The Granular product development team was seeking more clarity—and inspiration—regarding a product strategy update.
I worked with members of my design team to create a video visiontype that stitched together customer footage with illustrative UI elements to help the org visualize the strategy updates and our future vision. Additionally, I created other artifacts (in prose form and via multiple graphics + presentations) to help inspire the team.
After sharing the video and other artifacts with the organization, we saw an increase in company survey results regarding strategy comprehension and morale, and the team successfully delivered a large, related initiative. Additionally, these artifacts were shared with senior leaders and board members at our parent company, Corteva, to illustrate the vision and story of Granular.
Design organizations are unique and require specialized tools to attract and retain top talent. When I joined Granular in 2017, the design practice was nascent and lacked a strong culture.
To mature and grow the Granular design practice, I created a suite of bespoke tools, tailored to the needs of the organization and industry. This included: hiring rubrics and interview guides, design team objectives and principles, a forked career ladder (created in collaboration with one of my leaders) that allowed ICs to advance without having to take a management role, regular career development syncs that every manager had with their direct reports to ensure a focus on employee growth, and countless other tools.
The Granular design team grew to be a well-regarded part of the organization (and referred to as one of the org’s greatest assets by the CEO). Design team satisfaction and performance were high, as measured by company survey and anecdotal feedback. Customers used phrases like “easy-to-use” to describe the software the team designed. While the bulk of this success is due to the amazing people that were on the team, the infrastructure that I put in place as team leader contributed to the results.
Minted began as a stationery company. We discovered that the needs/wants/behaviors of art shoppers are ≠ stationery shoppers so we worked to create an experience that was tailored to this new customer.
Using proto-personas as a guide, I brainstormed with a cross-functional team to generate ideas which led to the creation of a more simplified and immersive art shopping experience. It featured a product detail page overlay (to enable swifter browsing + multi-product purchase).
Elements of the design were tested and rolled out to multiple product kinds, leading to an overall increase in conversion.
Mockups and high-fidelity wireframes make ideas real—but sometimes TOO real. In the early stages of product design, jumping to mockups too quickly can lead to churn or erroneous concept-selection.
Sketches help clarify ideas, spur discussion, encourage collaboration, and move things forward without limiting options. So I try to sketch on whiteboards, post-its and paper whenever I can.
More sketches = more collaboration = better outcomes.
Avid Stumblers had many “Likes” and no way to organize or re-discover their curated content.
We developed a feature that allowed users to group their Likes into Lists of content.
In less than a month after launch, over 45,000 Lists were created by users in the StumbleUpon community.
I have been designing/leading the design of user experiences for over 17 years now, so I have a lot more projects I can share. Additionally, these work samples show a tiny snapshot of my design process. For the sake of brevity (and confidentiality) I have omitted many of the insights, constraints, failed concepts and results of these projects. I find those details to be more interesting than the actual solutions, so I've developed some case studies that I am happy to share in person.
Contact me at erica.meade@gmail.com if you'd like to see additional projects or case studies.