Venmo is a business unit of PayPal, and has one of the leading apps in the fintech space. I managed a team of designers distributed across offices in three cities responsible for Core Experience, Commerce, and Internal Tools experiences.
2018-2019
Team Management, Design Strategy
Due to its confidential nature, discussion of this work is available only upon request.
Samsung SmartThings is a consumer smart home platform that connects IOT devices from multiple manufacturers. I worked in the AV group, leading the design of several video integration projects.
2016-2010
Interaction Design, Prototyping, Team Management.
Due to the confidential nature, discussion of this work is available only upon request.
Perch was an easy to use multi-platform live-streaming smart home monitoring startup that was built in the Samsung Accelerator in New York. Users could download an app to their spare phones and get started quickly. I created the UX while also helping develop product and marketing strategies. We also created innovative integrations with IOT platforms and prototyped physical designs for hardware products. The product was available for Android and web, and was acquired by Samsung SmartThings and discontinued.
2014-2016
Product Management, Interaction Design, Visual Design, User Research
Background
The Perch team built an extremely low-latency streaming platform and developed a free mobile app for users to turn unused smartphones into home security cameras, and web app that allowed users to view and engage in more complex interactions. Several primary UX challenges were overcome:
How to communicate that a smartphone could function either as a camera or viewer. Using text, images, and a clear flow (lots of testing and iterations!) I developed a sequence that guided users to their desired setup state.
Giving users clear status during onboarding while keeping them engaged. We streamlined onboarding to the most essential steps, while pushing forward the connected camera state to give users a sense of accomplishment and an understanding of the mode their smartphone was in. This encouraged users to complete setup while allowing the app to finish other tasks in the background.
Letting users know they could use the web interface to interact with connected devices. We created a UI with clearly actionable states that let users control lights and other devices.
Reception
Perch was well-received despite limited marketing efforts.
Fast Company: The Perch App Transforms Old Gadgets Into A Free, Real-Time, Home-Security System
ReadWrite: Perch Can Use Existing Devices To Make Any Home Smart
The Next Web: Perch lets you turn nearly any device with a camera into a smart home security system
Perhaps the biggest compliment was being understood as the change agents in a bigger effort within Samsung.
The Verge: Samsung's big bet: put American software startups inside its most important hardware
Chartbeat is a real-time website analytics service used by almost every major (and minor) publisher in North America and Europe. I designed the first few iterations for web and mobile, laying down the interaction and visual patterns. By observing publishers, we discovered a market for analytics for front-line users.
2008-2010
Interaction Design, Visual Design, User Research, Product Management
Background
The team developed a set of first principles to guide development, and we used iterative design-build-test cycles, where the fidelity evolved as we built out the site. I’ve highlighted some of the core principles and selected design decisions below:
Structure the site around user goals (second image)
chartbeat is a tool for front-line workers, not just internal analytics teams. I designed the layout around a set of use cases, so users could walk through the data in a logical fashion, understand causality, and take action. The triad of panels at top allowed users to understand “how many people are on my site, how did they get here, and what are they looking at?” in a snap.
Data should be appropriately dense, clear and actionable (third image)
Data should be rich and deep, without compromising ease of use and clarity. As an example, the tree map in v.1 (left in the image) was challenging for users – they liked the intent, but it was difficult to interpret. Sites with extremely low or high traffic or with few pages skewed the chart so that it was impossible to analyze. I decided to use a small range of fixed sizes, ensuring the display of most pages, and using dots to represent visitors.
Everything should be on a single page (fourth image)
A key interaction design challenge chartbeat faced was letting users drill into richer data without resorting to traditional hierarchical navigation schemes. I came up with the notion of “pivoting” around a selected data element, where the entire page changes to reflect just that element.
Use historical data as context, but keep it a real-time tool (fifth image)
Users loved the real-time aspect of chartbeat data, but a unanimous request was to provide some context to what they’re viewing. We added a powerful replay feature that let users isolate events and walk through it (“Tivo for your website” as we liked to say). By bringing the replay to the fore, we signaled to users that historical data is available by showing a trend chart.
Bitly is best known as a URL shortener used on social media services like Twitter. It is used by most of the Fortune 1000 to power their shortlinks, and provides valuable data about the performance and reach of content. This started at Betaworks as a simple utility that we quickly realized could provide essential feedback to users in real-time. We built sites for end users, B2B sites for publishers and brand managers, as well as mobile apps.
2008-2010, 2013
Interaction Design, Visual Design, User Research
Background
Bitly had its start as part of a data extraction and classification project - the shortlink provider kept going down so we built our own. I designed the site and mobile app for the first couple of years and played a product manager role.
Bitly Publisher Tools (second image)
One of the key challenges was designing a data display that could scale from 0 to 10,000 to millions of clicks. We continually evolved the detail page according to the needs of publishers, who used the granular data to amplify their social media presence.
Bitly Pro (third image)
For enterprise customers, aggregate link displays, custom URLs and branding were additional considerations. This is an early version of a view showing relative click counts of customer-created links vs. natural amplification happening on the web.
Betaworks is a New York-based incubator and seed-stage startup investor. They started a number of important companies, including Chartbeat, Bitly, and the new Digg. I worked on early-stage startups, on design, UX, and product management. I also advised startups Betaworks had invested in, providing strategic and tactical guidance.
2008-2014
Team Management, Interaction Design, Visual Design, User Research, Product Management
Schoolnet is the leading provider of reporting, assessment, school and classroom management software, and is used by many of the largest school districts in the US. I led a team that completely revamped the enterprise and consumer-facing websites. We conducted on-site user research with administrators, teachers and parents to better understand end-user needs.
2005-2008
Team Management, Interaction Design, Visual Design, User Research
Yahoo purchased HotJobs and needed to integrate both the site and the company into Yahoo. My role was to bring Yahoo's management and values into company, hire a team, and revamp the product to compete with multiple external sites, and to better integrate with the Yahoo portal. Multiple web properties spanned a two-sided marketplace for both recruiters and job seekers, and extensive collaboration with engineering and marketing took place.
2003-2005
Team Management, Interaction Design, Visual Design, User Research
