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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).