Teambuilding and management

At both D2L and FairVentures, I’ve had the privilege to work in a team lead, design manager, and co-op supervisor capacity. Whether through setting up team-wide design challenges and critiques, scaffolding personal development through standard competencies, or creating trusting space in one-on-ones, my aims have been to set my team up for success with structure and priorities, help them collaborate with other functional groups in the organization, and to encourage them to challenge and support each other.

FairVentures UX Co-op Supervisor

At FairVentures, I’ve had the pleasure of working with 5 UX co-op students over 5 separate semesters. The hiring process includes generating interest in the Lab through creating a FairVentures Introduction Video, creating engaging whiteboard-focused interviews, and hosting open-houses for students to see the space and meet others at FairVentures. During the term, my philosophy is to treat co-op students as an equal and have them contributing directly to our client projects as quickly as I can. Bi-weekly one-on-ones give us a chance to clarify work process, and set areas for personal growth.

D2L Learner Experience Team Manager

In 2014, I was asked to become one of the first design managers at D2L. Leading a team of 3 designers focused on the “learner experience”, I worked alongside two other design managers for “teacher experience” and “administrator experience”. In the role, I focused on ensuring my designers were assigned appropriately across different agile teams and projects and supporting them with information they needed, while keeping distractions minimized. Some of my key activities and accomplishments included:

• 1-year leadership training course including topics of change management, growth and development, lego serious play, lean, agile, and crucial conversations,

• Designer technical competencies matrix for role and seniority management,

• Team-wide design challenges,

• Hiring across all design teams including the Learner Experience Team,

• Mentoring new designers,

• Facilitating regular design reviews and critiques,

D2L Personal Learning Design Team Lead

In 2013 when several groups consolidated into the Personal Learning team, I was asked to become the design team lead of 4 other designers to help organize design efforts of direct-to-learner products. My focus for this role was to organize an evaluation of our products across web and mobile, and consider the future of the direct-to-learner products. Some of my key activities and accomplishments included organizing:

• Problem and solution interviews (from Running Lean by Ash Marya) to learn about the needs of students for direct-to-learn apps,

• Customer lifecycle and cohort analysis of activation and churn rates for direct-to-learner tools based on telemetry, and

• Usability evaluation of direct-to-learner tools,

On behalf of the designers on the team, I worked with the product management team to prioritize the backlog of new features and old features we needed to revisit and improve.