Crafting Seamless Experiences

That Stand Out Above the Rest

Hi, I’m Joey

10 years’ experience leading design & research teams of enterprise level B2B & B2C UX deliverables and scalable patterns. Focused on outcome oriented, measurable user experiences.  Developed research & strategy plans through the entire lifecycle of products including roadmaps for product & experience teams. History of pleasant & effective team leadership, managing large teams of design managers, project managers, visual designers, researchers, developers, content strategists and information architects in both Agile and Waterfall. Provided consistent communication and feedback working with executives, C-Suite and stakeholders. Working familiarity with coding standards & development processes, which expedites dialogues around planning, development requirements and business scope. Efficient but flexible research-based user centered designer.

Welcome to my portfolio,

How did you get into this field?

I found user experience during my thesis work at UT Southwestern creating e-learning modules for medical students, who were forced to learn thousands of pages of books in a series of back to back classes aptly deemed “Blocktober“.  Students were unable to digest such large amounts of information, and it resulted in cognitive and social issues.  I worked with the neuroscience department to minimize the content of one such class, using consistent imagery and creating a simple interface to help decrease cognitive load.  The research results were amazing! Students loved it, the professors loved it, and  I’ve had the passion to provide more of those experiences ever since.

Building UX in a newly Agile company

6 Month Conversion of Company from Microsoft Dynamics to Salesforce

Year
2023

Client
NDA

Project Overview:

The client is a leading financial advisory firm specifically targeted at helping military families gain necessary financial knowledge and empowerment to relocate effortlessly during their enlistment, live securely in retirement and compassionately pass on their legacy to family in the future. 

Objective : Build out the experience practice and supplement the current UX team of 4 in rolling out this new service.

Project Background:

On project outset, the company was in the midst of agile transformation only having one complete PI of agile under their belt. My team was tasked with helping the executive transformation team, stakeholders and RTEs from vendor selection of a new sales enablement software through product release. We were tasked with providing success and sentiment metrics for KPIs, designing custom flows for niche client needs and developing research around each of the foundational business goals of the initial product release.

Previous software developed in Microsoft Dynamics had been outgrown as it was customized too much for easy software upgrades. During initial assessments the team learned “lift and shift” was no longer a viable option to upgrades and a complete vendor analysis of the market to find the best software and to provide skilled assessments of its risks was needed. After a complete assessment the company decided to make the move to Salesforce and sought for the UX teams to help deliver a successful MVP of core user functionality. 

Team Leadership:

Given the scope included multiple different business groups, the teams were organized based on persona types for each of the 5 services within the product, which included office staff, advisors, management, background systems functions, and client.

Each team consisted of 1-3 user experience researchers, including a senior and  a junior, and a designer. Team leads were assigned for each organizational branch (i.e., Product Service Train) and delivered overall results to the product managers and the Director of UX. The results were then organized and presented back to both the stakeholders and the C-Suite. 

 

User Research:   

There were three research phases after vendor selection to the offering which completed the product life cycle:

  1. Discovery - Early exploratory research & workshops

  2. Development & Refinement and prototyping

  3. Validation & Rollout - Evaluative testing before & after release

Process Breakdown:

  1. During Discovery, primary exploratory research was conducted to understand the business groups needs, user requirements, and help organize and prioritize the backlog. 40 interviews were run over the course of a month to include all related business groups of the company, as well as 10 end users. The backlog of project requirements was compiled and organized by the 5 persona based services. Teams were then integrated into each of these services to help conduct further testing on specific system functions and user needs.

  2. During Iteration and Development, each UX team conducted interviews, usability tests & RITE tests around prototypes that were built within 2 week design sprints. Over 150 interviews were conducted to validate various digital experiences within Salesforce CRM prior to deployment. In addition to the interviews, surveys were conducted to understand the user sentiment around the previous CRM (i.e, Microsoft Dynamics), pre-release and post-release Salesforce CRM. These surveys were conducted to evaluate adoption and sentiment post-Salesforce CRM release on a quarterly basis. 

  3. During Validation and Product Delivery (i.e, the Salesforce CRM rollout), product change champion groups were identified which would help to test and refine the product. The experience teams for each service were tasked with refining the highest value identified items.  Overall, the sentiment of new software by beta release was 4.2/5 and was fully released at the end of the PI.


Design Process

Customer insights and opportunities for improvement were compiled in UX design and research artifacts (i.e, journey maps). The UX artifacts were used to clarify the role of specific mental models within a persona type and uncover secondary confusions of the users.

Design delivery was broken into two categories:

  1. Business Critical Functions (constituting the Minimum Viable Product or “MVP”)

  2. Future Product Enhancements 

Both Business Critical Functions and Future Enhancements were defined with the support of UX artifacts during kickoff design workshops. These workshops, which included non-UX business stakeholders like the C-suite, ensured the alignment of vision in a timely and efficient manner. Many of the workshops resulted in preliminary prototypes which were tested through RITE studies for expedient design iteration. The iterated prototypes were handed off to development teams by the end of each PI. Potential future product enhancements were evaluated and executed in order of business value.

Results:

4 major successes were uncovered during the process: (1) UX value to Agile, (2) Increased User Satisfaction, (3) Decreased Support Requests, and (4) Team Velocity. 

  1. As the company was just beginning to implement Agile methodology, establishing a culture of customer centricity was a critical component of the overall process. By release of the product in year 1, UX was able to become embedded at all stages of the business portfolio. Enterprise UX transitioned from decentralized UX into matrix UX teams based, not only on the persona-based services, but also on the maturing knowledge level of the fully developed UX team structure. 

  2. When transitioning from Dynamics to Salesforce CRM, users' sentiments were gathered to determine a baseline for future scoring. At the launch of Salesforce CRM, user satisfaction for the product took an expected initial hit due to haphazard training, functional defects, and insufficient technical/business support hampering user adoption at rollout. As these challenges were addressed over the next 6 months, confidence in the Salesforce CRM product grew rapidly to help bring the users satisfaction to around 85%. Enterprise Net Promoter Scores (NPS) also grew by nearly 15% in that time period.

  3. Similar to user satisfaction, there was an initial increase in customer support cases around the product directly after rollout. Within 6 months, CS cases tied to Salesforce CRM decreased by 43% as broken workflows were fixed and/or replaced.

  4. As the organization learned to build more agile products, foundational UX research became a standard element in the project delivery life cycle. UX research began only one sprint ahead of development at the start of the Salesforce CRM implementation effort, but was able to consistently deliver value one PI ahead just 6 months later (i.e, 2-3 PIs later)


Limitations:

The team faced four major challenges from the outset of the project: (1) Low UX maturity within the organization, (2) very slow initial adoption of agile to the company, (3) the company's lack of product knowledge, and (4) poor alignment with implementation vendors

  1. Low UX maturity is a frequent and anticipated issue in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. From the outset, we were tasked with helping mature the internal practices of the company, advocate for customer needs, and nurture internal staff. By the end of the project, the team was successfully empowered internally to take over post-production and has become a trusted and self-sufficient group of user advocates.

  2. Agile is also still very new within many business sectors of the metroplex. We helped to not only deliver successful UX work products, but also inform the key role of UX/CX within effective enterprise strategy and Agile product delivery

  3. There was very little internal knowledge of the Salesforce suite within the company, which created greater dependency on an external vendor to support a successful Salesforce CRM implementation. However, the lack of internal Salesforce subject matter expertise allowed UX to come to the table as a partner and help separate the abilities of the new system from stakeholders' existing mental models.

  4. UX delivery took one PI to align communication with the implementation vendors. Initial business critical functions were in scope for the vendor, but were given back to the internal UX teams to execute. UX leadership took on this initial assessment work and reprioritized the backlog of UX efforts. This was done by shifting UX delivery by one PI and redefining MVP success by removing low-value deliverables. These steps allowed the team to build velocity by informing feature acceptance criteria with customer insights before execution.

It all starts with an idea…

Full Lifecycle of a First-in-Class Mobile Yearbook Designing Product

Client
Balfour & Co

Year
2015

Project Background

Yearbook publishing is a zero sum market currently dominated by four major companies.  The ability, speed, and quality of print are no longer the primary drivers of retention or purchase.  Yearbook publishing softwares currently on the market are all very complex, and difficult free-to-use products modeled with the same complexity and flexibility for creation as Photoshop. Corel, and other purchasable softwares.

Yearbook Publishing softwares to date were not made for the full range of the market users.   Often being difficult for first time or small book users, it created a barrier to entry even for those proficient in Adobe products or larger books. The users can range from after school parents putting together an elementary school yearbook to college students creating their years compendium.  As such, they often rely on the sales representatives at Balfour or their provider for training, support, and completion of their yearbooks before the deadlines.

Encore is the industry’s first UX driven yearbook publishing software, created from a foundation of research and customer insights.  It was continually tested with users through RITE studies to validate its usefulness and ensure its usability.  It has applications that can be extended into the mobile space and beyond as it grows with the market of technologically savvy, on-the-go students of today.

Challenges

  • How do we create a well established UX design system which can translate to multiple international development teams?

  • How can UX help transform an engineering centric company into a design centered company?

  • How can we help improve the delivery rate and speed of the product deliverables?

  • What are the success metrics for an industry first product?

  • How do we provide easier mobile experiences for users on the go?

  • How do we provide a product for clients with limited resources (ie on Chrome books etc)?

Market Analysis and Generative UX Research

Before beginning  into the creation of the product we first went to the market to look at current resources on the topic.  We studied their strengths and weaknesses and began building out a product priority list.  Further we began generative studies speaking with key stakeholders and users to fully understand what features were important or could be reprioritized.

  • Questions we asked:

    • To Product Team:

    • What features do we see which we need to include in our product?

    • What does the current market look like and how can we improve it?

    • What features and areas is the current market having issues with?

    • To Users:

    • What kind of features are most important to you?

    • What would help you to create your yearbook faster and more efficiently?

    • Where do you often find yourself making errors with our software

    • Based off your experience with our product or others, what features would you like to see in future version?

    • If you could choose which features you have listed are the most important which would those be?

Design & Creation

During prototype creation we continually iterated based on product manager feedback and engineering director initiatives, making sure to include all of the development issues and documenting any changes we made based on limitations of the chosen code bases and APIs.   Creation started with a component library and built out to the product pages which were completed through Design Sprints.  Each Design Sprint consisted of members of the design team, the project manager, and at least one member of the development team creating, questioning, and testing different ideas and theories on how to build a given task.

Evaluative UX Research

While we were prototyping we had a calculated schedule of studies to test out each section or aspect of the product’s use.  Studies were held in conjunction with different sales trainings and meetings throughout the year to ensure we were able to test on multiple markets and demographics.   Each study was completed in a different region and sample group based on the personas and user types built out during the generative testing phase (primary research & design sprints).

Iteration

Based on discovery research and analysis the designs were adjusted and documented for the development team.  Often the senior design team members would help to serve as a product owner for each of the development sprints running in conjunction with the components of the UX designs.  These members would then split their time through the next UX cycle between the development needs and the creation cycle for the next portion of the product.

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

Being able to test a product with this much analysis was truly only possible due to evangelizing UX to both by myself and the director of Engineering.  It helped build the trust of the company in the UX process and its abilities to help define a product vision currently inundated by sales team requests.  Adoption of UX within the company was a slow process for the year prior to this but with our  success and results in other products they allowed us the breadth of testing necessary to deliver this relatively new but already well received product.

Impacting Quick Product Delivery

2 Month Redesign of a Legacy Yearbook Designing Product

Year
2015

Client
Balfour & Co

Project Background

The majority of Balfour users are on a 15 year old legacy JAVA system in desperate need of a code update and a new interface.  Unfortunately, due to development team focus on the new mobile friendly and future-focused products, a complete code refresh wasn’t possible until the following school year cycle.  The business concern was this core product,  software used by large schools and universities needed to keep up with the competition for the current year.   The user experience teams assistance was requested in producing as much change as possible with limited dev resources to achieve an update capable of helping clarify users primary concerns, which included:  visual updates for confusing and difficult interface icons/content,  content architecture,  difficulties with the page management process, and teacher oversight on book publishing.

Challenges

  • How do we achieve positive business outcomes with such a limited turn around?

  • What are the primary focuses for this one year product refresh?

  • How can we maximize the company time without overusing developers?

  • Which users needs should be investigated, designed, and implemented?

Generative UX Research

One benefit to this project was prior research discovery. We were concurrently running a series of UX studies on users of other products and were able to use the insights from such processes to help drive the main focuses for this project.  Due to these insights we were able to hold a quick 3 day design sprint to handle discovery, ideation and research to make a proposal to the product manager for the updates needed to achieve sustainability for the upcoming year.

Design & Creation

Due to previously discussed time constraints, the turn-around for the ux portion of this project was 2 months.  We needed to completely redesign all of the flows for the current product as certain components touched all parts of the system.  As a team they had also agreed to add an extra challenge to align the design style to the product which matched all of the new products.  The team felt this would help begin orienting users to the upcoming paradigms.   Achieving the goals set out were only possible with the help of a well stacked team running design sprints efficiently for nearly a year. Each component was tackled based on the team members specific expertise and in tandem with one alternate approver.  The project was able to be successfully delivered to the project team on time and within the target budget.

Evaluative UX Research

One other benefit to the success of this project was our having an agreement with the development team to allow us the use of one resource for 2 months.  The time delay would allow us to do followup research with customers to ensure we targeted any lingering concerns and met their needs for the upcoming school year.

Iteration

Iteration was not needed on this current design, but the designs were used to help drive the next version of the product, which was taken out of its current application format (JAVA) and moved to Html5 with the other products offerings.  The discoveries from the evaluative research on this product continued on after the deadline for the development team and were used to help drive the next generation of the product.

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

Short turn around times can often inhibit the creative and client success of a UX team.  Often it creates difficulty delivering a full scale product they can all truly agree was wholly successful.  But with the right team setup, and a driven group such needs can be met.

Work History

  • Director - User Experience & Product

    Oct 2022 - Present

    Develop the product design and experience practice by serving as leader to both the domain and leadership teams nationally through practice meetings, meetups and company initiatives.

    Served as global Product Design SME for Sogeti on engagements with other Capgemini subsidiaries to ensure collaboration in company vision.

    Develop Experience & Product leadership plans for education and retention of consultants. Rebuilt the pursuit pitch models to streamline efforts for company sales within the practice.

    Mentor across all levels of the company locally and nationally, from junior consultants to senior managers, to help build mutual vision and community.Develop the product design and experience practice by serving as leader to both the domain and leadership teams nationally through practice meetings, meetups and company initiatives. Served as global Product Design SME for Sogeti on engagements with other Capgemini subsidiaries to ensure collaboration in company vision.

    Develop Experience & Product leadership plans for education and retention of consultants. Rebuilt the pursuit pitch models to streamline efforts for company sales within the practice. Mentor across all levels of the company locally and nationally, from junior consultants to senior managers, to help build mutual vision and community.…see more

    Senior Manager- Customer First

    Oct 2019 - Oct 2022

    Lead teams across 5 client regional engagements from product level to portfolio UX team efforts. Efforts include leading Salesforce implementations, product selections, company alignment & vision strategies as well as reimaging product & roadmaps. Have Driven over 10mil in sales of experience and innovation projects.

    Develop the experience practice and leadership teams nationally through practice meetings, meetups and team vision initiatives.

    Develop Experience & Product leadership plans for education and retention of consultants. Rebuilt the pursuit pitch models to streamline efforts for company sales within the practice.

    Mentor across all levels of the company locally and nationally, from junior consultants to senior managers, to help build mutual vision and community.

    Lead teams across 5 client regional engagements from product level to portfolio UX team efforts. Efforts include leading Salesforce implementations, product selections, company alignment & vision strategies as well as reimaging product & roadmaps.

    Have Driven over 10mil in sales of experience and innovation projects. Develop the experience practice and leadership teams nationally through practice meetings, meetups and team vision initiatives.

    Develop Experience & Product leadership plans for education and retention of consultants. Rebuilt the pursuit pitch models to streamline efforts for company sales within the practice.

    Mentor across all levels of the company locally and nationally, from junior consultants to senior managers, to help build mutual vision and community.…see more

    Manager - Experience & Innovation

    Feb 2019 - Oct 2019

    Created Southwest Airlines Pilots Associations overall user experience strategy, research design documentation, user interviews, and knowledge transfer to internal teams to inform 3 year roadmap for overall internal product strategy .

    Lead team of consultants new to UX projects through a research design project to create outputs which were presented to the Board for approval of long-term project charter.

    Created Southwest Airlines Pilots Associations overall user experience strategy, research design documentation, user interviews, and knowledge transfer to internal teams to inform 3 year roadmap for overall internal product strategy .

    Lead team of consultants new to UX projects through a research design project to create outputs which were presented to the Board for approval of long-term project charter.…see more

  • Head of UX

    10/2017-1/2019

    Brought Design Thinking to a startup of product managers, UX designers, & developers. Provided the company with a design-first structure for building out new product offerings as the company shifted focus from engineering centric.

    Assisted company in refining vision through stakeholder interviews, research, competitive analysis, customer experience maps, user story sessions, & alignment sessions.

    Aided in the release of an enterprise level NPS survey system. Provided design, product and UX work for an international brokerage company with a single quarter turnaround with a limited team on the design phase of the project.

  • UX Manager

    Jul 2016 - Sep 2017

    Implemented a User Centered Design system utilizing Scrum & Design Sprints methodologies, which quadrupled the 6-9 person team’s project capacities and allowed them to become a cross-divisional resource on over 12 projects.

    Led, organized and implemented research efforts for both divisional and cross-divisional initiatives. Built company’s first internal research cycle into existing product roadmap and release plan.

    Utilized regional sales training sites for user research testing, increasing testing capacities by 5x, while also decreasing research costs YOY by over 60%.

    Provided voice and tone, definitions and information architecture to both the product and corporate brand level.

    Implemented a plan for handoff between UX, training and curriculum to allow production of materials during development.Implemented a User Centered Design system utilizing Scrum & Design Sprints methodologies, which quadrupled the 6-9 person team’s project capacities and allowed them to become a cross-divisional resource on over 12 projects.

    Led, organized and implemented research efforts for both divisional and cross-divisional initiatives.

    Built company’s first internal research cycle into existing product roadmap and release plan.

    Utilized regional sales training sites for user research testing, increasing testing capacities by 5x, while also decreasing research costs YOY by over 60%.

    Provided voice and tone, definitions and information architecture to both the product and corporate brand level. Implemented a plan for handoff between UX, training and curriculum to allow production of materials during development.

    Senior UI/UX Designer

    Feb 2015 - Jul 2016

    Became the company’s first user experience designer eventually scaling to a team of 9 designers, developers, content specialists, information architects and researchers.

    Created prototypes, wireframes, user flows, mockups, and interactions for current and future products. Worked with local, regional and international teams on implementation of designs, which included:

    -Websites with sales reporting, e-commerce and user management tools

    -Highly sophisticated design, layout, photo manipulation and yearbook publishing applications

    -Mobile applications in image management, profile management, and sales rep CRMs

    -Cloud integration/database services

    Standardized, built and maintained company information on branding style guides, competitive analysis, user testing results, personas, marketing analytics, user flows and iconography across all applications within the division.

    Became the company’s first user experience designer eventually scaling to a team of 9 designers, developers, content specialists, information architects and researchers.

    Created prototypes, wireframes, user flows, mockups, and interactions for current and future products. Worked with local, regional and international teams on implementation of designs, which included:

    -Websites with sales reporting, e-commerce and user management tools

    -Highly sophisticated design, layout, photo manipulation and yearbook publishing applications

    -Mobile applications in image management, profile management, and sales rep CRMs

    -Cloud integration/database services Standardized, built and maintained company information on branding style guides, competitive analysis, user testing results, personas, marketing analytics, user flows and iconography across all applications within the division.

  • Produced over 30 web, mobile and software experiences, as well as branding and design materials for companies such as:

    -Body Drop Fitness by Camp Gladiator (campgladiator.com) a hip-hop dance based fitness program

    -Fons PR ( www.fonspr.com) a public relations company with clients such as Alamo Drafthouse, and Amazon

    -Service 247 (www.service247.com) a private technologies and insurance company

    -PeopleFun ( www.peoplefun.com ) builders of mobile video games

    -Texas Nurse Practitioners (texasnp.org) association of nurse practitioners based in Austin, TX

    -Illumidream / XM Tek (www.xmtek.net) software development and internet technologies services

    Managed the production and experience of interactive neuroscience courses for the UT Southwestern Department of

    Neuropathology into portable e-learning experiences, creating: interactive 3D models, 2D animations, illustrations and quizzes for medical students and residents.

Testimonials

  • Ryan Meinzer

    Director of Engineering - Capital One

    No matter what I say, it will be insufficient to express my admiration for Robert's skills as a designer and overall understanding of the nuances of User Interface Design.

    His designs are clean, easy to use, and easy to understand despite being very dense with information. Robert spends his free time learning and expanding his knowledge keeping designs free and cutting edge.

    I would gladly have Robert on any team I form or am part of in the future.

  • John Beauford

    CTO - Doctors in Training

    Jamie KokotRobert was a excellent contributor to our team in terms of UI design, and current design paradigms. He works quickly and does very good work. He was on the forefront of visual design paradigm and is a top quality illustrator. He will be a great asset to any design or illustration team.

  • D'Marcus Graves

    UX Designer - First Command

    I am honored to say that I worked with Robert at First Command Bank. I learned so much from him during our time together. His attention to detail is unmatched and he has exceptional organizational skills. Robert’s most endearing quality is his empathy. Robert is a great human, which is the most important characteristic on a team.

    Robert challenged me to grow, and I was eager to learn. I was given the opportunity to take lead on major projects and he provided constructive feedback and guidance.

    Robert is a master at strategic thinking, excellent at communicating, and he understands how to influence and groom great leaders. Thank you again for helping me understand that human nature is more powerful than any technological invention, individual or industry.