Krista Van Laan: UX Portfolio

E-commerce Site: SSL Certificates

My team designed this application from scratch, employing user-centered design practices, with multiple rounds of usability testing and iterative design. It is the company's primary e-commerce site, where a consumer buys SSL certificates and creates an account to manage all their SSL certificates.

• Click here for the live site.
• Click here to read the back story about this application and some of the other products I worked on during this time.

Methods:

• Cognitive walkthrough, wants and needs analysis, task analysis
• Card-sorting
• Interviews with customers, customer support, and product management
• Affinity diagrams
• Functional flow diagrams, low- and high-fidelity mockups and wireframes
• Working prototypes
• Usability testing and validation testing with customers in our usability lab

What I did:

• Managed project and was the lead designer
• Created mockups, flow diagrams, wireframes
• Wrote requirements, user scenarios, and test scripts
• Oversaw visual designs and prototypes
• Supervised Web development

Consumer Product: Media Player

Click here to see a demo version of the UI.

Methods:

• Cognitive walkthrough, wants and needs analysis, task analysis, personas
• Competitive analysis
• Functional flow diagrams, low- and high-fidelity mockups and wireframes
• Working prototypes
• Iterative usability testing

What I did:

• Managed project
• Wrote requirements, personas, user scenarios, and test scripts
• Managed usability testing and wrote executive summaries that were instrumental in marketing and manufacturing decisions
• Oversaw visual designs, specs, mockups, and prototypes
• Created flows and supervised UI development

E-commerce Site: Consumer Authentication

This is an e-commerce site where users buy and manage credentials for second-factor authentication. This site was designed and maintained by my team using user-centered design. My team also designed applications for different form factors including mobile devices, hard tokens, and security cards. We submitted a patent for the help designed for this site.

• Click here for the live site.
• Click here to read more about this application and some of the other products I worked on during this time.

Methods:

• Cognitive walkthrough, wants and needs analysis
• Paper prototyping
• Field studies in US, Europe, and China
• Functional flow diagrams, low- and high-fidelity mockups and wireframes
• Usability testing and validation testing in our usability lab and "on the street"

What I did:

• Managed project through several releases
• Helped with design and packaging
• Wrote online content

Enterprise Console: Managed Security Services

My team was responsible for the design and usability for this enterprise application, a managed security services portal.

Methods:

• Functional flow diagrams
• High-fidelity mockups and prototypes
• Site visits with customers
• Validation testing

What I did:

• Managed project design, usability research, and documentation through many releases
• Helped design the original version
• Participated in customer visits and usability analysis
• Managed creation of prototypes used by sales
• Managed translations

User Research: SSL Certificates

I saw an opportunity to have the User Experience team directly affect sales and user acceptance of a new concept when I proposed that my team do research and testing to determine how users would respond to the new Extended Validation certificates. We did remote testing with more than 50 users and I wrote a white paper that was distributed to potential partners and customers.

The results were so positive for us that product management decided it would be worthwhile to have it done with a larger sample size by a neutral vendor. I hired Tec-Ed to do the same sessions with more than 300 users across the country, analyzed the raw data, and wrote a white paper that was distributed on the company Web site. Click here to see the white paper.

NOTE: The prototype on the right was for test purposes only in a blind study. We were not identified as the company doing the research, so this does not follow branding or UI guidelines.

What I did:

• Managed project
• Helped develop test plan, script, and prototypes
• Wrote white papers for both rounds of testing. They were distributed on our company's Web site and at conferences.
• Supervised second round of testing with neutral third-party firm. The statistical results were virtually the same as those done by our in-house team.
• Analyzed the raw data

Interactive Tour

This is an example of one of the online interactive HTML tours my team provided for many of our applications.

What I did:

• Designed HTML tour format that was used for all of our products. The tours were animated and interactive, yet easy to maintain and update.
• Wrote specs and guidelines for tours

Heuristic Evaluation

This is a usability evaluation I did as a consultant for a commercial Web site, using a scorecard method I developed to evaluate products. Click here to read the document.

What I did:

• Designed scorecard templates in Excel. I have different scorecards for applications, devices, software, and Web sites.
• I use the forms for heuristic evaluations, usability analyses, and out-of-the box analyses. These let me apply the same criteria to different products of the same type, and the criteria are then weighted.

Building a User Experience Team

I was asked to give a presentation to a Silicon Valley company to help them understand what is involved in creating a User Experience team, particularly one that can work successfully in an Agile environment. Click here to download the presentation.

Presentation contents:

• What is User Experience?
• How does a User Experience team support the rest of the organization?
• What processes are followed to ensure the best user experience?
• How does UXD fit into the Agile environment?
• Case studies

Flow diagrams

I often produce or supervise production of flow diagrams for projects. Here are some samples of flows I did.

What I did:

Flow diagrams (these are partials with identifying areas removed):

• Media player. This was done to define the main screens of the player, along with diagrams of what the remote control functions are on each screen.
• E-commerce certificate purchase and account creation.
• Billing and account creation.

Personas

Here are some of the personas I developed.

• For a media player project.
• For a payments gateway.