After taking 6 months off during Covid, I made the rather huge decision to relocate my family from the Silicon Valley to Meridian, Idaho. Joining First American in Jan '21 as a Senior Product Designer contractor, I was promoted 6 months later to FTE as Lead, Design Manager in August '21.

In this remote role, in partnership with Research, Product, Engineering, and Business, I lead a team of six product designers and design technologists to replace and improve a legacy escrow services platform and its inherent task flows. The greater team and I help identify painpoints, providing user-tested remedy during the translation and improvement into “Ignite” (the replacement platform). Within an Agile Scrum based framework and with Design Thinking methodology I determine, coordinate, and oversee product design “tracks” with two Lead partners and a super awesome UX Design Director.

As Director of User Experience Design, I led ux and design initiatives for all transactional experiences within firsttechfed.com and associated platforms. Notable achievements include:

• Team leadership of six front-end designers, researchers, and IAs. In partnership with stakeholders, research associates, and First Tech customers we identified product and service pain points, gained understanding of challenges, and provided experiential design remedy of pain point in the creation and improvement of First Tech experiences.

• Transformed user needs and business goals into compelling experiences during all stages research, design/prototyping, and user testing design validation. Our efforts led to the improvement of banking and lending digital product experiences within Online Mobile Banking, Mobile X IOS/Android App, and OMNI application experiences for home loans, car loans, and student loan refinancing.

• Efforts during the Ellie Mae mortgage application overhaul project contributed to a near doubling of First Note Mortgage loan production ($336.1M planned, $641.5M achieved) from Jan-April 2020 while scoring a related NPS score of 80 for April 2020.

• Design improvements for online account management and credit card settings experience (Q4 2019 through Q2 2020) contributed to call center volume reduction for members calling about (mobile and desktop) Change Account Password, Credit Cards’ Replace Card, Find and Dispute Transactions, Lock Card, and card management-related settings.

• Introduced foundational component-based standards that became First Tech’s IOS, Android, and responsive web design systems.

• In conjunction with Product and Development, my team determined and maintained the UX/Design roadmap and production schedules for research, design, and testing initiatives. This was based on an Agile, two week sprint cadence.

• Evangelized team methodology (Design Thinking) while promoting team and individual efforts.

Led a pod of three product designers in the creation, introduction, and improvement of Prudential financial planning and advisory products. Notable achievements include:

• “Player Coach” team leadership in the definition, exploration, and iterative, user testing feedback-guided prototyping. With embedded Research, Product, Development, and SME partnerships, my team devised experience design for Link by Prudential and multiple personal finance desktop and mobile applications, tools, and calculators.

• Leading Pru’s foray into the “robo-advisory” space with the research, design, and incremental release of “Link by Prudential”. Link is a goals and life stage-based advisory platform which helps users keep track of and achieve financial goals by linking underlying Pru products and services.

• Co-managed the Pod’s digital product design requirement gathering, sprint grooming, and roadmap synchronization, ensuring timely deliverables and influencing cadence.

• Produced and procured UX artifacts for the purposes of planning, demonstrating, and socializing Prudential’s advisory products and features.

• Led team for recurring contributing design for Prudential’s Playbook (“Prustrap”), a Bootstrap-derived component library and it’s companion Atomic Design System.

Promoted to lead the improvement of collective trading experiences for both E*TRADE.com and the E*TRADE Pro trading platform.

• Managed an in-house team of 4 (average over the 6 years) uxers, product designers, and vendor partners to improve E*TRADE’s online and platform-based trading experiences. E*TRADE Pro was a top 3-rated trading platform over a 7-year period (’09-’15) and consistently ranked #1 amongst professional traders.

• Team efforts in product improvement and ease of use contributed to consistently increased trading volumes year over year.

• Defined design language, promoting visual design standards that became E*TRADE’s v1 design system and component library.

• Improved and introduced expanded trading capabilities throughout E*TRADE trading environments including FX Futures, Exchange Traded Funds, and Enhanced Options with integrated strategy. My team also provided a host of design solutions to help traders overcome trading pain points and improve understanding.

As product design manager for the E*TRADE product design suite and related products and services, my notable achievements included:

• Migrating, translating, and improving the Equity Edge desktop app to its online version. Contributed in building and maintaining Equity Edge Online (a sass stock plan admin platform) earning a #1 rating in customer loyalty and overall satisfaction for multiple consecutive years.

• Led design for the introduction and ui supporting “Mortgage on the Move”, a portable mortgage product, that was successfully hailed as the first of it’s kind.

• Leading full redesign of improved trading experiences for both E*TRADE.com and the E*TRADE Pro trading platform.