Finished "Creative Directions" by @ThatSperling this week and thought maybe I'd share some of my favourite moments. This book is chock full of insights, first-hand knowledge, anecdotes and perspectives from and for creative working people.
View MoreHello, I’m Brandon.
If the human is a question mark, design is the way that question is engaged.
From Are We Human? Notes on an Archaeology of Design by Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley
I'm a data-driven designer, educator and lifelong learner based in D.C. I'm fascinated by the ways we can apply technology to solve complex problems and I lead teams that build things people love to use.
What's it like to work with me?
About
Experience
My progression from the early days of the web to this "golden age" of design has given me the experience to lead dynamic and multidisciplinary teams through complex challenges.
Purpose
Lead teams to do great work. Blend and balance user needs with business requirements. Create a diverse and inclusive workplace. Advocate and agitate for innovation. Champion work-life balance. Grow the prestige and respect of the role of design to effect meaningful change.
Current role
Looking after the talented people that comprise the UX team at Taoti Creative, enabling them to unite their skillsets and act on insights that lead to innovative and effective design that moves the needle and delivers value to our clients.
Leadership
Ready to guide teams and influence individuals to face and embrace the challenges of constant change
Trust your team and earn their trust in return. Easier said than done. It requires a commitment to respecting and understanding–in a word, empathy. Most people are already motivated by an innate desire to come together and do great work. I am people-centred and it's my responsibility to amplify the ideas and output of my team, creating the long-term conditions for us all to achieve our common goal.
Mentorship
Engaged at the surface level to build strong bonds and inspire the next generation of young designers
Activating and retaining talented people carries an obligation to work with them on a long-term project of personal growth. Open communication and collaboration are essential to building trust that promotes not only individual development but also increases the performance of the entire team. Shifting business imperatives and career progression can create the need for a sense of direction. As a mentor, I make it a top priority to find time and make space to connect with colleagues, identify where they need to go and help guide them to their next milestone.
Stewardship
Committed to practices that drive sustainable business, unlock collaborative potential and foster cohesive culture
As we work towards the necessary and critical near term goals that define business cycles, we also need to plan, act and build with a longer vision. Doing the work of continual improvement, on ourselves as well as on our outcomes, ensures that we're creating a culture that balances the needs of individuals with the complex behaviours of teams. Establishing and reinforcing an inclusive, collaborative work environment leads to individual investment and a sense of ownership at all levels that benefits an entire organization.
Experience
Overseeing and expanding a dynamic, efficient, and innovative UX team dedicated to delivering exceptional value to clients.
Director of User Experience (UX) at Taoti Creative Washington, D.C. 2023 – Present
Responsibilities:
- Leading and adapting the user-centered design process that drives web, social, experiential, and tech projects for the entire agency.
- Hiring and retaining talent that produces best-in-class work and ensures exceptional client experience.
- Driving business growth by winning new clients and expanding agency capabilities through innovative service offerings and efficient productization of existing services.
- Developing AI/ML-assisted design philosophy, policy, processes, and tools, and driving adoption across the agency.
Project Successes:
- Led discovery and UX design of DC.Gov in collaboration with DC's Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO), emphasizing services, neighborhood localization, and persistent measurement, resulting in a $1M contract extension to build in Drupal 10.
- Led discovery and UX design for DARPA.Mil, delivering a simplified content strategy, improved navigation for faster information discovery, and more effective communication of office functions, program capabilities, and newly available opportunities.
- Managed dual responsibilities as Product Manager and Designer, leading a mobile-centric redesign of WSSC Water's online Customer Service strategy, including a reorganized sitemap around common problems, an emphasis on self-service resources, and social-friendly step-by-step guide pages to help customers quickly and definitively solve problems on their own.
- Simultaneously led discovery and UX design for two major transportation associations, International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association (IBTTA) and American Public Transportation Association (APTA), resulting in cross-pollination and insight sharing that produced distinct and innovative strategies for both projects.
Key Contributions / Highlights:
- Led AI integration by positioning Taoti as an AI co-creation thought leader at GovCon 2023, promoting ethical AI tool adoption, and improving wireframe quality with client-aligned content, significantly enhancing early-stage deliverables and client satisfaction.
- Developed detailed and accurate estimates in collaboration with the Business Development team, increasing the agency's average project win from $50K to $150K within one year, unlocking higher-paid project tiers and driving profitability.
- Single-handedly led the UX department through a period of high turnover, keeping projects on track, meeting milestones, and resolving internal and client challenges to ensure continuity with no disruption.
- Minimized general overhead by efficiently managing tasks, recording the lowest overhead on the creative team while contributing the most hours to internal investment projects.
- Redesigned and streamlined research, audit, and testing deliverables, achieving notable reductions in Discovery phase costs.
- Set high benchmarks for quality through hands-on reviews and QA, resolving performance issues to ensure project excellence.
- Drove efforts to re-engage inactive active clients, resulting in organic account growth, new projects, and fully booked roadmaps of impactful work for more than 10 long term clients.
Founded and led the Global Product and Creative teams to discover and design innovative services, products and channels that help travelers find the good out there
Associate Director of Product Design at Tripadvisor Singapore 2020 – 2023
Responsibilities:
- Directed a combined team of 12 across 2 business units, Global Product Innovation and Creative, with a mission to design, build and test innovative products and data-driven marketing content.
- Led design efforts for global Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and developed new products in APAC.
- Gathered global customer insights and acted on them to inform the development of key growth areas.
Key Contributions / Highlights:
- Founded the Global Product Innovation Team in Singapore and built the capacity to service multiple core products and new business challenges simultaneously.
- Recognized by the VP of Global Markets for excellent leadership and successful project management that enabled regional growth.
- Gained the trust of the U.S.-based product team to execute key initiatives and work on high-visibility surfaces and internal start-up initiatives which were otherwise closely guarded.
- Led the India Product Management Team to improve 2 booking platforms and increased revenue by $6.5M in 6 months.
- Built a strong collaborative culture and drove year-end business planning for the Global Markets team of 30 people.
- Established the Product Innovation Team of 7 under my direction and led large remote workshops during COVID.
- Transitioned the Innovation Team to product design and management, enabling a Strategist to be promoted to PM.
- Drove Destination Authority product updates and uncovered user insights that continue to inform Experiences strategy.
- Created the foundational innovation work leading to 2 of the 7 new product and service initiatives planned for 2023.
- Positioned Forums product and On-Trip Native App as organizational priorities for 2023 that enable travelers to share strategies for destination planning, guidance and booking.
- Realigned Plus Subscription team, reduced operating cost, identified value propositions, and advised on experiments.
Led and grew the APAC UX team through a challenging and demanding growth period
User Experience Lead at Huge Brooklyn, NY and Singapore 2013 – 2020
Responsibilities:
- Managed and mentored 3 UX Designers and 7 Product Designers.
- Helped establish the Singapore office and Huge’s user-centered approach to design in APAC.
- Collaborated across time zones with clients and teams on research, prototypes and workshops.
- Provided design education, professional development coaching and office culture building.
- Led experience design for clients and new business efforts in the Brooklyn office.
Key Contributions / Highlights:
- Relocated to Singapore to work with a specially formed team of strategists, designers and engineers with the goal of driving product transformation for Credit Suisse’s new Digital Private Banking platform.
- Supported discovery efforts with ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWI).
- Built a design system for responsive apps and trained a team of 5 designers to use and maintain it.
- Led the concepting and design of the Trading and FX features of the app which together booked $1B in trade fee revenue in its first year and won 12 industry awards over a 6 year period.
- Prototyped ideas that became new Credit Suisse projects (watch app, Daily Brief, and social bookmarking).
- Delivered design for External Asset Managers (EAM), Multi-Client Dashboard for family practices, Credit Suisse Invest and CRM.
- Established the experience foundations for 5+ SK–II pop-ups and retail stores in Japan, China and Singapore’s Changi Airport.
- Led the SK–II Super Powered Assistant counsellor app redesign and Magic Ring integration that expanded in-store beauty session bookings, sales, CRM and shopping features.
VP of Creative Design
Horangi Cyber Security in Singapore 2016 – 2018
Responsibilities:
- Led and mentored a team of 2 Product Designers and 3 Developers.
- Defined company identity, collateral and marketing, including the first generation of the client platform.
- Conducted internal research and organized client workshops in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Key Contributions / Highlights:
- Hired the first team of 2 designers and set them up as an internal design agency located in Singapore.
- Led the design team through an initial release of the client experience platform resulting in fundraising and awards:
- Horangi raised $20M USD in a Series B round led by private equity firm Provident Growth in 2020.
- Horangi was one of the first cyber security firms in Asia to attain SOC 2 Type II Certification.
- Horangi was certified as an AWS Security Competency partner.
- Horangi was awarded 2021 Amazon Web Services (AWS) ISV Partner of the Year in ASEAN.
- Horangi Warden was named a High Performer Across Multiple Cloud Security Categories on G2 Winter Reports 2022.
- Designed automation for lower-cost aspects of network testing and conducted user testing in Singapore, Indonesia and Philippines.
- Developed internal management tools and designed an MVP for tracking client relationships.
- Revamped the website, Warden platform and directed a brand refresh including recruiting material.
Director of Experience Design
Weber Shandwick & Powell Tate in Washington, D.C. 2012 – 2013
Responsibilities:
- Managed the digital team of freelancers and engineers to build campaign materials and websites.
- Provided creative direction, technical advice, narrative framing and marketing strategy.
- Facilitated digital transformation to help the public relations team adopt user-centered practices.
- Drove freelance agencies’ performance and grew the UX discipline within Powell Tate.
Key Contributions / Highlights:
- Streamlined the UX discipline to bring user-centered design processes and practices into the D.C. office.
- Developed new business in the UAE and scoped campaign creative materials for retainer clients.
- Helped launch Creative Mornings D.C. by assisting with their first event at the Gibson Guitar Showroom.
- Launched “This is Personal” campaign with the National Women's Law Center.
User Experience Instructor
General Assembly in Singapore 2015 – 2022
- Organized 25 full day bootcamp workshops attended by an average of 15 people per day on topics ranging from user-centered design and research to wearables and designing for augmented reality (AR).
- Hosted events to enable students from graduating classes of the UX Design Immersive program to network and learn alongside working professionals.
UX Designer & Engineer
Free Range Studios in Washington, D.C. 2007 – 2012
- Designed and developed user-centered tools, platforms and websites.
- Created identity and communications collateral for progressive brands and nonprofits.
- Took leadership to define the User Experience role and standards for development and hiring.
Web & Interactive Designer
Hirshorn Zuckerman Design Group in Washington, D.C. 2005 – 2007
- Concepted and designed richly interactive web sites and produced multimedia and animation.
- Advised the marketing team on creative and technology direction for projects in the real estate, entertainment, sports and lifestyle sectors.
Web & Creative Designer
WebFirst in Washington, D.C. 2004 - 2005
- Designed mission critical applications and collaboration software for govt and non-profit clients.
- Led the creation of company identity and marketing materials
- Developed training materials to transition clients to the use of content management systems.
Creds
Designing for humans
More than a decade of solid user-centered research, testing and interaction design.
Teaching at GA
Curriculum author of popular and relevant monthly Bootcamp courses for General Assembly.
Making & Critiquing
Staying sharp with side projects and speaking at conferences such as SXSW and WebVisions.
Motto
Be Valued. Be Valuable.
An easy enough concept but one that causes critical reflection and inspires new energy upon each reconsideration. To be valued, we must trust yet be vigilant of those we surround ourselves with and work for. To be valuable, we have to accept that those same people want and need things from us and that we are obligated to do our best in service to them.
The curious dance we do within those reciprocal roles very much defines us as human beings. To that end, I've dedicated my attention and work efforts to detecting and designing solutions to real human concerns, promoting user-centric technology and fostering conditions that contribute to a more inclusive future.
Social
Diving into Dan Mall's "Design That Scales"
- Strategy
- DesignOps
Documenting life and keeping and eye open for the unexpected and balanced beauty of sacred geometry
I’m currently leading the User Experience team at Taoti in Washington, D.C.
As Director of UX Design I'm looking after (and growing) an innovative, lean and effective team that delivers value to our clients. Get in touch with me to discuss speaking engagements and other professional opportunities.
My full work history is available on LinkedIn at btiny.link/linkedin
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