UX Strategy, Design, Leadership

Hi! I'm Amy Smith

I specialize in creating Digital customer experiences that are rooted in a shared understanding of the customer problem across Design + Product + Engineering.
I truly believe that design can make the world a better place.

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ABOUT ME

Fusing design thinking, strategy, and operations

Building a design driven culture is a team sport that partners Design, Product, Research, and Engineering

Design is what keeps me curious and finding ways to make it count toward the human experience. I am a Senior UX Strategy and Design leader with over 20 years of expertise in creating impactful experiences that bring value to the customer and help organizations realize their digital transformation. I have 10+ years of experience in building diverse, highly collaborative cross-functional teams that understand and embrace the craft in creating a cohesive customer experience. Together we shape the design practice and culture to build autonomy and trust.

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Design + Dev Ops

Automate the important to
focus on the critical

I work with organizations to implement a Design Operations plan which allows processeses to scale and create a shared understanding by encouraging open discovery, design, and collaboration across disciplines. This creates a model where work centers around the problem a customer is trying to solve or the job to be done (JTBD), rather than the platforms on which users are interacting with your organization. Disciplines are able to work in parallel (not waterfall) towards the same goal.

1. The Kick-off

Present and discuss the customer needs and the business/market value. The depth of the discussion during the kick-off meeting is not exhaustive. A kick-off can happen ad hoc or during a regular refinement meeting. A feature or opportunity canvas provides the team with strong indicators on what research is needed, user interactions and goals, and system architecture.

Who's there:
Design, Content, Research, A11y, Product Manager, Architecture/Tech Lead, SME's, Taxonomy/SEO

2. Map & Sketch

After the scope and high-level requirements are analyzed from the kick-off, the Design team jumps into focused design discovery work (solo or small groups). Activities may include:

  • Market, experiential, heuristic analysis
  • User research reports of prior experiences
  • Journey mapping, sketching, page flows
  • Service blueprint creation

Who's there:
Design (UX), Content, Research, A11y, Architecture/Tech Lead (as needed), PM/SME's (as needed)

3. Wireframing

The process may start with high level page flows that evolve into black/white wireframes which represent the details of the entire flow including empty states, error scenarios, transitions, content, CTA's, etc. It's important that there is collaboration between design and front-end development so that service and UI/Design system components can be identified.

Who's there:
Design (UX), Content, A11y, PM/SME's (as needed), Front-end dev (as needed)

4. UX: Present, refine, test

Present wireframes along with any prepared design and A11y documentation. Architecture/Dev use this phase to respond to the design, ask questions, etc. Stakeholders are tagged as Reviewers (Content, Design Lead, A11y, Dev). User research sessions are executed and designs are refined based upon user feedback. Development should be able to begin early services/API work at this phase.

Who's there:
Design, Content, A11y, Research, Architecture/Dev, PM, SME's, Taxonomy/SEO

5. UI: Prepare & Hand-off

Once the wireframes are approved, UI visual comps can be created. Content may be refined and A11y executes their final review of the designs (color, interactions, etc.). The Design team is available to Dev beyond hand-off to answer questions as implementation of the design may represent micro-interactions and states that need to be fully understood.

Who's there:
Design, Content, A11y, Architecture/Dev, PM, QA, Analytics

6. Track & refine

Digital experiences are never "set it and forget it". Establishing success metrics during the discovery phase will allow the team to track analytics so they can hypothesize, experiment, and iterate on a solution to achieve the desired results. Experimentation leads to innovation.

Teams should be able to establish backlogs that contain a prioritized mix of new experiences as well as refinement or growth hacking initiatives.

Who's there:
Design, Content, Research, Architecture/Dev, PM, SEO

Case Studies

Strategy, collaboration,
and co-creation

I fundamentally believe that as a design leader I am more authentic when I am able to guide teams and create great customer experiences by keeping my own design skills honed and sharp.

UnitedHealthcare:
Pre-member platform

Lead Designer on the discovery, UX prototyping, and UI design direction of the UnitedHealthcare Pre-Member platform.

  • Fully responsive
  • Templatized framework and design system
  • WCAG compliant
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UnitedHealthcare:
Sparq app

Lead Designer on the discovery, UX prototyping, and UI design direction of the UnitedHealthcare employee internal app.

  • Native iOS and Android
  • Outlook and Adobe Experience Manager API integrations
  • WCAG compliant
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TR Account Experience

My design teams were tasked with creating a new Account experience. The project scope included a fully redesigned CX as well as migrating all TR customers to this single system.

  • Reusable component library
  • Customer self-service driven
  • Cohesive UX/UI across Digital eco-system
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TR Marketing Playbook

Create a framework for partnering with Marketing that reduces time and friction in the production lifecycle.

  • Content first strategy rooted in research
  • Self-service prep for Marketing team
  • Go-to-market time reduced 25%
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Design Ops: Figma Migration

Orchestrate and implement migrating to a new design platform.

  • Partner with Procurement and Legal for licensing
  • Catalog legacy work, migrate files, and train staff (120 designers, ~150 product/engineering staff)
  • Implement and roll out plan in ~4 months
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Let's discuss your next project

Contact me