Insurance Technology (60%)
- serve as the voice of UX on the product team of one of my company’s major retainer clients—a modernizing premium finance insurance technology client with over 500 million dollars in annual revenue. I tell every insurance agent I interview that my job is to help my client innovate technology and software integrations that makes their job easier and their client’s life better.
- The research data I consider includes DataDog system analytics, stakeholder and user interviews, user tests, partnership with Customer Success team, as well as holding collaborative design sessions with agents. I perform UX evaluations of in-production products (+close competitors), map service processes, and support the UX of internal systems including corporate site and iOS applications.
- My role involves processing all of these inputs and turn them into actionable personas, business requirements, user stories, wireframes, clickable mockup, Figma prototypes, and prod-ready designs. I also manage the client’s agency-side Design Library and create semantically consistent UI components as needed. I communicate designs on a twice-weekly basis to 10+ member product team that includes executive stakeholders, dev team, and customer success.
- In meetings, the head of the dev team says stuff like, “Kyle’s here to bring a new prototype and drop some UX bombs today.” But I see my work as valuable because it helps their team prioritize long-term research projects and new feature requests. I’m energized by this work because my client is genuinely as obsessed with serving insurance agents and carriers as I am with helping them infuse great UX into their projects. I love aspects of this role where I get to modernize a very traditional finance-adjacent industry because it highlights the importance of developing a full understanding of the end use context. My team seems to genuinely appreciate my research-focused voice and I’m knowledgeable enough about their entire suite of products that I’m unequivocally the go-to voice at my company for their projects.
Infrastructure / Railway (15%)
- Liaison to a 4-6 person Business Intelligence team of a Class 1 Fright Railroad Company. I’m responsible for staying up to date on the the last 2-3 years of client research findings and maintaining their design library as needed. I help generate research related a multi-year software adoption project.
- Primarily consulting on the sometimes unfortunate UX of a business-led self-service Microsoft Power BI data analytics strategy in a very traditional business-driven organization with more than 6,000 employees. I’m responsible for maintaining domain expertise for my company on master data management strategies. My research helps the client inform internal standards documentation, training materials, data requisition processes, and prioritize user requests.
Non-Profit (15%)
- Plan, scope, manage and perform ongoing research projects for clients like a Big 12 university and a nationally recognized global-impact non-profit. Clients frequently trust me to represent them to their stakeholders, donors, students, supporters, and program participants. I manage complex stakeholder relationships with non-corporate governance and decision approval structures (i.e.unions, student groups, faculty governance of digital materials, etc.).
- Clients tell me that my insights are delivered with a polthmathic understanding of complex experience design problems presented by legacy data, design debt, and content management strategy. I’m also responsible for developing a deep understanding of how non-profits showcase unique selling propositions and how those consumer feelings translate into donations and actionable data collection for their front line employees. I push my learning to advance my domain expertise in higher education consume-facing websites by studying and applying site-principal heuristics.
- Clients also say that my research reports help them formulate long-term organizational thinking. I fit best with clients who appreciate structured deliberation and strong reliance on keeping good historical project documentation. I’m excited when these clients use my research to give voice folks users who are economically vulnerable or otherwise unseen as subject os “user-centered design.” I love seeing the look on stakeholders faces in the Zoom call when they catch their first glance at wireframes or a new site concept.
Non-Client-Facing (10%)
- I help Business Development court research retainer relationships with clients by developing white-glove bids for UX projects for new and returning clients.
- I work with Delivery Managers to document, compile, categorize, synthesize, and effectively communicate actionable insights to our clients.
- I collect and transfer meaningful feedback to interaction designers and other project stakeholders related to legacy client files and research records that inform ongoing projects.