The Job
Designed key interfaces for a proprietary application platform and products. Created best-in-class data tools, including products that focus on data visualization. Owned and created brand identity for the company’s core platforms.
UX/UI Design
UX Research
The Overview
What is Amex Advance™?
Amex Advance is a new American Express business division that partners with companies across the advertising, travel and service industries to deliver curated personalization services optimized for their customers.
American Express has a long heritage of using insights from its data to help merchants grow their businesses and providing value to Card Members. Now that we are extending this service beyond our network, Amex Advance and its partners will use these insights to deliver advertising to more narrowly targeted audience segments and personalized recommendations. Harnessing our deterministic data insights and predictive machine learning, Amex Advance connected platform delivers outstanding solutions and services to solve your key business challenges.
How does Amex Advance deliver Audiences for my brand?
Amex Advance harnesses the latest machine learning techniques to help predict when a consumer might be in the market for a certain product.
Amex Advance analyzes the vast majority of the $1 trillion in annual transactions on the American Express closed-loop network, which have been aggregated and anonymized, to develop predictive insights about the future buying behaviors of a desired consumer audience.
From these models, the Amex Advance connected platform and its clients will create advanced audience segments with the highest intent to purchase.
The Needs
Interactive Portal Requirements
What the Interactive Portal will do:
1. Build models and audiences
2. Access insights and performance
3. Order customized audience segments
Specific product features to be developed throughout the project:
1 Create Projects
2 View Project Insights and Performance
3 Order Audience Segments
4 View and Edit Projects
5 Profile Details and Help
6 Next Steps
7 Receive output
Additional key updates and enhancements to be developed alongside main objectives:
• Enhanced Search Features
• Enhanced Brand and Category Search
• Show Example Merchants for each category
Channel Specifics
• Designate online vs offline in objective function
• Enable channel optimizations (interim solutions for digital, email, etc for Curated and Custom)
Seed Data
• Ability to upload partner seed data directly to platform
• Event Rate Error Reduction and Perscriptive Error Messaging
• Real time event rate checks - know if the model will fail before it runs
• Integrate charge volume investigation tool
• Automate parameter amendment to increase event rate Insights and Performance-Export Capability
• Insights-Export to Excel (List of all insights and % or multiplier)
• Addition of Revenue metric (average conversion value/conversions)
• Conversions and Revenue Projections by percentile-Export to Excel
• Generation of PDF Audience Effectiveness Report Operational Capacity
• Ability for users to schedule, queue, and reprioritize projects
The Approach
1 | The very first step in the design process is to begin listening and learning about the problem space from the stakeholders initiating the project.
ACTIVITIES
• Schedule meetings with key business partners or PO to answer checklist questions
OUTPUTS
• Documented notes from meeting
• Email recap to stakeholders
DESIGNER CHECKLIST:
• If appropriate, did I get an end-to-end walkthrough of existing experience/problem area?
• What are business outcomes behind the idea?
• Do I know what my stakeholders’ personal goals are and how solving this problem helps them?
• Do I know all of the direct and indirect partners, including technology team and end users?
• Was our design process clearly communicated?
2 | Development capability & constraints
Next, we want to make sure we form a tight working relationship with our dev partners and understand both dev constraints and opportunities.
ACTIVITIES
• Schedule meeting(s) with core development team in order to cover checklist questions
OUTPUTS
• Documented notes from meeting
• Email recap to dev partners
DESIGNER CHECKLIST:
• How do our development partners describe the problem area and user/business benefits of solving?
• Despite not yet knowing design touchpoints, are there any major dev constraints to be aware of?
• On the flip side, are there any capabilities we should consider leveraging?
• Between POs and our dev team, are there any expectations around how designs will get delivered?
3 | End user research.
Finally, as part of our “design trio,” we want to talk to the assumed end users as early as possible to confirm desirability and problem space.
ACTIVITIES
• Research sessions with 5-8 users representing the target end users
• Summarize research findings
OUTPUTS
• Raw research notes
• Research summary document (personas, jobs-to-be-done, journey maps)
• Email recap to stakeholders/dev partners
DESIGNER CHECKLIST:
• Have we gotten an end user demo of the context in which they might encounter the problem area?
• Is the stakeholder-identified problem the right one or is there another underlying issue at hand?
• How do users currently cope with the problem – what are there mitigating behaviors?
• What’s our users’ profiles? Their primary jobs-to-be-done, goals, motivations, domain knowledge, fears, etc.
4 | Problem definition
Using all of the information gathered so far, we narrow our focus and begin creating a UX strategy.
ACTIVITIES
• Create a problem canvas: Redefined statement of problem area primary affected users expected business out comes, user benefits riskiest assumptions ranked high level design timeline
OUTPUTS
5 | Problem canvas
Gather all stakeholders (primarily business and dev partners) to align on the problem canvas and design timeline.
ACTIVITIES
• Meet with stakeholders to review the problem canvas
• Sign off on design timeline and next activities
OUTPUTS
• Documented notes from meeting
• Email recap to stakeholders
DESIGNER CHECKLIST:
• Does everyone understand our re-defined problem statement and mapping of its current state?
• Are we aligned with the design timeline or do special considerations need to be made?
6 | Divergent concepting
Armed with a good understanding of the problem space, we now try to generate as many different and radical ideas for solutions as possible.
ACTIVITIES
• Competitive research on UX directions
• Pair designer sketching session to come up with a wide range (8-10) of concepts
• Follow up sketching to iterate on concepts and narrow down to 2-3 sketches
OUTPUTS
• Sketches or very low-fidelity wireframes
• Email recap of brainstorming to stakeholders and dev partners
DESIGNER CHECKLIST:
• Have I made sure my stakeholder and dev partners feel involved in the creative process, either by inviting them to one brainstorming/sketch session or soliciting them for their solutions/ideas via email?
• Have I carried out enough competitive research around UX best practices and trends?
7 | End user research
Now that we have concrete materials to look at, let’s return to the users and see what their high level impressions are of the concepts.
ACTIVITIES
• Research sessions with 5-8 users, using 2-3 sketch concepts, representing the stakeholders’ target audience
• Summarize research findings
OUTPUTS
• Research summary document
• Email recap to stakeholders/dev partners
DESIGNER CHECKLIST:
• How do users feel about how well each different concept addresses their problems? What are the gaps of each concept? (walkthrough, think aloud browsing of sketches)
• Now that users are seeing concrete concepts, are there any new revelations or refinements about the problem space we should know?
• Using participatory design, are there modifications or combinations in the concepts users are encouraging?
8 | Convergent concepting
Having gut-checked our potential creative directions at the lowest fidelity, it’s time to choose and produce one direction.
ACTIVITIES
• Creation of end-to-end mid-fidelity wireframes and prototype that work out the details of our interaction design
OUTPUTS
• Mid-fidelity wireframes
• InVision prototype of mid-fidelity wireframes
• Email recap to stakeholders/dev partners
DESIGNER CHECKLIST:
• Before beginning to take my concepts to mid-fidelity wireframes, am I confident in my knowledge of stakeholder alignment and dev constraints?
• Have I made sure to cover all of the touchpoints originally set out in my problem/UX canvas/strategy?
9 | End user research
We come back to our users a final time with a prototype resembling what they are likely to see released live.
ACTIVITIES
• Research session with 5-8 users using the mid-fidelity wireframe prototype
• Summarize research findings
OUTPUTS
• Research summary document
• Email recap to stakeholders/dev partners
DESIGNER CHECKLIST:
• Using classic task-based usability testing:
• Are users able to actually complete tasks?
• What is their perceived ease of use of the prototype?
• What is their overall satisfaction/delight with it?
10 | Visual design exploration
After confirming our final creative direction with users, it’s time to bring our prototype to life by exploring visual design directions.
ACTIVITIES
• Competitive research on design directions
• Pair designer creation of parallel, mock visual design concepts
• Individual iteration of one agreed-upon visual design direction
OUTPUTS
• Visual/UI designs
• Email recap to stakeholders/dev partners
DESIGNER CHECKLIST:
• Have I brought in another designer on the team to do an initial parallel exploration of visual design concepts?
• Have I made sure to carry out enough competitive research to pull in relevant visual design best practices, trends, and innovations?
11 | Design delivery
Finally, having aligned with our dev partners on expectations for design delivery, we can slice and dice or package up our visuals.
ACTIVITIES
• Creation of visual design specifications
OUTPUTS
• Visual/UI designs
• Invision visual designs with specifications (by using Craft plugin)
• Email recap to stakeholders/dev partners and potentially final meeting
DESIGNER CHECKLIST:
• Have I pre-emptively checked in with my partners about their exact needs for the deliveries of my designs?
The Process
Breakdown of the main stages of the process and their subdivisions.
The Research
Defined users, journey, and personas.
Defined trends and performed an industry-wide comprehensive competitive analysis.
The Ideation
Sketched out ideas, and rough drafts for consideration.
The Refinement
Created a high fidelity user flow, to use as platform structure
The Result
The Ask
“Enable data from American Express’ decision-making tool to reach our its customers by making our platform easy-to-use, user-centered, and cohesive.”