In July 2017, I led a high-impact redesign effort to re-position the logged-in user experience for over 600, 000 users. 

Early Results: 

All three KPIs went up over 30% over the first two weeks. Monthly Active Users reached 99% :)  

User Research Process:  

I did two rounds of User Tests (in-person and unmoderated) to gain insights on engaged couples’ expectations and their essential needs of the logged-in homepage.

Round I - Unmoderated user testing (usertesting.com) with 15 participants divided into 3 groups (5 users each).

Round II - 3 in-person moderated tests 

Both rounds of users were asked to describe their essential needs and then compare early dashboard concepts. Goal of the test is to understand

What’s Dashboard’s main job?

What info is necessary?

What’s the content hierarchy?  

Dashboard UT Round 1^A \ Round 1^B \ Round 1^C

Key Takeaways: 

They want to see "the big picture" - while our tools are detailed and helpful, users want to see a broader perspective of the entire wedding. Highlights such as what to-do next, how much budget is remaining, how many guests RSVPed are the most important facets of the big picture.  

They want to see "a big picture" - planning a wedding is often stressful, users want to be reminded why they are going through this journey. A wedding countdown plus a heart-warming couple photo meets the emotional job-to-be-done. 

Personas are a design tool to cultivate empathy within product groups. As my very first UX project working with the design team at XO group, I created four personas to help product designers and PMs to craft better experiences and share more personalized user stories. 

The challenge:

Narrow down the primary personas based on user profile data and qualitative user research. 

Make personas useful and relevant in product discovery so that the tool is being utilized by the product/design team.  

Key Takeaways: 

Model around the behavioral perspective instead of demographics + planning details. Differentiate the different behavior characteristics so those archetypes could have different jobs to be done (JTBD).  

No. 1: Create a vision and a set of shared values

Establish a clear vision, as most people want to work on something bigger than themselves. Once you build a network of teams to rally around the vision, individual teams can then have better decision making framework and produce more results. 

Developing this key characteristic takes much more work than just rubbing the proverbial genie’s bottle, closing your eyes and making a wish. It takes focused planning — and it won’t happen overnight. It will take the same kind of thoughtful planning an architect might employ in designing blueprints that instruct how to build an amazing custom home.

No. 2: Hire for complementary skills

Think of the design team as a Venn diagram with overlapping circles. Design is in the middle, but there’s magic in the periphery: illustration, photography, iconography, typography, user science and beyond. For you nerds out there: The design team’s capabilities are the union of the overlapping circles, not the intersection.

It's important to define and clearly communicate each member’s value. Create an environment where each member feels that they’re included and that their opinions matter to you. It will breed shared trust, passion
and loyalty.

No. 3: Open effective communication and collaboration

Did you know that more than 70% of all communication either isn’t even heard or, not surprisingly, is misinterpreted? Poor communication generally occurs when folks don’t have a clear understanding of their roles and key accountabilities. 

People tend to bend the rules to their liking. So instead of being prescriptive, be open to feedback and adjustment. Work to build in a few ways to keep the team communicating, while also keeping them focused and productive.

Louisa is an innovation project that was mean to experiment with AI and natural language process to help low-budget couples plan the wedding of their dreams. 

The team spent three weeks offsite and came up with dozens of new concepts to generate more user obsession. The team build the whole chatbot UI and backend before the end of the 3 weeks. We validated the concept with more than 12 real users and then move the feature into the Planner app experience. 

The Challenge:

In the past few months, many navigation changes have been led by senior leadership's "gut feeling" instead of actual data and user-insights. The team is asked to provide navigational pathways to additional new features in a cluttered app experience.

Too many silo-ed features are competing for users' attention without underlying connectedness. The application has a "more" menu that is becoming a junk drawer. 50% of the app users visit the "more" menu without tapping any of the items.  

Research Methodologies: 

Use Card Sorting exercises to unlock users' mental model

/Card Sorting

is a method used to help design or evaluate the information architecture of a product. In a card sorting session, participants organize topics into categories that make sense to them and they may also help you label these groups.