Building and leading a comprehensive design team for enterprise solutions.
Design Thinking for Enterprise
Microsoft
- • UX Research & Design
- • Front End Development
- • Mobile Development
- • Interactive Design
- • Rapid Prototyping
- • Branding
- • Usability Testing
- • Graphic Design
- • Print Design
- • Animation
I joined WMI in the position of Junior Developer, my first job after my move to Seattle, but I knew my vision for my future at WMI put me in a design leadership position in our technology services team, leading the design & creative processes on all our internal and client projects.
My job wasn't just to make things look pretty. The biggest question I tried to solve:
How do we recommend and apply modern design thinking for digital products that scale to enterprise software, in a world where design thinking isn't prioritized for internal software and reporting?
In order to create a user-centric design approach to our software, I began focusing on smaller components of the process.
Introducing design thinking
The best way to begin building our user-centric design approach was to introduce minor visual elements that engage interest while providing appropriate solutions for internal needs.
Little data visualizations like donut charts translated from Excel sheets made a big difference introducing our clients to enterprise UX design.
Design as part of our process
I started working with our project managers much closer. During our initial discovery and timeline stages of projects, I created outlines that establish time at the beginning of the design process to flush out the real user needs with the client and how the solution could best solve those problems.
Upgrading to a Modern Web
As the youngest member of our team, the weight often fell on me to research the newest directions in the world of software development, and push new changes within our team.
Now, our proficiency in design thinking and enterprise scale software solutions opened opportunities for us to build products that help manage multi-million dollar projects, and I continue refining our design process in the implementation of new products and solutions.
