Engage

Enterprise SaaS

After working on the vendor side with Terra Dotta, I had the opportunity to work in-house with them on their CRM application. Prioritizing accessibility and DEI, I worked with Terra Dotta to build an application that would give Study Abroad offices a better tool to engage students that you didn’t fit the cookie-cutter studying abroad student profile.

I led the communication team on the company’s DEI board and, in writing the vision and mission, was able to guide the project with these statements in mind.

And Engage was born.

Role:

Lead (and only) UX & UI Designer

UX Engineer

1. Discover.

Discovery for Engage was uniquely quick as I was already sufficiently familiar with the ed-tech industry from my previous work with Terra Dotta. But, this was a new product with a completely different team. On my first day there, I integrated with the product team and worked as the only designer on the project. Alongside them, I documented use cases and client needs to get an accurate idea of the need Engage would fulfill.

2. Define.

In defining Engage, I worked on developing user stories that would help inform how we would design. I used my background in marketing communication and experience with enterprise-level ESPs to scope what the users would need and used some cursory competitive research to ensure the product would satisfy the defined customer need.

3. Design.

I created wireframes right away as the company had personas already developed and validated the concept through a Customer Advisory Board. I worked with the development team on Engage to work in sprints parallel to theirs, so they were well equipped to make progress. In working through the UI, I learned that Material wasn’t the best design system for us to use. I took the opportunity to define the building blocks of a design system while I designed Engage’s UI. From there, I learned how to use Zeplin, Storybook, Chromatic, and Angular so that I could start creating our own Design System that would satisfy all of our needs.

4. Deliver

Through the development process, I met with developers for weekly and ad hoc feature releases, offering design guidance to ensure the designed product was what customers needed.

Engage is currently in beta with customers, and iterative design and development are ongoing as the team and I receive feedback.