Koru Storefront
- Employer: Nautical Commerce
- My Role: Designer. Did all the things.
Designed a marketplace storefront for Koru, a distributor transitioning to a consignment business model via Nautical Commerce's platform, from an existing Shopify storefront.
- Designed multiple views, including the home page, product listing, and product detail pages.
- Updated existing brand to adapt to their new consignment business model.
- Implemented home page in CMS (Builder.io).
Neighbor UX/UI
- Employer: Neighbor Billing
- My Role: Designer. Did all the things.
Neighbor is a consumer billing platform that our team at Globalive Technology launched in three months, from concept to production. As head of design, I was responsible for the UX and UI for the entire platform, which included:
- Web Interface - Designed and guiding development of the Neighbor Hub (CSR portal) UX/UI.
- Bill Design - Goals included incorporating multiple types of services, making them easy to understand and brandable, while minimizing calls to support.
- Email Templates - Designed and implemented transactional emails.
Neighbor Brand
- Employer: Neighbor Billing
- My Role: Designer. Did all the things.
Once the first release of our Neighbor Billing platform had shipped, we then re-launched our website to sell what we had built, and to attract employees to the company.
In so doing, I identified the need to refresh the brand, but gave ourselves a short timeframe to develop our new look.
Fuzzies Gratitude Journal Concept
- My Role: Designer. Did all the things.
The practice of gratitude journaling has been shown to have many positive benefits. It's as easy as writing down the things you are grateful for on a daily basis.
I wanted to design a system that encourages people to get into the habit of gratitude journaling, and to share their gratitudes with others, using the technology they have at hand.
Achievers API Prototypes
- Employer: Achievers
- My Role: Designer and Developer. Did all the things.
- PHP, jQuery, Chrome extensions, Confluence & JIRA APIs, Outlook VBA
As Product Manager for the Achievers API, I built prototypes to demonstrate present and future use cases using the API and our data. This helped our non-technical stakeholders visualize the potential value we could provide, and enabled new use cases for our Sales team.
Prototypes included:
- Experiments on TVs, bringing recognition and personalities into our physical spaces.
- Chrome Extension as a vehicle for change: Ability to recognize the author of a Confluence page, or JIRA ticket; overriding product styles.
- Outlook macro and Sharepoint widget: Recognition in the flow of work.
Resinate Cannabis Brand
- Client: Resinate
- My Role: Designer. Did all the things.
I worked with the founder of a cannabis grower to design a brand for his company. The goal was to take his name "Resinate" and create a trustworthy brand.
As part of this project I developed the logo, patterns, colors, and examples of its application to an investor pitch deck and to product packaging.
Blueprint Product Launch Marketing
- Employer: Blueprint
- My Role: Designer and Developer. Did all the things.
For the release of Blueprint Requirements Center 2009, we needed a refreshed web presence to really show it off.
I designed and implemented a new site and other marketing pieces that accompanied it, including a teaser and email campaign.
Xenos Intranet
- Employer: Xenos
- My Role: Designer and Developer. Did all the things.
After joining a company, I found out that the business' existing Intranet consisted of a handful of static web pages with aging links to outdated and non-existent resources.
In an effort to resolve this, I took it upon myself to build a new Intranet from the ground up, with the goal of creating a tool by which employees could easily share useful information.
Other Case Studies
Other notable design exercises:
🎨 Daily UI: A 100 day project to improve my design skills.
🕹 Nintendo Switch Connect: A conceptual social app for fans of the Nintendo Switch™.
👕 Layer2: Brand style guide for an urban outdoor wear company.
Daily UI → Switch Connect → Layer2 →
Concussion Recovery App
- Client: Complete Concussion Management
- Employer: DevBBQ
- My Role: Product Manager
Product Manager for the modernization of a mobile app (React Native) that coaches and athletes can use to track recovery from concussions; clinicans can use a responsive web dashboard to perform baseline testing, and provide a recovery plan.
- Managed requirements and bi-weekly delivery.
- Localization: Facilitated language export/import for client translation.
- Test Scenarios: Developed and executed test plan (no QA resource).
- Email design + development.
- Involved client representative in scrums.
- Visit Complete Concussion Management →
Sports Fundraising & CMS Platform
- Client: Boon-Town
- Employer: DevBBQ
- My Role: Product Manager
Boon-Town partners with athletes and teams to raise funds and awareness for important causes.
The platform was used successfully for a campaign to raise funds for cancer research at Sunnybrook Hospital, with the support of Doug Gilmour, in honour of the late Gord Downie of The Tragically Hip.
- Managed requirements and continuous client delivery, from concept to launch.
- This project had challenges: Limited designer hours available; the scope evolved expanded to effectively build a CMS; and the branding and design completely changed mid-project.
At-Home Physiotherapy App
- Client: Therapia
- Employer: DevBBQ
- My Role: Product Manager
Therapia provides patients with physiotherapy home visits. The app connects patients with local home care physiotherapists throughout the GTA and beyond.
- Managed requirements and continuous client delivery, from concept to launch.
- Responsive web app.
- Visit Therapia →
Recruitment Platform MVP
- Client: wayHire
- Employer: DevBBQ
- My Role: Product Manager
WayHire provides select, passive candidates with discreet, career development opportunities with desirable employers. An applicant tracking system for recruiters.
Our client was ultimately acquired.
- Developed as a true MVP, over multiple engagements, around our client's specific process.
- Managed requirements and continuous client delivery, from concept to launch.
- Conducted discovery and managed roadmap.
Paymi
- Employer: DevBBQ
- My Role: Product Manager
Paymi is a consumer loyalty app that allows consumers to automatically earn cash when they shop with their existing credit or debit cards.
- Responsible for managing requirements and continuous delivery.
- Visit Paymi →
Other DevBBQ Client Projects
- My Role: Product Manager
Sphere
Facilitated discovery sessions for a life coaching platform.
Condo Pre-Build Reservation System
Managed requirements and continuous delivery of this responsive web app (Ruby).
Fanergy
Managed development of a prototype for a sports fan engagement app (Swift, iOS).
Waypoint Golf
Facilitated discovery sessions for a golf tournament booking platform.
Achievers Accessibility
- Employer: Achievers
- My Role: Product Manager. Requirements analysis and user testing.
Lead implementation of accessibility in our web platform, and raised awareness internally. This included:
- Interpreting WCAG levels, as it pertained to Achievers.
- Acquiring JAWS, and using tools where available for initial testing (WAVE, aChecker, Google).
- Finding an advocate in development who was interested in being the expert.
- Taking this developer to watch a user test further built empathy; they later did a tech talk on the subject.
Achievers Product Management Initiatives
- Employer: Achievers
- My Role: Product Manager
In addition to the API, I led improvement initiatives on a number of features on the Achievers employee recognition and rewards platform.
Login Flow Improvements
- Problem: Interviewing the customer support team revealed login challenges our members commonly had; password recovery was top reason members called in.
- Worked with Security team to ensure newer restrictions (partly due to ISO compliance) were taken into account: preventing brute-force attempts; modernizing CAPTCHA (making it accessible); increasing security questions; not letting the user know whether their email was on file or not... all in the context of a white-labelled platform.
- Solutions included: Clearer UI for login, and separation with SSO; password strength indicators and social proof (e.g., "Your password is weaker than 40% of users"); email improvements to try to avoid password emails from going to spam folders.
Transactional Email Improvements
PM for improving the design of all our transactional emails.
- Inventoried all emails, their triggers, and CTAs.
- Created a journey map + performed a JTBD analysis for each email.
- Researched and scoped requirements for CASL compliance.
- Result included improving copy, CTAs, and implementing email subscription interface.
Checkout Flow
- Improvements to the rewards catalogue checkout flow started as collection of "priorities" identified by our suppport team: Differences between physical (i.e., shipped) vs virtual (i.e., gift codes); notifications on order updates. I challenged their assumptions.
- Looked at data which revealed that users bookmarked the order status page, and didn't have a clear way back to that page otherwise.
- Mocked up changes to the checkout flow and tested it on new employees.
Administration System Improvements
- Observed the support team using our internal administration system, to see what common workflows looked like.
- Solutions included creating shortcuts to our ticket tracking system, to speed up access and to populate key screens, shortening time on calls.
Other PM Work
Other initiatives included:
- Holiday Emails - Our annually scheduled emails across all approved programs that encouraged redemptions.
- HRIS Integration Improvements - Executed requirements from our Professional Services team to improve the efficiency, integrity, and functionality behind data imports from HR systems.
Achievers Program Launches
- My Role: Program Launch Manager
Led the design and implementation of 30+ customized employee recognition programs, with annual contract values ranging from $120K to $3.5M.
Notable clients included Google, Levi’s, and Cineplex.
Worked with HR directors and senior stakeholders to determine requirements for recognition programs, including: program brand, design elements (in conjunction with graphic designer), components, budgets, and communication plan.
Blueprint Icon Redesign Project
- Employer: Blueprint
- My Role: Project Manager.
Our latest product release was a big one for our company.
While providing an important, fresh set of features, it also visually marked a turning point in the design of our application. Compared to the previous version, the new release had a more modern look-and-feel to it and relied on updated technology, such as a brand new windowing framework.
As a result, it became apparent that we needed somebody to direct the redesign of all of the icons and graphics, as things would have looked very much out of place on top of our shiny new toolbars. That somebody had to identify all 250 icons, work with somebody to refresh what we had, and help to come up with design ideas for the new features we were adding.
As it turned out, that somebody was me.
Article
The Big Freakin' Requirements Document Must Die. Here's Why.
Article I authored for Blueprint, achieving over 47K+ views on BA Times & republished elsewhere.
Whitepaper
Best Practices in ECM Migration
Whitepaper I wrote for Xenos (acquired by OpenText) to provide lead gen for their electronic content management migration services.
Article
WordCamp Toronto Redux
Wrote a couple articles for blogTO including this recap of that year's WordCamp conference.
Chris Gurney
I'm a Toronto-based product designer and former product manager who has toured the tech industry with a background in computer science, across a broad range of roles.
About Me