that has no patience for flashy startups.

The results are an intuitive tool that delivers increasingly meaningful features as our customer base expands.

Customers can now remotely monitor incidents as they are happening at any time during the robot’s patrol hours. If an unusual or critical incident requires immediate action, customers can view video surveillance in real time to make better high-impact decisions.

Also, providing the ability to remotely experience Cobalt’s patrols is a powerful way to demonstrate the value of the service.

My role

• Research into workflow, backgrounds, worries and aspirations of the GSOC’s intended users.
• Design of wireframes, and proposed app layouts, features and user flows.
• Worked with engineering to clarify and determine technical requirements and security restrictions.
• Created prototypes to review, finalize and test for usability and flow.
• Designed and delivered final app layouts and visual assets.
• Created illustrations of the robot, as well as nonstandard icons.
• Documented any elements that furthered the evolution of Cobalt’s brand.

I underwent basic guard card certification at a training facility as part of my research. Scored top marks!

TOK Media produces live discussion, networked polls, and content platforms that publishers can embed into their existing websites. The concept was well developed, but needed the UI to accommodate its next round of feature updates. Also, to give it the credibility that would help sell it to publishers, it needed a more polished look and feel.

As project lead, I worked with the founder and lead developer. In addition to their detailed notes and numerous meetings, I researched existing paid content models and participated in the TOK platform to understand the product and user behavior.

I wireframed interactions for the multi-platform experience, produced many, many interactive prototypes, and then nailed down visual details with Photoshop.

One of the more interesting challenges was finding a way for poll users to scale the number of voters they could view. The example below shows the two most extreme views—as few as a dozen voters and as many as 1,216 voters (color-grouped by their vote).