Portfolio

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Examples of UX and product design work from the dozens of applications and tools I've created over the course of 20+ years

 

 

Harmony (c. 2005)

Background: An insurance company was launching a new platform for their salespeople to enroll employees at client companies in their annual benefits. This was a significant modernization effort, moving away from legacy desktop application and backend to a web-based, real-time enrollment stack.

Objectives: Support end-to-end benefits enrollment process online for both supplemental insurance products and other employer-provided benefits. Enable enrollment for end-users (Employees) on their own, or in an assisted manner one-on-one with a Salesperson. Provide appropriate product education, including life insurance modeling, basic "What if" scenarios, and personalized examples. Allow complete configuration of benefits, account options, and enrollment reports, via administrator interface.

Work contribution: Functioning as part of the CX (Customer Experience) team, I coordinated with product leadership, business analysis, and technology partners, including:

• Product discovery / business analysis
• User and client research - interviews with Salespeople and 20+ client companies,
• Information architecture - special focus on benefit configuration utilities
• Wireframes - notable breakthroughs on "Benefit Menu" page, and in product education
• Usability testing

Results: Within first 12 months after initial launch, overall enrollment for targetted products increased by 12%. Also helpdesk support calls were reduced significantly.

 

 

 

Life Insurance Financing (c. 2006)

Background: A major Wall St. bank was creating a new web-based platform for a growing desk that provided liquidity for clients with excess life insurance (e.g. COLI / BOLI).

Objectives: Create new public site educational content. Create new workflow-based tool for various authenticated users to support the initiation, structuring, and execution of deals. Provide clear list of deals in progress and indication of next steps. Support for multiple users including clients (e.g. document upload), Salespeople, and traders / structurers to approve deals.

Work contribution: As the project UX lead, I worked directly with Salespeople, business analysis, and technology partners, including:

• Business process analysis
• Product brainstorming - sketching and paper-prototyping
• Site maps, user journey flows
• Content creation
• Information architecture - e.g. deal management, deal details, etc.
• Interaction design details - document upload, error conditions, status messaging, etc.
• Wireframes
• Visual design - incorporated Firm style guidelines

Results: After initial launch, time to complete first structuring deal was reduced by more than 40%.

 

 

 

Stress Testing v.1 (c. 2015)

Background: A major Wall St. bank was creating brand new capabilities for designing and managing Stress Scenarios (hypothetical economic conditions that can be run to analyze the potential impact on a given portfolio.) Scenario Stress Tests were critical for Capital allocation and regulatory compliance.

Objectives: Support end-to-end Scenario design, review, and deployment workflow. Provide timely access and alerts across various user groups, following existing business process and required approvals. Clearly surface the status for a given scenario, and required next steps.

Work contribution: As the UX lead, I partnered with key stakeholders across business and technology to envision and implement the new system, including:

• Product definition and design
• Business process analysis / workflow
• Paper prototyping, user research, and visual design exploration
• Information architecture - special focus on workflow
• Wireframes - details for workflow states, actions, status messages, etc.
• Visual design

Results: Product launch saw overall time to create and deploy Scenarios go from months to days. Positive comments from the Fed about significant investment and "leading example" because of this platform.

 

 

 

Stress Testing v.2 (c. 2022)

Background: A major Wall St. bank was re-imagining overall Scenario Stress Testing capabilities (see "v.1" above) after significant business process evolution.

Objectives: Support the new workflow for Scenario design, review, and execution. Provide collaborative, real-time editing for multiple users, and give clear indication of impact / variance across versions. Greatly improve user delight and site responsiveness, addressing the dynamic growth in volume of Scenarios since initial platform adoption.

Work contribution: As the Stress Testing Initiative Lead, and Head of Market Risk Tooling North America, I partnered with business management, and led cross-functional teams of Product Owners, UX designers, and technology architects, including:

• Program leadership - set vision for new tooling, defined KPI's, budgets
• Product management - roadmaps, MVP definition, guided Product Owners on backlog
• Delivery - led Scrum teams, Sprint Demos, business reviews
• Product design - guided UX resources in wireframes, Azure prototypes
• Visual design - ensured compliance with Firm standards, offered contributions to shared component library

Results: After MVP 1 launch, overall time to create and launch a Scenario dropped from days to hours. Greatly improved version auditibility, resulting in decrease in confusion and re-work.