eGifter

Origin of a Monster

Before I arrived, the C-suite had either little or rough exposure to what UIUX Design was. At game start, they had good reason to think all designers were the same, emotionally pushing pixels around with neither cool-headed forethought nor technical (or psychological) insight. Thus, my exceptionally talented new squad operated fast and loose, usually at the The Final Countdown, magically putting together strikingly caffienated builds, then unleashing them into the wild. They worked, yet re-usability, documentation, and scalable efficiency were traded in for breakneck speeds. It was typical New York Tech Startup style, and it was awesome. However, it was evident that clarity, communication, and cohesion were needed, especially if we were to navigate our ship safely through the tsunami of high-profile clients coming in.

Evolving our process beyond the "Ready. Fire. Aim." method without losing forward momentum was one of our greatest challenges, and in so doing, it carved us out of marble. The collective brain power of my squad was fantastic, as was their dedication, and channeling this towards Our Singular Vision via my living designs as "The Source of Truth" would prove to be one of my most rewarding accomplishments. We grew to become a far more efficient beast, fluidly adapting to incoming requests with upgrades seamlessly, and found calm clarity with my UIUX Design at core of our visual communication.

Rather than Business or Marketing going straight to Development with ever-shifting, vague requirements, my C-suite would instead come to me to Design it all first. We'd gather all requirements, think it through as a unified team, design, feedback, iterate, test... and then build. Our code got cleaner, our method smoother, our morale higher, and our products better.

• Implemented a design process as "The Source of Truth". This defined our sprints downstream with clear, vetted, and approved design definitions to build towards, improving efficiency and quality across the board.
• Designed and defined a component system as LEGO blocks at the atomic level, scaling up. Using a mobile-first, user-centered approach at the micro level, each element, component, page, flow, system, and solution would inherit the benefits all the way up the platform scale.
• Planted Design as The Pillar, both as foundation and bridge between Business, Marketing, Operations, Engineering and Development. Living design documentation and interactive prototypes gave us a shared vision, clear language, and focused targets, thus unifying everyone's buy-in for a holistically satisfying product set.
• Revamped Client Demos. Rather than dedicating full development cycles involving our CTO, Lead Engineer, and two Front-End Developers to build a functional “live” demo for every client, I’d instead deliver an interactive protoype to the same effect. This freed up immense resources while increasing the volume of client pitches Marketing could perform by a factor of five, leading to massive opportunities and returns.
• Iteratively test towards constant improvement. We'd continuously iterate upon our innovations at the interactive prototype stage, interview users and usage to measure A vs B results, watch the emergent winner, then evolve ever forward.