EXPERIENCE AT GAIA:
Created visual designs for the Gaia product interfaces
Generated UX and design documentation including comps, user flows, prototypes, annotations and specs
Designed brand and GUI components including icons, buttons, forms, and layouts
Participated in feature testing through quantitative and qualitative analysis via A/B and User Testing
Provided feedback and collaborated with the other designers
Worked with developers and QA to ensure flawless execution of the visual design
Created new features and iterated on existing features to create a better experience for Gaia members
Created print and promotional materials for the GaiaSphere Event Center
Logo creation for GaiaSphere Event Center
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Looking at leaders in the video-streaming industry is important when making design decisions for Gaia to identify competitors and understand their strengths and weaknesses in relation to ours. Looking at leaders in other industries is also helpful to find creative solutions or to think of challenges in a new perspective.
USER TESTING
At Gaia, I regularly use a website called trymyui.com to perform user testing. I give testers scenarios, tasks, post-test survey questions, and crowd-sourced opinions and receive recordings of their screens to evaluate. The useful information received from these tests are fundamental in design decisions, especially when improving existing pages and features on the site.
PERSONAS
User personas are a great way to get to know our users. Representing every possible customer was not necessary, but by empathizing with Gaia’s most important user groups, I am able to address needs and pain points in my design decisions.
CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAPPING
I often create customer journey maps to visualize the process that a person goes through in order to accomplish a goal on Gaia’s website. This provides a holistic view of the customer experience by uncovering moments of both frustration and delight which reveal opportunities to address customers’ pain points, alleviate fragmentation, and create a better experience overall for Gaia’s users.
TASK FLOWS
Identifying the main flows that users follow to complete the main tasks on Gaia’s site is important to enable not only myself as the designer, but key stakeholders and other team members to understand all the necessary background information prior to getting into the hands-on UI work. Understanding user goals and navigation patterns makes designing the layout much easier and more successful.
USER FLOWS
User flows are created to represent the different paths that a user would take through the site to complete important tasks. This is done to ensure that I’m designing pathways that work for different kinds of people engaging with the product. These flows are important to spot and eliminate “dead ends” that could leave users stranded within designs and to ensure that user choice is accounted for and honored.
WIREFRAME SKETCHES
Before starting any work for a new feature on the computer, concepts are quickly sketched out to get a rough idea of layout options, allowing to try out a multitude of ideas and iterate them before settling on one.
LOW FIDELITY WIREFRAMES
Low fidelity wireframes are created to be able to show concepts to stakeholders for approval before moving into more detail-oriented work. Because they are so quick and easy to reshape, they help stakeholders determine whether to add or subtract features. This also helps developers understand the scope of work and allows them to flag any concerns to spare any additional costs later on in development.
PATTERN LIBRARY & STYLE GUIDE
I helped contribute to Gaia’s pattern library and style guide with the creation of new components to be used throughout the site.
PROTOTYPE CREATION
The testing phase is the greatest opportunity to improve products by studying how people respond and interact with ideas. I create functional prototypes using InVision to allow users to experience the page to test the design's correctness before going into production and to discover any design errors or red flags.
HIGH FIDELITY WIREFRAMES
High fidelity wireframes are created in different breakpoints - 1440px, 944px, 768px, and 375px. These are then exported to Zeplin into a format which generates code snippets, design specs, and assets for developers to utilize and easily build.
A/B TESTING
Once new designs are built, two variants of the same page are often split tested to different segments of Gaia’s users at the same time to determine which variant drives more conversions. This helps significantly improve the site’s UX by eliminating all weak links and finding the most optimized version.
DESIGN ITERATIONS
Revisions are made to design work based on conversions, split testing, and/or user testing results to create the best possible product features. With each iteration, I can identify new opportunities, respond to changes in business goals and user needs, and adapt to current market trends and advances in technology.