How I Contributed.

• MVP / Feature Definition

• Roadmap Management / Feature Prioritization Facilitation

• Product Design / Design System Ownership / Animation Goodness

• Stakeholder Management ( Internal & External )

Realized Customer ROI.

• Safety - 85% reduction in recordable safety incidents across customers.

• Quality - 117% increase in catching defects in production environments.

• Asset Resiliency (OEE) - 45% increase in asset uptime.

• Worker Experience - 98% adoption rate at an enterprise industrial customer.

1.

Gaining Empathy Directly at the Point of Work.

Identifying a few key stakeholders was crucial in uncovering where value lies within this enterprise industrial ecosystem. Throughout the process, we gained insights into various dynamics, including who had the strongest influence, who managed enterprise budgets, and who stood to benefit most from a successful digital transformation.

By focusing where the work happens, we identified where our audience experienced friction in their daily operations and how our tool could make a difference.

My Takeaway.

The sooner you put on steel-toed shoes, a high-vis vest, roll up your sleeves, and get out on the shop floor, the better you'll understand a diverse audience — just watch out for the forklifts!

I heard “you might want to stay away from [insert name here]” more than a few times in my journey and those abrasive, hardened workers were a gold mine. They were eager for someone to ask them how to make work suck a bit less … you just had to get past the rock-solid outer shell.

All this took patience, dedication, and a shared trust but I took great pride in genuinely capturing the voice of the frontline worker while developing a tool that made them feel valued and recognized as the crucial part of the operational puzzle they are. All while balancing the needs and priorities of other key enterprise stakeholders.

2.

Internal Stakeholder & Voice of the Customer Ownership.

In a start-up environment, everything moves at lightning speed, and we had a diverse group of internal stakeholders, including hands-on C-level executives, developers, contract designers, project managers, and industry partners. I utilized design thinking techniques early in the feature definition process to rally support for ideas and ensure a collaborative approach to features and functionality. We then utilized Jira and Confluence to document features as they evolved to create a single source of truth.

Voice of the Customer was a guiding principle in developing features that addressed the challenges faced by our current and future customers. High-fidelity clickable mock-ups played a vital role in sparking discussions about features with our core audience, partners, and industry experts.

My Takeaway.

Lots to unpack here … ensuring internal stakeholders are aligned in a start-up environment is essential. I continually worked to make sure that everyone was informed about what they needed to know and had ample opportunities to share their feedback at every step.

Relying on your customers is invaluable, but it requires substantial preparation before engaging with them if you are in an environment that is less technical. This is where our Core Design System proved essential. With a set of evolving design patterns, we could swiftly validate our ideas in high-fidelity and gather feedback, while getting to development as quickly as possible.

3.

Data-Driven Continuous Improvement.

We developed a tool that effectively connected frontline workers to their tasks while providing an intuitive way to gather operational data on safety, quality, and productivity. As a result, we flooded team leads and floor managers with information, but we didn’t offer them a tailored experience to access the specific details they needed quickly. We pivoted quickly and built a tailored, yet customizable dashboard that allowed users to customize just about every bit of it to meet the individual needs of each user. Data helped us tell the story around how the evolution was a marked improvement.

My Takeaway.

"Tada" moments have no place in product design. Iterations are key to evolving to an experience that users find valuable. Coupled with critical user feedback, data reveals essential truths that encourage deeper exploration and potentially massive pivots.

In this specific use case, it was imperative to think critically about creating an accessible solution that users find valuable and engage with regularly. We made it incredibly simple for the frontline to generate data using the platform. As Spiderman wisely said, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

4.

Behavioral Economics FTW.

With my background in business and marketing, I was well-versed in the principles of behavioral economics. This concept was essential in defining every feature of the tool.

• How will this feature motivate our personas?

• What outcomes do we want to achieve, and how will those outcomes influence others?

• How can we balance user behavior with the realities of working in an industrial environment rooted in the legacy of Taylorism?

Today's audiences are conditioned to expect value from their digital interactions. While this has always been true, the rise of loyalty programs in various commercial activities has intensified these expectations. If users can derive tangible value from your product or service, they are likely to embrace it more wholeheartedly.

My Takeaway.

Integrating customizable engagement (gamification) into our tool marked an inflection point for the platform, impacting more areas than we ever anticipated.

Users not only enjoyed instant gratification from completing tasks with assigned point values, but they could also track their rankings among their peers transparently.

Moreover, managers were able to build more meaningful relationships with their direct reports around doing the work, as the platform took care of the "blocking and tackling" involved in tasks like participation or safety reporting.

5.

Designing for Enterprise SaaS is a Different Beast.

I’ve always prided myself on being a pragmatic designer who creates elegant, flexible experiences. However, designing for enterprise SaaS comes with its own set of challenges. Each customer has unique needs and processes, and enterprises often require scalability. The tool had to be versatile enough to accommodate organizations of any size, demanding careful attention to design flexibility throughout the process. Ultimately, we developed an incredibly adaptable tool that allowed for complete customization while still achieving a high level of design effectiveness and character.

My Takeaway.

Establishing a design system built bootstrapped on top of a strong technical foundation was crucial for us to design effectively as we expanded both our feature set and customer base. We used Ionic as our mobile development framework, and I took great care to ensure that Corvex brand essence was evident in every pixel.

In short, foundations are good, but it is imperative that you adjust the look and feel to accommodate your user base because one size does not fit all.

Mobile Screens.

The mobile experience was guided by our Core Design System, allowing us to establish consistent design patterns for our diverse frontline audience. The design aesthetic is deliberately simple, akin to relatable tools like a hammer or wrench. This simplicity and consistency facilitated easy adoption and overall mastery of the tool.

Web Screens.

From simple tabular data to complex dashboards, the web application needed to address specific goals for managers and executives alike. Their capacity to respond to frontline events and activities was displayed in real-time, allowing for prompt action when necessary.

Park Tool

Park Tool holds a global leadership position in bike tool manufacturing, yet its digital offerings were overly complex and outdated.

Ramsey County

Ramsey County is the second most populous county in Minnesota. The 508,640 people that live there are a diverse group and they demanded an accessible offering.