eCommerce Tower Lead

In 2021 I started as the eCommerce Experience Lead. The oversaw 6+ departments in both the B2B and B2C spaces. I helped formulate and maintain product roadmaps as well as processes on each project. Our tower leads the company in maturity.

Strategy

From Undefined to Research Driven

When I first started with the tower it was struggling. The designers were stressed and unhappy. The product had no defined roadmap. I lead the charge in making the tower a research-driven tower in UX partnered with the business to define the roadmap by understanding the user journey. We defined the process each feature needed to go through as well as the current status of each feature.

Business Discovery > Feature Discovery > UX Enabler > Usability Testing > UI Design

Turning Our Tower Into a Team

I started tower-specific ceremonies within our tower including Standups, Retrospectives, and a Team Demo.

From Discovery to Product

After research completed their discovery analysis, I helped decipher the findings amongst the product. For example, the analysis may determine designing a setup on one product that reflects on another product. This breakdown would allow designers to properly understand and weigh the work.

Cross-Functional Alignment

Connecting Epics, Features, and Stories

The UX team was managing their work in the project management tool TFS but using an unconventional method. Enablers were being created as features. Initially, I helped align the UX team to manage our own backlog but eventually, I worked with the product teams to align all the teams under one board. We managed our user stories on our board and connected them to features on the product board. Development and Core teams would do the same so you could properly track the work contributed into a feature and ensure it’s gone through the right steps of the process.

Properly Scoping Work

When I started researchers were trying to conduct full studies and designers were trying to design large features in a 2-week span. This caused stress and compromise in the quality of work. I helped advocate research to divide their work into recruitment, testing, and analysis. The work was scoped individually and weighed so they could be divided if necessary. UX Enablers were also divided when necessary into Concept and Design user stories.

Design System Implementation

Introducing Page Level Components

Coming in as a designer as well as witnessing other new designers start, I noticed there was a big problem. People were not sure which design was the most up-to-date designs. Our way of aligning with iterations was to create a new file per user story. That meant you had to dig through old files in order to find the most recent screen. This led to design updates and time being lost. I introduced page-level components to the product UI kits. This took combinations of components from our core UI kit and made organisms that combined to make pages. Once a design was completed it was added to the page level kit, ready to be used to show a flow or enhanced for the next feature.

Training and Alignment

As the team expanded, we got different levels of knowledge. I created meetings to help share tips and updates on the design system. The primary goal was to help grow the skills of the team and make them more efficient. It also allowed for open discussions about redundancy or problems in the process, allowing us to adapt as a team.

The First to Adopt the Design System

During my time as the lead, a core design system was created. I helped push my product into implementing the new design system, thus becoming the first product to adopt the new designs and embark on a path of aligning our tools.