Portfolio Category: Design Research

What should we do next?

What should we do next?
Many product development organizations already understand that iterative feedback is helpful for improving product designs before, during and after release. However, not all product groups proactively use feedback about development priorities as much as they could. Sometimes, it's tempting to either work off a list that was brainstormed a year or more ago, or simply…
Read more

Cloud-Based Banking Software

Cloud-Based Banking Software
ImpairmentStudio™ is a quickly growing product offered by Moody's Analytics to calculate allowance according to CECL and IFRS9 accounting guidelines. Hailed by Moody's Analytics' executive leadership as "the best product launch we've ever had", this product gave me the opportunity to design a new product from the beginning. We structured the product around the sequence…
Read more

Mobile Web

Mobile Web
Blue Shield of California needed a mobile web presence to meet the needs of one of their biggest customers. I worked with a product manager and visual designer, as well as onsite and offshore developers and QA specialists, to quickly define a concentrated set of functionality tuned to the needs of people on the go.…
Read more

Usability Goals Align Teams & Spur Ideation

Usability Goals Align Teams & Spur Ideation
How can we know where we want to go? By identifying usability goals up front, we can align our efforts and get there together. If we define our goals, we can also measure our progress along the way to reach them as directly and quickly as possible. In the example at left, a simple visual…
Read more

Building Business Partnerships

Building Business Partnerships
Before it was integrated into Homestyler, the Autodesk 3D rendering technology used for realistic snapshots was developed as an offering to suppliers of building equipment, such as appliances and countertops. We explored partnerships with a number of vendors as a possible way to expand Autodesk's portfolio of businesses. The examples below show that there are…
Read more

Updating a Popular SaaS Application

Updating a Popular SaaS Application
Autodesk product designers work together on cross-divisional projects to improve their products across the board. One such effort involved switching the paradigm for presentation of tools from a menu style to a "Ribbon" style, as Microsoft did in 2007. I was the lead designer of the new interface for Autodesk Design Review, an application for…
Read more

Making New Technology Approachable

Making New Technology Approachable
When Autodesk started branching out into consumer-oriented SaaS applications like Homestyler, a home remodeling and visualization tool, we could no longer rely on extensive training to get target users up to speed and working. And when an entire new technology was introduced, in this case the ability to set up and request realistic "snapshots" from…
Read more