I returned to Citrix this time as the sole designer on the Research and Development team working on nearly all projects within the team. Projects ranged from machine learning tools, VR and AR prototypes, and other early phase projects. I also created and led a workshop on Ideation and Technology delivered across multiple office locations.
Text Taylor helps us focus on the positive aspects of our days and reminds of some of our favorite moments in the past, helping us to be grateful, just as a friend would. Who doesn’t need a friend sometimes?
People often have trouble being happy, believe it or not. People often don’t know why they’re unhappy, yet many of us don’t pause to reflect on the things happening in our lives. Many folks think that reflection takes a significant commitment of time and energy, which is why we created Text Taylor - to empower people to live happier lives by making positive reflection as easy as answering a single question every day.
Shervin Shaikh, the originator of the idea, pulled me in to work with him to realize Text Taylor and get it out to people. My role on the project has been a little bit of everything from visual and interaction design, to product thinking and strategy.
Although Text Taylor is currently an SMS service, you can access all your moments through a web UI on desktop and mobile.
We kept Text Taylor private, didn’t publicize it all that much, and kept the user group small initially, which led to about 100 users using Text Taylor every day. In an attempt to grow Text Taylor May of 2016, we ran a short Betalist campaign, allowed current users to refer friends leading to a 3x growth in users in about two weeks. At the moment, we’re still wait-listing users and figuring out next steps for the product.
Portal is your always-on video and audio connection between you and your distributed team. Having an always-on connection increases awareness of one another, creates empathy between team members, and enables more natural communication. Portal also facilitates more immersive and serendipitous communication, while making non-verbal cues naturally apparent, all in an approachable and easy to use package.
Check out a Sample of the siteDistributed teams often have trouble feeling connected with one another and can sometimes suffer from a lack of empathy for team members. Furthermore, co-located teams often have sidebar conversations that remote team members simply can’t participate in given their serendipitous nature. We wanted to develop a device that would make our team feel, well, like a team again.
I initiated this project and acted as the project lead where I determined the initial feature set, designed the interface, designed and built the website, established priorities, and managed engineer’s work.
Classy is a machine-learning tool that aims to make the classification of unstructured data faster and reusable by automatically categorizing your data with just a little training by the user.
Check out a Sample of the siteUser Researchers or Marketers often collect data from users through surveys. Some of that data comes in the form of free response, like that collected through Net Promoter Score surveys, which typically leads to a very tedious process just to analyze the data. Furthermore, that process is difficult to leverage the next time you collect data.
Like many of the other research projects, I found myself doing user interviews, creating designs, building parts of the front-end for both the product and the website, and working with the project lead to define the direction of the project.
Here are a few small visual examples of the many things that I touched while working at Citrix the first time. Again, I love to collaborate, so many of these were influenced by my awesome colleagues.
Huddle — A menu bar application aimed at giving you single-click access to an audio and screen sharing session created during hack week.
Gnosis — A Chrome extension that allows you to explore the emotional context in written communication, such as emails.
Classy Feedback Modal — Classy Feedback Modal - An early concept for enabling users to classify unstructured data quickly.
Who’s Typing? — A simple prototype showing who is typing in a room.