I Am Alex Milroy
and I live UX

  • Design

  • Research

  • Testing

The Services I offer

Research

Building the best solution for users needs is always my priority. With experiences in new product development, and existing product upgrades I have the experience to handle any design project.

Development

Strong management skills let me coordinate the on time delivery of multiple objectives from domestic and international teams. I ensure objectives are delivered on time, and nothing is ever lost in translation.

Design

User experience cant solve a problem without knowing the problem. With my extensive research experience, identifying users friction points is quick and painless.

Project Management

A working knowledge of HTML5, CSS, Bootstrap, and Java allows me to navigate, modify, and create content at the leading edge of technology, and stay in front of the curve.

Hello, I am Alex Milroy...

I'm a user experience designer working in Seattle, Washington. I work with companies like Microsoft and Affirma Consulting and I am currently looking for my next opportunity.
Creating memorable user experiences is not just a job for me, it's a passion.

View my Works

The works I am proud of

iOS MDM Integration

Esper



iOS MDM Integration

Overview
  • Overview: Esper was founded as an Android only MDM platform to manage nearly any type of Android device in an organizations fleet from one place, drastically simplifying deployment and management of large scale fleets of Android devices. The iOS integration initiative for Esper centered on how we would integrate iOS devices into Esper’s existing Dev Ops platform. The goal was to include iOS device support with the minimum number of changes to the existing product.
    • Role: Senior Product Designer
  • My role was to drive the design of the additional device platform integration project. I would focus on including iOS device support while using iOS as a testing ground to understand if we could include all Apple devices, as well as Windows and Linux based devices in the future. I researched and documented the requirements for MDM management within the Apple ecosystem. Then working with stakeholders and engineering to generate designs for brand new areas of the platform, and modifications to existing aspects of the platform that would need to change. In this role I took the project from initial inception, through ideation and design through to a completed MVP to be tested with our two largest accounts.
    • Project Description
  • Esper had discovered that many customers were operating mixed fleets of iOS and Android devices. Our current customers really liked how easy to use our product was, and wanted to manage their iOS devices from the same place as their Android devices. To increase business with current and new customer's leadership decided to include additional device support in our platform while retaining our simple management interface and without dramatically changing our existing user experience. We would use iOS device integration as a way to understand if we could expand to additional device ecosystems in the future like Windows and Linux device management, and if our customers valued these changes.
    • Process
  • Understanding Apple's MDM requirements: The first thing to do was understand how to onboard devices to our platform. For Apple devices we can only communicate with Apple Business Manager (ABM), which then sends commands to the devices. This required setting up tokens to connect our services. I defined what commands we would need to send to Apple devices, and what information to request back from these devices. I determined we needed to setup 3 tokens to view and communicate with devices, send messages, and manage applications. I built story maps around the steps the users would have to follow, and services they would use to setup these tokens which would guide design and put all stakeholders on the same page.
  • Designing the token management page: Next I began designing an interface that would walk users through setup and management of each different token. I intentionally designed these pages to be modular so if we wanted to add new services in the future, a framework was already setup to follow. Each token would be treated individually, allowing for simple granular management. We did not control all aspects of this process so I added direct links to every location a user would have to visit with simple instructions, goals, and included feedback for every step. Token setup would walk users through a single page multi step process. Users could follow each step in order, or skip directly to specific steps without having to transit multiple pages. This kept power users in control, while ensuring new users would not get stuck in the process. I also designed feedback toasts, iconography, and error states for completed and failed actions. Since tokens would expire after a year or disconnect after an account change with Apple, I added messaging to alert users about various token connection issues.
  • Installing apps for MVP: Apps were handled differently between iOS and Android. Android could simply upload apps, or add them from the Play Store. All free and paid iOS apps first had to be purchased through the App store before they would become available to install on devices. Additional fields needed to be added to our app install process to accommodate inventory management for iOS. For the MVP I focused on the two primary install methods, device level install for single device apps, and group level install for adding apps to all devices in a group. I modified our existing experience, adding additional fields to select device type, and to show available inventory. I also designed toast messaging for install/uninstall actions and inline error messaging in cases of insufficient inventory.
  • Installing Apps for the future: While working on the MVP, I questioned our current app install process. I theorized that users did not care about device OS, and would want to manage them all as if they were the same platform. Sensing opportunity I designed the unified app installation approach which was presented to stakeholders as a future / stretch goal. Initially I ideated for users to select an app from a list and that app being installed on all devices in a group. However this would be difficult to maintain. Iterating on the idea, I created an interface to allow for queuing of multiple app installations at once through a single command. Users could select up to 6 apps to install at once, consolidating a six step process into one step.
  • Device tables: Our device tables needed to be updated to handle new iOS and Android mixed fleet scenarios. New fields would need to be added, and existing fields needed modifications. I audited all existing fields across all effected tables, and documented fields required modification, and fields that needed to be added. With this information I created a design matrix, which developers could reference to know what each column header and how each cell of information would look for each device type. This allowed for easy reference of each possible state to quickly gain acceptance from stakeholders.
  • Device details pages: The device details page contained every detail about a device, its hardware specs, software, and its status. I audited all existing fields, and documented which required changes, and which needed new additions. To keep engineering effort to a minimum, any fields not supported on screen would show “not available” text in their fields instead of being hidden. This allowed us to retain the location for each data point across all devices. Users could remain accustomed to looking in the same place for data without having to search across the interface. I designed a matrix of possible field states to help quickly gain acceptance, and provide an easy reference for engineering.
  • Device Filters: The last component was for device filters. Filtering could be done on many facets of our devices, but only three would need to be changed; The OS, device properties, and group name filters. OS received the most changes, to separate out different OS types and their version numbers, while allowing for modular expansion in the future. I designed accordion menus to hold each OS and their version numbers, the order in which OS versions would be displayed, select all functionality, and visibility into total number of OS's selected.
    • Major Accomplishments
  • Working closely with the remote development team, we were able to design and build a functional MVP interested clients could use within 4 months.
  • I was able to integrate iOS into our existing platform without dramatic changes, and had created a framework which could be used to add additional platforms in the future.
  • I was able to design future solutions beyond the MVP to improve customer experiences in multiple areas like app installations.
    • Toughest Challenges
  • The toughest challenge was working around all the constraints of our existing MDM system, and the new and different way iOS devices worked. Understanding the different ways we could interact with each device and its effects on our platform required a lot of organization, critical thinking, and patience.
  • Keeping all stakeholders on track for an MVP was also very difficult. Through the design and engineering process, I had to consistently advocate to keep our scope limited. As a designer who wants the best solution, it was difficult to advocate against more involved but ultimately better user experiences to keep our projected timeline. I was able to work through this by documenting when these decisions were made, and creating solutions to them that could be picked up after we had validated the initial MVP.
    •

    Advanced Licensing Selection Interface

    Nutanix



    Advanced licensing selection

    Overview
  • Overview: The advanced licensing project for Nutanix supported gaps in existing licensing features that will allow users to manually select specific licenses and license types for their clusters, including multiple types of upgrade licenses.
    • Role: UX Design & Research
  • My role for this task was primarily UX Design, testing and validation. I worked with stakeholders, engineering, and other UX and visual designers to best understand the problem space, and requirements. I collected research, generated UX designs, collaborated with other designers, designed, recruited for, and ran multiple rounds of user testing, ideated on designs, and ultimately delivered designs and assisted in their implementation.
    • Project Description
  • This feature is a branch off of the normal licensing flow where the licensing portal would automatically select licenses for users clusters. This interface allows users to select what clusters they wish to license, select their license meter (either capacity or hardware based), and then go on to select licenses to meet their cluster requirements. This puts users in control, allowing them to select specific licenses which are especially important for users who want to co term all of the licenses to expire at or around the same time.
    • Process
  • Where to put the advanced licensing button - One of the first problems to solve was to decide where users go to begin the advanced licensing flow. It was initially hidden under an actions menu after a user selects clusters, but this was not seen to be visible or discoverable enough. Additionally, advanced licensing will only work on one cluster at a time to keep the process simple enough. This was based on user feedback from previous attempts at multi cluster licensing, where users complained that the concept was too confusing. I prototyped designs where advanced licensing would be a secondary option of a primary CTA button, but ran into problems of allowing only one cluster to be selected at a time before advanced licensing became available. The current proposal is to have the advanced licensing button come before cluster selection.
  • Should I use popups for the entire flow, or use them only for license selection – Another problem was how to show progression through the selection interface. Initially the entire process was carried out in a popup, but I was uncomfortable with the lack of visible progression with this design. I began working on a hybrid model where only license selection would take place in a popup. This would allow for opening and closing of popups for selection, affording a concept of progression without the need for additional progress bars or multiple visually similar pages.
  • Designing the License Selection Interface - The process of actually selecting licenses was fairly simple, as it is an interface we have designed before and could recycle it into this interface. The harder part was handing the entry into, and exit from the license selection interface, and showing useful feedback to the user. I decided to split license selection into different groups, so a user would only be selecting one type of license at a time, be it a node appliance, node software, core, or flash. This would help ensure that users would not get confused about what type of license they were currently selecting for. I initially used a set of accordions to show users what licenses they would have to select. Users would open multiple accordions and be presented with a list of licenses to select from for each license type. As I worked on this approach, it quickly became clear that space was limited, and this interface did not do a good job of showing progression, feedback, or being very discoverable. I eventually broke each license type selection down to individual actions to make the process more clear. This helped reinforce progression to the user, and made the process more focused, hopefully requiring less cognitive load for the user to complete the process.
  • Visualizing Progress – The hardest aspect of this project was how to show progression in this interface. How could I show the user that they were making progress on their license selections in interfaces that would be re used multiple times. By utilizing popups for license selections, and different visual states for the screens in-between I felt confident that users could visualize progression. This helped improve the concept of progression, and would help keep the user focused on bite sized tasks in a multi step process.
    • Major Accomplishments
  • I was able to take a previous project that handled only upgrade license selection, and include it into this interface. This meant that the user could complete multiple tasks from one location, using one interface, instead of multiple at once.
  • The design passed through user testing sucessfully with only minor modifications required based on user feedback. The core concept was proven to be sucessful, and did not require any major rework.
  • Personally I felt proud that I was able to design and build an interface that would be sucessful under so many different requirements and needs.
    • Toughest Challenges
  • One of the primary challenges of this project was deciding what to keep from existing designs, and what to change. I did not want to increase tech debt unnecessarily, and wanted to try and work within the confines of existing designs as much as possible. This not only helps cut down on tech debt, but also provides a smoother transition for users when first encountering new designs or interfaces.
  • Understanding the requirements for this project was another large challenge for me. I didn’t fully understand what was required initially, and revisited meeting recordings and my notes multiple times before I felt like the requirements clicked for me. It then took additional meetings with stakeholders and designers to check my understanding was correct, and that my approach would work.
  • While working on this project, other stakeholders were heavily involved in a priority project that was quickly approaching its deadline. This meant that meetings would be consistently rescheduled to work around others shifting schedules. It also meant that the runway for designing this solution continued to extend. It required me to be flexible, and conscious of others time to ensure that this project kept moving forward without taking stakeholders away from other higher priority tasks.
    •

    Licensing Reports

    Nutanix



    Licensing Reports

    Overview
  • Overview: This project encompassed adding a number of additional reports to the licensing portal. This would give users additional insights into their license inventory, through reports like available licenses, used licenses, NFR licenses, decommissioned license, and many others.
    • Role: UX Design & Research
  • I began this project primarily as a user researcher. I Knew that I had the opportunity to deliver on prior customer requests I had heard to display more relevant data on licensing tables. I designed and distributed a quantitative survey to uncover the most important data points to our customers. I analyzed the results and documented my findings, using my research to help influence what data to show on each reports on screen table. Additionally I also worked as the UX designer, helping to design the new information architecture that would be required to navigate between the reports.
    • Project Description
  • Early in the project it was decided that all reports could not just be listed in the navigation sidebar, as it would confuse and dilute the navigation of the licensing portal. It was up to me to design a new Information Architecture with which to display these different reports, as well as to determine what data points would be most beneficial to show users in each of these on screen tables for each report.
    • Process
  • Deciding what columns of data would be the most beneficial for users to see for each different report - Based on previous feedback I had received from users, I knew that the table data was not providing everything users wanted to see. No one had followed up with users about what data they found most important, and least important. To solve this problem, I built a survey and distributed it to users, receiving over 75 responses. I used this data to determine what data points to include in each report, based directly on quantitative feedback from our users.
  • Analyzing survey data – Analyzing the results after the data came back proved harder then expected, due to the number of ways the data could be reviewed. Initially I split the users into four groups based on the number of licenses they owned (1-25, 26-50, 51-100, 100+ licenses), but this left one large group (1-25 licenses) and three smaller groups. This left the data a little inconclusive since the three smaller groups had less responses combined then the one larger group. After consulting with the research team, they suggested combining the three smaller groups together, and comparing the 1-25 license group against 26+ license group to provide more statistically significant results.
  • Advocating to change the table data and for custom table data - After completing the research, I then had to advocate again for the results to be incorporated into designs moving forward. I got resistance and push back from stakeholders who were resistant to want to implement different table data for each report. To convince these stakeholders to adopt the changes, I reviewed the results with them, pointing out why these results were relevant and significant enough to influence each reports unique data. These discussions eventually evolved to say that my research would provide a good foundation for the default presentation of the results, but that a future implementation of this feature would include customizable table data, allowing users to exactly customize their tables data fields.
  • Information Architecture Generation – I moved on to begin designing the information architecture for the reports themselves. I used a card sorting activity with colleagues to help identify like groups of reports into buckets. Once we determined the buckets for the groups of reports, we also worked on the names and order of the reports within those buckets. I worked on a number of designs for how to display the navigation on the interface, a number of which are still potential contenders for final implementation as this project nears completion.
    • Major Accomplishments
  • I was able to take a previous project that handled only upgrade license selection, and include it into this interface. This meant that the user could complete multiple tasks from one location, using one interface, instead of multiple at once.
  • The design passed through user testing sucessfully with only minor modifications required based on user feedback. The core concept was proven to be sucessful, and did not require any major rework.
  • I was able to expedite the Information Architecture redesign process by generating multiple designs, and using them to have more meaningful conversations with stakeholders, and to more quickly and confidently arrive at a solution that everyone was satisfied with.
    • Toughest Challenges
  • The primary challenge for this project was fitting in a round of user research into the schedule. I had to work quickly and efficiently if I wanted to conduct the research, analyze it with our internal research team, and make the results actionable without delaying the design.
  • The other challenge I faced was getting stakeholders to buy into the results of the research. Some stakeholders were reluctant to remove specific columns of data, and it took multiple conversations and multiple ways of displaying the data to reinforce my findings, and which data was important to include, and which could be removed
    •

    Dark Site Licensing Compliance

    Nutanix



    Dark Site Licensing Compliance

    Overview
  • Overview: Dark Site operators are those users who operate an internal network that is generally completely disconnected from the global internet The Dark Site Licensing project was to find a way to ensure dark site users checked in to ensure licensing consumption remained compliant, did not use more features or capacity then was purchased, and to gain analytical usage data from our dark site clusters.
    • Role: UX Research
  • My role in this project was to design a solution that would allow Nutanix to ensure that its dark site users were not utilizing more resources on their dark sites then they had existing in their license inventory. What my role primarily ended up being was as a researcher to uncover information about how dark sites operated, who operated them, and what environments they operated in. As the project progressed, my role shifted to be an advocate against implementation of the feature, requiring me to build and document a strong case against development and implementation of this feature. I wrote a clear and concise report that included all the information I gathered, my research, my conclusion, and all evidence I could use to back up my case. I used this document to increase visibility of the issue, and facilitate conversations between dark site account reps and decision makers.
    • Project Description
  • Nutanix has almost no visibility into how customers license and utilize dark sites, and wanted to try and ensure that dark site customers remained in compliance. This was important because dark site users represented a large proportion of yearly revenues. We wanted to try and see if there was a way we could collect usage data and analytics from dark site operators, and have them transmit that data back to our licensing portal to check compliance. This would prove to be very difficult, due to the rules surrounding the transportation of any data into or out of a dark site, in addition to the restrictions on how this data could be transferred.
    • Process
  • Speaking with Dark Site account reps - I spoke to 5 different dark site account reps individually, and documented my findings from these conversations. I wanted to get a better idea of what dark sites were, where they operated from, who operated them, and why they would operate a dark site. I learned most dark site users were either military or federal agencies generally involved in defense and intelligence. Because of the secretive nature of dark site operators, I was unable to speak to any dark site users directly. Learning more about the physical implementation of dark sites proved difficult. It required multiple conversations and lines of questioning to get a clear understanding of the varied conditions dark site hardware existed in. These locations could range from office buildings, to navy vessels, to portable networking hardware that could be deployed in the field.
  • Data Transportation Problem – Getting data into or out of a dark site would be very difficult, as in most cases data could only be transferred through burning CD's, handwriting information onto paper, or some other laborious process. This data would then likely have to pass through multiple checks and users to ensure that data coming into or out of a dark site was sanitized and did not include confidential or classified information. This process could take from hours to weeks to complete. To try to solve this problem I used the research from these conversations to begin ideating on a possible solution to the problem of transporting data from a dark site to the licensing portal to check for compliance. Solving this problem would require designing or inventing a new way to transport data into or out of a dark site in the easiest and most simple way possible, while not relying on a physical connection between the dark site and Nutanix servers. I thought about using QR codes that the dark site could generate and be scanned into the portal, or print outs that would include a hash # that could be input into the licensing portal.
  • Understanding the features repercussions - It eventually became clear that implementing this feature would require lots of extra work on the customers part to transport usage data between the dark site and licensing portal to ensure compliance. This was a problem because we were asking for a lot of extra work from the customer, without any clear benefit for those users who up until this point did not have to complete this work. Through talking with account reps, it became abundantly clear that if we implemented this feature dark site operators would look to move to software solutions that were easier to implement and manage, which would mean a mass exodus from our platform to that of our competition. With the knowledge that Nutanix would lose customers over this feature, I had to find a way to communicate these findings clearly and succinctly to decision makers. They needed to be made aware of the potential issues with the request, and what it would mean for one of our largest sources of revenue
  • Advocating for project cancelation – Knowing that implementation of this feature could jeopardize existing customer relationships, I spoke at length with my manager about my findings. We created a plan where I would document all of my findings into a research report, and we would set up a meeting between stakeholders and the dark site account reps to discuss the situation. I moderated the meeting to drive the discussion, ensure that all important points were covered, and that my stakeholders fully understood what we were asking of our customers, and what would happen if we implemented this feature. This convinced my stakeholders to stop development of this project. Those stakeholders were then able to take my report, and present it to executive leadership. Ultimately our plan worked, and leadership decided that based on the possible loss of customers and revenue, that this feature should not be implemented as requested, and that a better solution would have to be found in the future.
    • Major Accomplishments
  • To save Nutanix a large revenue stream, and retain positive customer relationships with one of our largest customer segments.
  • I felt very proud that I was able to successfully advocate to put the user first and use the research and data I had collected to put the user first and stop what the UX department lead would later call “a potentially disastrous feature implementation”.
  • My research report was both succinct and detailed enough to stand alone, and to be delivered unedited to executive leadership for review and consideration.
    • Toughest Challenges
  • One of the primary challenges of this project was deciding what to keep from existing designs, and what to change. I did not want to increase tech debt unnecessarily, and wanted to try and work within the confines of existing designs as much as possible. This not only helps cut down on tech debt, but also provides a smoother transition for users when first encountering new designs or interfaces.
  • Understanding the requirements for this project was another large challenge for me. I didn’t fully understand what was required initially, and revisited meeting recordings and my notes multiple times before I felt like the requirements clicked for me. It then took additional meetings with stakeholders and designers to check my understanding was correct, and that my approach would work.
  • While working on this project, other stakeholders were heavily involved in a priority project that was quickly approaching its deadline. This meant that meetings would be consistently rescheduled to work around others shifting schedules. It also meant that the runway for designing this solution continued to extend. It required me to be flexible, and conscious of others time to ensure that this project kept moving forward without taking stakeholders away from other higher priority tasks.
    •

    Map and Hotel Booking

    Virtuoso



    Updates to hotel booking experience and map view design

    Overview
  • Overview: Virtuoso is a luxury travel company that provides access to their network of luxury hotels, properties, tours, cruises, and experiences across the world to their travel advisor network. Travel advisors would primarily access this network of information through the virtuoso website, which would provide listings, and detailed information about their products. Tasks like booking cruise or hotel, selecting amenities, researching dates, and locating contact information were all conducted through a member portal on the website.
    • Role: UX Design & Research
  • My role was to lead the UX research and design tasks for the hotel booking experience, and that larger map project that would grow out it. I was responsible for conducting research, analyzing results and generating reports from the research, ideating and designing solutions to the problems I uncovered, advocating for the adoption of these changes, and driving the design, documentation, and development of the features after acceptance from the stakeholders.
    • Project Description
  • The project was initially brought to me by a product manager who wanted to update the way we presented nightly hotel rates to our users. We needed a way to show live hotel rate data to our users, instead of using inaccurate cached data. This led our users to lose trust in the accuracy of our data, and forced them to do additional research outside of our network to ensure they found the best price for their clients.
    • Process
  • Research - I began this project by conducting research with our advisor network. I presumed problems with our hotel booking experience extended beyond just inaccurate pricing data, and that a number of small tweaks would deliver on the overall ask of improving our users experience with the tool. I created an online survey, which would help me understand our advisors most important needs when searching for a hotel, and what they did not like about our current implementation. I also spoke directly with our advisors and our extended hotel advisory committee, which included travel agent members, hotel operators, and internal resources.
  • Key takeaways from research – With actionable research, I uncovered multiple pain points our advisors were facing. It confirmed the pricing issue was forcing our users to leave our site to hunt for the best pricing on our properties. Most importantly it uncovered that pricing was not the primary issue facing our users, it was a lack of transparency into the physical locations of our properties. It also uncovered that search results were inaccurate.
  • Generating prototypes – After identifying the friction points of our users, I began to generate prototypes to illustrate potential solutions to these problems Notable features of my prototypes included loading animations for the hotel pricing, a type to complete auto suggest function with categorized suggestions for the search box that would return more accurate search results, and a map feature that would show the location and price of all our properties within a certain area on a map.
  • Advocating changes – I utilized the prototypes to present my findings to the product manager and development team. I walked them through my research, and by using my wireframes, I was able to illustrate exactly how these changes would provide benefits for our users and company. After defending my design decisions with data, articulating my ideas and their benefits, and answering all of the stakeholders questions the decision to adopt all of my recommendations was made.
  • Increased support across the organization – o As support for the map feature increased, I worked with product managers and internal resources to write documentation, describe all features in detail, and build support through the organization for the potential of the map feature which could be distributed across the site beyond just hotels. I continued work on my suggested features described above. I created multiple wireframes ranging from low to high fidelity, including functionality where necessary.
    • Major Accomplishments
  • I was able to expand the scope of the initial request to include improvements to the booking experience that I had uncovered during my research, and deliver solutions on these additional design issues.
  • Build a coalition within the organization for the map feature that advanced it from a stretch goal, into a high priority feature that was immediately fast tracked into development.
  • Gained additional backing from VP levels to integrate the map feature into a core component of a consumer focused redesign of the virtuoso website.
    • Toughest Challenges
  • Convincing stakeholders that an expansion of scope was necessary to provide measurable improvements to the initial request.
  • Keeping track of the ever expanding list of stakeholders who were interested in implementing the map feature on their products.
  • Maintaining momentum for the project through layoffs due to COVID 19 pandemic.
    •

    Web Store Redesign

    CPE Store



    Redesign of an existing web store and education portal

    Overview
  • Overview: CPE Store is an e commerce store specializing in the sale of educational accounting books and certifications in a number of subjects. The websites outdated shopping experience was not converting enough users into customers, and required a redesign that addressed a number of issues.
    • Role: UX Designer
  • I was brought in at the beginning of the site redesign to explore how a user focused design could improve sales of both core, and add on products. I conducted research and developed multiple concepts into prototypes that would enhance the users journey through the shopping experience.
    • Project Description
  • The requirements were to create a new shopping experience that minimized the number of clicks and page changes as users browsed through the stores product catalog, and required that the entire catalog of courses for a given subject be displayed in the navigation onscreen at all times. It was also requested that we find a way to highlight some of the stores features, including bulk discounts and additional tests for colleagues.
    • Process
  • I started by doing a competitive analysis to see if any other retailers utilized designs similar to the clients requirements. At this time, much of the clients requirements were not embraced across the web, and the design requested would break from standard e commerce design conventions. After consulting with management to confirm that we wanted to create and embrace a new design paradigm for this project I began sketching wireframes for possible solutions. These initial sketches were used to begin developing features, layouts and interactions.
  • Parallel Scrolls – To achieve the clients request of a single page browsing experience with a persistent navigation, I designed a parallel scroll design, that would include a persistent navigation in a vertical scrolling bar, next to a larger vertical scrolling content area. This allowed users to locate specific content using the smaller navigation, and for us to expose all product details and buying options in the content area.
  • Cart confirmation and appeals for add ons – To help inform users of the stores bulk discounts and tests for a friend offerings, I combined the added to cart confirmation interaction, with an appeal for these specific features. After users added a book to their cart, I used a popup as the feedback mechanism and introduced multiple paths the user may choose from to complete their journey, from adding additional tests so they could get certified with a colleague, to going to checkout to complete their purchase, or to continue shopping to achieve a quantity based discount. Each path was clearly laid out with what the user could expect to be doing next out of each option.
  • Checkout Experience – I designed the checkout experience to re iterate the stores features and additional offerings, and to make creating an account with the store easy. By using different visual styles I was able to distinguish cart contents from feature add on’s. I also included the ability to sign in from the cart to increase checkout speed for existing users, or to create an account after order completion that would use information from checkout to pre populate user creation fields, and thus simplifying account creation.
    • Design Handoff
  • Finally I had to get the client and management onboard with my designs, so I built a functional prototype of the design that I could use to showcase the design and features in an interactive demo. This led to a quick acceptance by the client and management, and allowed me to quickly generate hifi designs and redlines straight from my prototype.
    • Major Accomplishments
  • I was able to design a solution that accomplished all client requirements while improving the user journey
  • Successfully took the project from kickoff to visual design handoff on time and under budget
  • Received quick design acceptance through the use of an interactive prototype
    • Toughest Challenges
  • Working within the clients requirements of a persistent on screen navigation and single page browsing paradigm was difficult to design for without oven encumbering the user with too much information. By utilizing visual separation between elements in the design I was able to set up a visual hierarchy that would guide users through this new experience

    • User Experience Design

    Microsoft

    Enterprise Management Software Design for Microsoft

    Overview
  • ESXP was an internal tool being developed by Microsoft to provide a consolidated app experience for multiple tools in a project managers workflow. It was intended to display data and metrics from across projects and engagements in one place. It primary features included tools to manage staffing, planning, and financing of a project, among others.
    • Role: UX Designer
  • I worked as a UX Designer, joining the team midway through the project to design interactions and experiences for various un developed tools for a specific user group. I worked with a team of other designers and researchers to develop solutions to features guided by using user experience design principals. I would be responsible for speaking with stakeholders, developing feature requirements, designing and prototyping solutions, presenting solutions to the broader project group, creating functional prototypes, conducting user testing, and generating final hifi’s, redlines, and interaction specifications.
    • Project Description
  • ESXP was a fast moving internal project whose requirements and features were ambiguous and fluid. Feature requests were often un defined, and required forging close working relationships with teams and individuals across the organization. The final program was designed to be responsive, and meet strict accessibility guidelines. It also had severe restrictions on its database design, which limited the ways in which feedback could be presented.
    • Process
  • Our team worked under an agile process with short sprints, with each designer receiving a number of features to design for with each sprint. These features would be carried through multiple sprints, each focused on either discovery and ideation, prototyping and user testing, or iteration and documentation
  • I would begin working on a feature by conducting research. This would involve working closely with various teams of stakeholders to uncover and define feature requirements. Meetings with broader groups, reviewing existing documentation, and speaking with users were used to round out our research, which was then documented. Sketches and prototypes would be created, and user tested to provide feedback so designs could be iterated on until we confirmed feature acceptance through continued user testing.
  • Key Links – To assist project managers with organization of a projects components, I designed a link repository that would store all key links for a project in one location. Research uncovered that users wanted to be able to add and edit their own links, as well as have the program pre populate necessary links related to the project from other systems. My design used pivot tables to separate different categories of links, and simple iconography for quick actions or to relay information.
  • Amendments – When projects became active, the project manager would be adhering to a financial plan. Financial changes after project initiation would require an amendment to be applied to the current financial plan, but this was not a process project managers could undertake themselves. After extensive research and collaboration, I defined the workflow for this feature, which would take multiple days and multiple users to complete. This put a significant cognitive load on our user, and required me to design the interface to provide clear feedback of the status of an amendment, actions that could be taken and their results, and persistent feedback. These systems were tested and approved by users as an improvement to their existing workflows.
  • Key Actions – Throughout a project, our users would be required to complete key actions to move a project foreword. I designed a notification to contain these actions, and the time left to complete each and to display them prominently on a projects dashboard. Actions were temporal, and designed to update as soon as they were completed, ensuring users received the correct feedback.
    • Major Accomplishments
  • I quickly discovered that a number of feature requirements were inaccurate, and required updating. I learned how to bring the necessary parties together to update incorrect documentation. Because of my work to do this, I became the domain matter expert and was able to be a valuable resource on those features.
  • After a number of unexpected staffing changes, I was left as the only onsite contact for our team. I was able to quickly absorb additional features, and pick up the temporary management of our teams functions until a re-organization could be completed.
    • Design Challenges
  • Due to database limitations designing feedback into the system that would have to work across large timeframes and multiple users was difficult to implement. By utilizing multiple forms of communication we were able to circumvent feedback limitations of the system
  • I was having a hard time getting High level management on board with including additional features, since they were deemed too much additional effort to code. To help advocate for those features I worked closely with our user researcher to show video and audio recordings of our users requesting the features directly, and explaining why they wanted them, and how it would help improve their work.

    • E Book Design

    Microsoft

    E Book design for Microsoft Azure Solutions

    Overview
  • Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing service for building, testing, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed data centers. As part of a new advertising program Microsoft wanted to produce standardized diagrams of every azure solution and publish it as an e book.
    • Role
  • My role on the project was to interface with project managers from our consulting company, and from Microsoft directly to gather documentation and existing diagrams for azure solutions from across the organization. I would then produce new diagrams based on a standardized design template by translating the documentation. I also created new icons, and reproduced raster icons into vector and created an icon library for easy reference.
    • Project Description
  • The projects goal was to create a diagram for every current azure solution architecture using the same visual style and template. This required our team to speak directly with product owners for each azure solution to uncover the components and how they interacted with each other for the given solution. We also collaborated on copywriting for the description and steps included with each diagram.
    • Process
  • Diagram Conversion: Most diagrams I received were created in power-point, or paint, and required significant translation to meet style guidelines for the template. I would review the reference materials, and produce new diagrams which I would present to the client to receive feedback. I would collaborate with the client from this point to work through iterations of the design until it matched the clients needs.
    • Major Accomplishments
  • When I started the project, the iconography being used to create each diagram was spread across a number of individual design files, and was not organized or categorized in any way. Additionally, icon sizes, layouts, and text were not universally formatted. I quickly set about creating an icon library to serve as a centralized location for finding and re using existing icons, and standardized the icon size and text. This allowed our team to use the library to quickly find all of the print ready finalized icons that could be copied into new diagrams.
  • The client requested that final diagrams be packaged in a very specific way, and include a number of additional file formats and documentation. Some file formats were extremely specific in their requirements and our team struggled to provide the exact format the client was looking for. I dove deep into the problem, and tested solutions until the files met the clients expectations.

    • Information Architecture

    Memorial Sloan Kettering

    Information Architecture Design

    Overview
  • Memorial Sloan Kettering’s employee intranet site was initially developed many years ago, and had not been designed with an information architecture hierarchy in place. Over the years as new sites were added, they were placed in various locations in the navigation. This led to a complex and confusing information architecture that was not meeting users needs.
    • Role
  • I was responsible for utilizing user testing, user research, and feedback to guide the generation of a new information architecture structure.
    • Project Description
  • To conduct remote user research to identify the way users expected to navigate the site, and then utilizing that information to design and test a new scalable information architecture hierarchy
    • Process
  • Card Sorting: I began my investigation by collaborating with the client to identify a significant list of popular destinations on the current intranet site. I designed and administered a pilot test to a small group of volunteers to ensure the test was well constructed, and would provide valid results. After confirmation and implementing a few tweaks, I administered the test to a much broader audience and received a statistically significant number of results that I could use to guide the development of categories and subcategories.
  • Category Creation: Once I had a large batch of data to work with, I began analyzing the results. Using a light touch philosophy I removed outlying results and combined similar results to determine a bulk of categories and subcategories. I finished out the list by using evidence to support the creation of additional categories
  • Tree Testing: Taking the proposed information architecture I designed and administered a second test to a new group of volunteers to verify the functionality of the new architecture. This test was designed to show if the new IA was working as expected, by asking users to identify how they would navigate to specific pages.
    • Major Accomplishments
  • Due to the care and attention to detail during the IA design process, I was able to verify the functionality of the proposed IA very quickly, with minimal iteration and therefore minimal time. This brought the project to its goal on time.
  • At our consulting agency, we had not administered many remote user tests before, and were piloting a new program to administer these tests. I was able to learn the process and tool very quickly, and identify its positive and negative features, as well as train teammates in its use.
    • Design Challenges
  • o Creating a diverse list of frequently visited sites was difficult, as the client did not have reliable information about popular links within the site. Initially, a number of the links were biased towards specific categories, and required additional collaboration to build a list of links that accurately represented the content of the site.

    • New product design

    Layout Lab

    HTML5 Art Designer.
    Layoutlab.net

    Overview
  • Layout Lab is an online art designer program catering to the promotional products industry. It provides the opportunity for users who don’t own or have experience with graphics software to create their own designs for free online. Layout Lab would allow Ignition Drawing to stand out amongst its competitors by offering potential customers who do not have reference artwork for their promotional products project to create their own artwork and do business with our company.
    • Role
  • My role on this project was multifaceted. I worked primarily as the lead designer, working to build and design all visual interfaces and creating all UX workflows and interactions. Additionally, I was the project manager, identifying technologies to be utilized, building production schedules, and managing our small team of offsite coders. Finally, I also worked as the product owner, guiding the projects direction to ensure it delivered on its promises and met its goals.
    • Project Description
  • The project started with a simple idea: Let users come to Layout Lab, and create a design for their promotional product project. To meet this goal, we needed to offer a lot of functionality in the program, including adding and editing text, browsing and using royalty free cliparts, uploading their own artwork, the ability to change colors on any text or artwork, and the ability to browse and modify a library of pre made designs and templates. My goal with the project was to confirm the need for these tools, and build a proof of concept to present to users and collect feedback on to guide an iterative user centered design approach. The program was designed to be fully discoverable by users, with users learning the program through simple exploration.
    • Process
  • Competitive Analysis: To start I did a competitive analysis, looking at solutions competitors like custom ink or inksoft were currently offering. This helped identify the competitions business model, and the tools they included in their products to make the product feasible. While our product would be similar, the business model we were planning was unique and presented a business opportunity into an untapped market.
  • Confirming user needs: I wanted to ensure that all features were user driven, and so I worked closely with our potential users, interviewing them one on one to better understand their needs and wants. I also used surveys delivered to our customers to produce quantitative evidence to confirm user needs. This data was compiled to create two personas to drive the design.
  • Text Tools: Text was a primary feature of the design, and using my research I identified multiple needs within text. We needed a large number of fonts, and the ability to view the fonts without first applying them to any text. Simple modifications like changing color, outline, and size were also required. More complex features, like arc and curved text were prototyped and tested, to ensure that the dropdown selector, and slider based adjustment worked effectively.
  • Cliparts: This was the number one requested feature by our users, and therefore vital to the program’s success. I prototyped a number of ideas, testing each until an optimal experience was found. This included the ability to search for specific cliparts, or to browse through the library using a category and subcategory information architecture. Breadcrumbs were used to aid in navigation and inform the user of their location. A infinite scrolling lazy load tile system was used for browsing clipart thumbnails, as this provided a modern seamless browsing experience.
  • Color Changing: Changing colors on cliparts and uploaded artwork would be a unique feature not present in any existing online designer, and would give us an advantage in its expanded capability for our users. The existing color change paradigm offered by professional software was too complicated and needed to be simplified. By utilizing wizard of oz style testing with users I was able to quickly iterate on the design. The final design proved to be extremely approachable, and after minimal exploration proved to be highly usable.
  • Testing with Users: Once development of a proof of concept was completed, I opened the beta product to our entire customer base. I included tracking within the program that would document usage statistics and underperforming tools or areas. I also set up in person tests with volunteers, proctoring tests to watch how users interacted with the program as a whole. The primary feedback I received during this period was that the program worked as expected, but did not meet our customer’s needs. Our customers did not want to use the program personally, but instead wanted to offer it to their customers off of their own websites and storefronts.
  • Private Label Service: This feature was confirmed by users after releasing the proof of concept. Our primary users, promotion products stores, wanted to rebrand the software and offer it on their websites and storefronts, instead of sending their customers to our website. Users identified wanting custom garment templates, cliparts, and design ideas for their private label sites. This led to a pivot in the design goals of the program, and by staying in contact with our customers a user focused design approach to developing private label tools.
    • Major Accomplishments
  • Layout Lab released to a number of excited and loyal customers. By working with them, listening to their feedback and actively engaging with their needs the program quickly grew adding on average 10 new subscriptions a week during its initial release.
  • Even though this was my first major project in a leadership role, I was able to design and manage systems to keep the development time short and focused. By using an agile style development schedule I broke features into sprints, and worked in tandem with the developers to design, build, and test features. By setting and following a specific schedule, and by utilizing my detailed hifi comps, interaction specifications, and documentation I drove the project from inception to release with no significant delays.
  • By being engaged with customers through the entire development cycle, I was able to keep the project focused and on target to meet users needs. Because of the customer focused design the program delivered on customers initial expectations without redesign of core tools or functionality, and only required additional features be added to meet users needs.
    • Design Challenges
  • HTML 5 and Canvas were still relatively new during development, and still contained many limitations on how they could be implemented. Specific features, like control point icons for canvas items were not supported, requiring a visual redesign of the control points to offer visibility into their use. Major problems like these were handled by understanding the limitations of the technology, and modifying designs to compensate or reduce the negative impact of those limitations.
  • Handling fonts was a big issue, as initially first time users would have to wait to download over 100 fonts before using the program which led to extensive delays. To solve this problem, I replaced live preview of fonts with images of each font, and only downloaded the font file to the clients system once a font was selected, retaining full functionality while improving performance.

    • Order Form Design

    Artwork Source

    Redesign of an underperforming order form.
    Ignitiondrawing.com

    Overview
  • Ignition Drawing created print ready vector graphics for screen printing and digitizing files for embroidery. The company did all of its business online, taking orders through a lengthy and complicated online order form. The form was poorly laid out, asked a number of very specialized questions, and did not offer feedback or present clear options for finding help. This led to multiple mistakes during production, and drove a high volume of calls to customer service.
    • Role
  • My role was to completely redesign the order form, to become more accessible, user friendly, and discoverable. My goals were to reduce the cognitive load on users, provide context sensitive feedback to help guide users through the ordering process, reduce errors in production, and reduce call volume to customer service. I would measure this by comparing the new order form design against the existing form, and measuring a number of key metrics.
    • Project Description
  • I structured the project to solve key issues I identified through research. Reduce cognitive load, provide immediate feedback, and inform the users about how to answer key questions, and be accessible to power users, and new users at the same time. I would completely redesign the order form from the ground up, retaining the same questions but re- structuring their presentation and layout.
    • Process
  • Investigation: Investigation was done prior to beginning the project. Having worked in customer service at the company for a year before taking on this project, I had a deep firsthand understanding of what issues customers faced, and problems that were created.
  • Pagination: During my research, I had seen that many sites like apple or dominos broke up their order forms into multiple pages. Using this idea, I used a card sorting exercise to determine similar questions, and grouped them into separate pages. This would keep each page focused on solving a specific aspect of the order process, and reduce overall cognitive load by allowing users to tackle small batches of questions at a time.
  • Instant feedback: To keep users on task and on track to complete their journey, I used instant feedback for every interaction. Uploaded reference images would be previewed to ensure the right file was uploaded, tooltips would display when hovering over questions, and shifting focus to the next question after one had been answered, and the use of a timeline based navigation system helped display a clear path to the user.
  • Tooltips: I wanted to designate an area of the interface that would be dedicated to tooltips, so users could associate that area with receiving more information or help answering a question. Tooltips were context sensitive, displaying and hiding based on the question the user was hovering over. This provided direct feedback on the exact question the user was focused on, without requiring input or searching for that information by the user.
  • Testing and evaluation: An A/B test was constructed to test the new order form against the existing order form. A small group of active customers were selected at random, and were presented with either the new, or old order form. They were given the option to switch between either form, and a number of data points were tracked with each form. Information like completion rate, revision rate, jump statistics, and others were collected over a 2 week period. Analysis of the data showed a reduction in time to completion, and revision rates for the new order form.
  • Release Plan: Instead of releasing the new order form all at once, I wanted to be sure it would scale with use, and all hidden bugs had been fixed. I decided on a 4 stage release plan, releasing to 25% of our customers with each phase, to ensure that if any bugs existed they could be fixed quickly and not affect the entire user base.
    • Major Accomplishments
  • The new order form was designed to improve efficiency and accuracy of orders, but it also increased sales by over 20% on the site. Because our order form was the easiest to use in the industry, it drove a lot of sales to our company, and reduced abandonment of the form by 15%.
  • Internal efficiency increased because of the new order form. Customer service was now less busy due to a decrease in questions about the order form, and could focus more time and energy into fixing other customer issues. It also reduced errors with orders, requiring less revisions and less time wasted by artists deciphering order details.
  • The new order form tested better then the existing order form in every measured category, and attained full acceptance across all of our customers within 4 weeks of completion. Based on continued user feedback and tracking of usage statistics, the new order form improved in all areas, and had no compromises.
    • Design Challenges
  • Exposing advanced questions to users, without getting new users sidetracked with those questions was a challenge. I wanted to be sure that advanced users could still find and answer these questions, while making them clearly optional for new users. By using checkboxs to expose accordions, the specifics of the advanced questions were hidden from beginner users, but very discoverable and accessible to advanced users
  • Browser Compatibility: The order form had to work with all current web browsers, and support previous versions of Internet Explorer, the most popular browser used to access our site. Each browser and version was extensively tested, and browser version specific tweaks were added to ensure even legacy browsers could still access the order form

    • Keep in Touch with me

    Whether you would like extra information on any of my works, want to inquire about how my skills can benefit your project, or just want to say hello I welcome the opportunity to hear from you.

    Alex Milroy
    Seattle, WA(Washington) 98056
    (215) 740 - 9187