A designer's impact on the world is defined by the relationships built along the way.

Alex has been designing & strategizing products with Fortune 500 companies over the last 10+ years; dedicating the last 3 years to translating that experience into building a world class design curriculum to teach the next generation of designers.

Select Projects

    BrainStation User Experience Design Product & Program Experience

    Curriculum Architect & Manager of UX Design Diploma Program/Product; Lead Educator

    How might we optimize intensive design learning potential through mentorship, feedback loop, and experimental modes-of-learning?

    BrainStation's User Experience Design Diploma Program is a full-time 12-week intensive program that transforms careers of students with little to no prior knowledge to design - into becoming industry-ready working professionals.

    Managed and directed design learning experiences (CX) across different campuses and formats of programming (diploma program, evening courses & professional workshops). Designed and implemented systems and mechanisms for product scalability, including curriculum architecture, admissions processes, performance evaluation management and content management.

    Lead and managed Toronto team of design educators and teaching assistants while delivering full-time programming (12-week cohorts) to adult professionals transforming careers. Validated success of effective learning strategies through controlled experimentation and live user testing. Oversaw and managed the quality-control of design projects for up to 30 students per cohort, with high-quality output, consistent high educator rating, and successful placement rates.

    Impact: shaping the fundamental foundations of design practice through the primary pool of Toronto's newest user experience design talent. After training, coaching and mentoring over 200+ students across 2.5 years, practicing professionals are now influencing the industry and spreading responsible impact across their everyday users.

    Kinetic Commerce Connected-Mall Platform

    Platform Experience Lead (Interaction, Service & Multi-Channel Design); Ivanhoé Cambridge Account

    With the convenience and digitization of online marketplaces reducing relevance to physical marketplaces, how might we entice customers to return back into the physical marketplace by leveraging their online preferences?

    The Kinetic Commerce Platform (PaaS) centralizes client technology stacks and translates existing services into highly customizable connected services, integrations and experience offerings. The platform itself allows for a diverse variety of experiential applications including inventory cross-checking, multi-channel database unification, indoor positioning applications, product context retrieving, and more.

    Product Lead; Interaction Designer & Product Owner, working directly with developers and product management to create foundations of Connect Mall platform (PaaS) offering. Production of mobile app and mall kiosk for custom in-mall location-aware experiences. Managed team of 4 designers and 6 developers and work alongside 2 product managers. Responsible for full end-to-end feature definition, development and production, client workshopping, roadmapping and co-pitching for new lines of business.

    Impact: The Connected-Mall platform has been integrated into ten Ivanhoé Cambridge mall properties across Canada (as of June 2019) including Metropolis at Metrotown, Vaughan Mills, and Montreal Eaton Centre.

    AutoDesk: Dynamic Knowledge-Sharing

    Lead Service & Interaction Designer

    How might we bring awareness to company organizational knowledge by leveraging the richness of informal interactions?

    AutoDesk is a software company known for their computer visualization software for architects and engineers. Primarily operating their Toronto location as a research institute, AutoDesk approached our team to address their struggles with overlapping internal research projects. While the organization has a in-house wiki-system to manage their static knowledge-base, our task was to develop interactive concepts that can take advantage of different communication channels to build live awareness of what is happening within the organization.

    Contributions: service design mapping, interaction concepts, ethnographic research, closely collaborating on a team of three designers, directly interfacing and live workshoping with client.

    CIBC SmartBanking for Business

    Lead Product Designer (engagement through Pivotal Labs)

    How might we reduce the administrative burden of small to medium sized business owners to make quicker decisions at a glance?

    CIBC SmartBanking for Business is a dynamic digital solution that integrates business banking capabilities with industry-leading third-party services to help clients make quick, informed decisions. As a comprehensive dashboard, clients can manage their banking, accounting, payroll, and more freeing up time to spend towards running their business.

    Full year project engagement collaborating between cross-functional teams across CIBC (technology, business, security, services) to deliver forward-thinking banking interactions for business clients.

    Impact: Every small to medium sized business client banking with CIBC (one of Canada's 5 major banks) will be directly interacting with this tool every time they manage their finances for their business.

    Temple Street ProductionsEvolve Functional Fitness

    Product Designer, Multi-Channel Team Lead (engagement through Pivotal Labs)

    How might we offer a highly customizable fitness programming that customizes production content based on duration, instructor preference, and fitness intensity levels?

    Dubbed as the "Netflix" of fitness, Evolve Functional Fitness was a subscription service allowing for a level of customizability unparalleled to other fitness offerings. When selecting a workout type, users could modify their workout based on a specific trainer, workout duration, and intensity level. As a distribution channel for high quality content from Temple Street Productions, the multi-platform offering takes advantage of expertise as a production studio developing hours of high quality highly customizable content. Designed primarily for iPad with expansion into native mobile and mobile-web offering, Alex worked with a team as lead product designer across all channels.

    The service was unfortunately cancelled several years after release by the client.

    Concept Development & Prototyping

    • LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) – multi-platform interactive prototype demos engaging computer-vision for product identification. Kiosk prototype transitioning between shelf kiosk interaction interaction to personal mobile device
    • Walmart Canada – interaction & interface concept for shared family shopping lists and intelligent deal clippings; in-store mode for shopping list item wayfinding and collective list claiming
    • LiveNation – experimental technical proof-of-concept synchronizing over 200 mobile devices for audio and visual distribution; exploring performance concepts such as "audience as a speaker" (distributing synchronized audio bites across 2000+ devices) and light performance sync experiments
    • Aldo Shoes – advanced in-store experiences and conceptualization for digital mirror product pairing and visualization interactions
    • Discovery Channel – interface proposal and concept development for iPad software offering bringing accessibility to content across new device formats
    • Rogers Media – experimental interface concept for making quick group decisions for on-demand content using personal mobile devices
    • General Motors – infotainment system concept for car status and maintenance

    Other Clients/Brands/Projects

    • Evolve Functional Fitness (Temple Street Productions) – multi-platform offering and distribution channel for highly customizable fitness content. Production design and app store release primarily for iPad with expansion into native mobile and mobile-web offering. Lead designer.
    • Firestone Complete Auto Care – mobile app design for automobile maintenance service requests/reminders; and support for mobile-web product/service browsing
    • Accuweather – interface consultation and heuristic assessment for major redesign implementation
    • Pearson Education – complex information modelling for curriculum, administrative, school, and student management software
    • Cineplex – AR (augmented reality) implementation overlaying movie information in front of movie posters in official Cineplex mobile app
    • Atlantic Lottery Corporation – project development coordination for large-screen multi-touch surface interactive game development visualizing lottery winners across the east-coast of Canada
    • Crayola – project technical support for incorporating iPad drawing input for children to see their artwork come to life on large-screen interactive wall installation

    This portfolio site was built by Alex, by hand from scratch. Alex is proficient in HTML & CSS as well as jQuery concepts, and works very closely with developers by understanding their own respective medium (including Xcode environments for iOS/MacOS/WatchOS app development).

    Capabilities

    • Product Design & Ownership, Management of over 10+ products ranging from consumer apps to commercial-grade platform solutions
    • Service Design & Platform Design for end-to-end retail services supporting multiple touchpoints ranging in personal devices, interactive surfaces, to large-scale signage
    • Product Strategy and innovation partner for Fortune 500 clients ranging in healthcare, education, retail, financial and entertainment; lead product designer & strategist for 1M+ client accounts
    • Design Team Lead & Mentor: design team building, directing, management, resourcing & reporting, culture building, process building, cross-team communication & initiatives
    • Data-Driven Design: user research, customer research, usability testing, prototyping, analytics and user insights
    • Information Architecture Modeling: content strategy, data structures, information modelling, business and programming rules
    • UX Process: comprehensive user-flows, agile user-stories, interaction models, wireframing, prototyping, visual design and assets manage
    • Communication Design: public outreach, storytelling for business concepts
    • Educator, Speaker, Community: lead educator for full-time UX Design diploma program; curriculum development, corporate workshops, seminars; speaker, mentor, community founder

    Other Brands Alex Worked With