Real estate websites haven't changed in 15 years. I reimagined what browsing listings could look like in the future, putting Keller Williams ahead of the competition, and making finding your dream home faster and easier.
role: UX Design
Home buyers spend, on average, almost a month browsing listings for 55 minutes per day prior to contacting a realtor. That's a lot of searching, clicking, and saving!
My vision utilizes interactive modules to collect data and teach the AI what a home buyer's preferences are at a highly specific level, so that it can then predict which listings the home buyer may want to see.
What if we brought listings to a home buyer, so that they never had to search for anything?
Amazon hired us to take Alexa where she had never been before: outside.
I led our team through user interviews, surveys, and brainstorming sessions that helped us create voice experiences that shaped Amazon's vision for the future of Alexa.
role: USER RESEARCH, UX Design, VUI Design, UI Design
Introducing Alexa to the outside world presents endless use cases, but also comes with many obstacles, like lowered attention span, and the social awkwardness of speaking to a voice assistant in public.
Our use cases addressed these obstacles while providing value through contextual awareness and personalization.
In September 2019, Amazon released their proprietary Alexa-enabled earbuds, called Echo Buds. Our challenge was to identify market sectors where Alexa could bring the most value, and design experiences that enhanced routine elements of daily life.
How can we take Alexa from being something that lives in your home, to something you can't live without?
Cities share the same problems, like trash removal efficiency and keeping bicyclists safe. I created a platform where cities can source solutions to these problems faster and with more confidence.
role: USER RESEARCH, Product Design
City innovators complete over 60% of their research and validation of smart technology online prior to initial contact with the vendor. Paying close attention to how city innovators complete their research was a crucial part of my process, and allowed me to design functionality completely tailored to their specific needs.
How can we reduce the time it takes to find the right technology without sacrificing the rigorous vetting process?
My solution improved the research process by organizing information uniformly, prioritizing validations, and making the process of contacting vendors and other city innovators much easier. Marketplace.city is now home to over 150 cities worldwide. It won the Innovative Idea Award at the 2017 Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona, and the founders have since raised $1.2 million in funding.
Lager is a wireless dongle that modernizes hardware diagnostics by allowing hardware engineers to communicate with their devices through the Cloud and run debugging tests in realistic environments.
Working directly with a team of engineers, I used sitemaps, wireframes, and user flows to design an in-browser command line experience.
role: UX Design, Information architecture
Can we create an all-in-one experience where hardware engineers can gather, analyze, and store their diagnostic data?
I delivered an annotated set of wireframes to engineers, who used them in the build process, and to the branding and UI team, who used them to design a beautiful interface reminiscent of other code editing software used by engineers.
As of March 2020, Lager has passionate beta testers at Peloton and has raised $1.5 million in funding.
To make journaling easier, my team and I created a chat bot app where users can talk about their feelings using only emojis, if they wish.
It launched in the App Store in 2014, and was written about favorably in The Atlantic, Fast Company, and Tech Crunch. After three months on the market, the app collected over 300,000 user entries, and maintained a 30% DAU/MAU ratio.
Can we say more by saying less?
Emojiary / Helping users discover their feelings through an emoji-based journal.
Keller Williams - "Project Leapfrog"
A reimagining of the online search for a home that replaces the “saved search” with a personalized, AI-curated feed of homes.
Team
Creative Director
UX Designer - My role
Deliverables
Presentation deck
High fidelity proof of concept
TIMELINE
3 weeks
Context
Real estate company websites haven't changed in 15 years. For “Project Leapfrog,” our challenge was to think beyond minor enhancements, and create a vision for what finding a home online could look like in the near future. I worked with Fictive Kin's Creative Director, Cameron Koczon, on the overall product strategy and concepts, as well as owning all of the UX design and extension of the new UI styles.
Our vision leverages the power of artificial intelligence to predict which listings a home buyer is likely to be interested in based on their activity within the site. Each time a user logs in, they'll see a stack of new listings, market updates, and various interactive modules that make smart suggestions and collect insights based on what the user likes, follows, or hides. This completely eliminates the need to adjust filters and save searches, and gives realtors a hyper-specific description of what their client is looking for.
Results
Keller Williams was extremely exciting about our solution. They were excited to use our pitch deck, high fidelity mock-ups, and library of interactive modules to push forward innovation plans internally.
An exploration into the potential value Alexa can add to our daily lives outside of the home.
Team
Creative Director
Lead Designer
Content Strategist
UX Designer - My role
Deliverables
Research report
2 Vision videos
UI framework
TIMELINE
8 weeks
Context
Amazon hired Fictive Kin for an eight-week project exploring hero experiences for using Alexa on-the-go through headphones and earbuds. The purpose for the project was to come up with contextually useful feature sets that would make Alexa an indispensable resource outside of the home or car, specifically in the travel, fitness, and leisure segments.
The final deliverables were a 34-page report, two vision videos, and a UI framework. These were used internally by Amazon to scope future work and drive partner engagement. I lead the user research and team brainstorming portions of the project, and based on our findings and ideation, I created a UI framework showing how the new Alexa on-the-go features could fit into the existing Alexa mobile app.
Results
Our research, videos, and UI framework inspired a lot of cross-team discussion during our final presentation. It was clear we gave them a lot to think about and work with.
We heard positive feedback from the project lead at Amazon, who followed up with us to say our work "put [the Alexa team] in the right spot to move forward."
An online hub where innovative city governments can source ideas, connect with smart technology providers, and implement solutions with efficiency and confidence.
Team
2 Founding Partners
Product Manager
Product Designer - My role
Backend Engineer
2 Frontend Engineers
Project Manager
Art Director
UI Designer
Deliverables
Web app
TIMELINE
18 weeks
Context
After seeing success with a localized database of smart technology vendors in New York City, founding partners Andrew Watkins and Chris Foreman wanted to expand the platform to city governments worldwide. The founders and I started by conducting user research to find out what information city innovators need when they set out to implement smart technology. Using these insights, I designed a place for each city to share their successes and current challenges, created tailored communication functionality on vendor pages, devised an informative and trustworthy review system, and established a white-glove onboarding process.
Results
Marketplace.city is now home to over 150 innovative cities around the world.
It won the Innovative Idea Award at the 2017 Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona, and the founders have since raised $1.2 million in funding.
A cloud-based web app that allows hardware engineers to gather, analyze, and store diagnostic data while running tests on their products in realistic environments.
Team
Hardware Engineer
Hardware Designer
2 Backend Engineers
3 Frontend Engineers
UX Designer - My role
Art Director
3 UI Designers
Deliverables
Web app
TIMELINE
Product completed over 1 year Case study covers a 3-week UX sprint
context
Diagnostics are a crucial part of the hardware design process, and it typically requires plugging your device into a computer and running an antiquated software program. Lager modernizes hardware diagnostics by using the cloud to connect the hardware engineer to their device through a browser-based terminal via a wireless dongle.
I worked directly with hardware and backend engineers to create a user flow, sitemap, and wireframes that maintained feature parity with the industry standard software, Docklight. I then handed off a complete set of annotated wireframes to the art director and UI designers which they used to create a beautiful terminal reminiscent of many other code editing programs.
Results
As of March 2020, Lager has passionate beta testers at Peloton, and has raised $1.5 million in funding.
An emoji-based mood journal that helps you see your feelings.
Team
Creative Director
Product Manager
Product Designer - My role
Backend Engineer
iOS Engineer
Deliverables
iPhone app
TIMELINE
6 months App launched November 2014
context
Emojiary is an app where you text a tiny chatbot how you're feeling using emojis. The concept came from exploratory user interviews, where the resounding lament was not being in touch with their feelings, but finding the blank page of a journal too intimidating.
As a team, we created a user-centered experience that made expressing your emotions easy and fun. The app was made up of three main pages: Chat, where you make your entries; History, where you can see stats and trends; and Goodies, where you can see the exclusive emojis you earned that were accessible through the custom iOS keyboard. When designing the interface, my goal was to create an environment that felt inviting and unique, but not overwhelming. I achieved this by using colorful gradients, minimal navigation, and subtle animations.
Results
During a month-long beta test with 1,000 users, 75% made daily entries. After three months on the market, the app collected over 300,000 user entries, and maintained a 30% DAU/MAU ratio.
Emojiary / Helping users discover their feelings through an emoji-based journal.
To make journaling easier, my team and I created a chat bot app where users can talk about their feelings using only emojis, if they wish.
It launched in the App Store in 2014, and was written about favorably in The Atlantic, Fast Company, and Tech Crunch. After three months on the market, the app collected over 300,000 user entries, and maintained a 30% DAU/MAU ratio.
role: UX Design, UI Design, Interaction Design
Rookie Mag / Creating a site where teens can be themselves.
I redesigned the entire site to optimize for content discovery, which resulted in a bounce rate that dropped from 68% to 2%.
Montefiore / Making navigation easier for patients.
I designed the new information architecture for a relaunch of the Orthopedic Surgery department's site, as well as designed the content and navigation in the subpages.
Arta connects fine art collectors, merchants, and galleries to white-glove logistics and services. I designed an elegant and responsive interface that neatly organizes shipment quotes and details, a robust request form that handles currency conversions, and a customer-facing quote selection and payment flow.
The company raised $3 million in funding after launch.
(Click the image to see more designs.)
role: UX Design, UI Design
Keller Williams / Helping buyers evaluate homes in real time.
The average home buyer views ten homes before finding the right one. I designed a prototype for Keller Williams' internal innovation team that demonstrated how home buyers at an open house showing could review a home room-by-room with just a few taps.
role: UX Design
WeWork / Designing a fun way to calculate costs.
WeWork needed an interesting way to show business owners how much they can save by renting office space from WeWork. I iterated through multiple interactive sequences that were brought to life through visual design and animated illustrations.
role: Interaction Design
Thanks for taking the time to look through my work!
Research Synthesis of user interviews where I highlighted potential product features and places in their experience where a product could have high impact.
Value-Complexity Matrix I used to prioritize work as we created the product roadmap.
Navigation System exploring how we could accommodate 3 levels of pages as well as surface the most commonly viewed pages.
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