I believe design is an integral part of what it means to be human.
I’m a product design leader, researcher, and strategist currently working with Nationwide’s innovation team. I jam with a smart-as-hell multi-disciplinary team exploring people’s unmet needs, and creating new products, businesses, and services to help solve them.
I love connecting the dots in complex human systems, generating new people and business insights, facilitating good conversations, coaching, and challenging teams to take action and bold leaps that make us feel uncomfortable.
Me
Currently Digging
Photographing unanswered questions, bouldering, professional wrestling, oversized anime mecha, backpacking, japanese whiskey, board games, soccer, and eating too many bowls of Honey Comb.
Experience
2022 - Present
UX Program Lead | Principal Product Designer
Innovation @ Nationwide
Direct a team of eight UX researchers, designers, and content strategists. I drive alignment across initiatives, mentor and coach, and drive experience strategy.
Designed and launched Growforth, a financial wellness experience helping people grow in their financial journey through actionable habbit building and support.
Designed and launched multiple generative AI products to help Nationwide Associates take care of the small tasks - so they can focus on building better relationships with their customers.
2019 - 2022
Principal Product Designer
Innovation @ Nationwide
Created My Financial Wellness Planner, a new product designed for Nationwide Retirement to help 2.5 million users take steps to achieve holistic financial wellness. Defined product vision, design strategy, conducted research, developed user personas, uncovered insights, created low and high fidelity prototypes and flows.
Explored how people prepare for their end of life, and how they deal with the loss of a loved one. Created a mental model around how people deal with a loved ones belongings, and pitched design concepts to help customers navigate the situation.
Started the Design and Business Thinking community of practice. Helping associates better understand the intersection of design and business strategy. Teaching new frameworks, stakeholder negotiation, design and business metrics.
2013 - 2019
Senior User Experience Designer
Nationwide
Explored how consumers view their mobility journey. Wrote point-of-views, facilitated ideation sessions, identified and synthesized consumer needs, and translated user insights into prototypes to help stimulate conversation in our research.
Led a multi-discipline user experience team to merge Nationwide’s multi-billion dollar private and public retirement plan enrollments into a unified experience from plan to build.
Explored how people proxy for one another. I designed over 30 low-fidelity prototypes used for four rounds of qualitative research, leading to a number of design principles that helped the team move forward into their next domain.
2013
Senior User Experience Designer
Clutch Interactive
Designed and developed a design system and prototype used by User Experience, Business, and IT to for Nationwide Bank to significantly improve speed to market with our design and build partners.
Led the visual design for the auto loan application and deposits experiences. Worked closely with a multifaceted UX team to help their business partners achieve their goals to drive more users into opening up checking accounts and receiving an auto loan from Nationwide Bank.
2010 - 2013
Lead Creative
Greenwood Creative
2005 - Present
Principal | Owner
John Sherman Hoyt
2002 - 2005
Fry Cook
Applebee's
How I Like to Jam
Take Bold Leaps
I believe being outside one's comfort zone pushes people to think bigger. I love to push teams in their thinking and make meaningful impact with actions.
Act Through Data
Product and design strategy strengthens when informed by insights created through qualitative and quantitative data. Without it, we're acting on assumptions and users deserve better.
Elevate and Support
I love partnering with others to refine and elevate our work so we are heard by our leaders. It's important to me that good work and talent is celebrated and the value our work provides is clearly communicated.
Principles Over Process
My philosophy is that processes are guidelines to help achieve the work we do. I believe flexible human mindsets are more important in helping teams make the right decisions.
Fight Then Unite
I'm game for a healthy debate and tension in all we do, but once a decision is made we need to unite and act to drive the team forward.
Share Ownership
I firmly believe getting everyone jamming on things that excite them pushes the quality of our work. I want to empower team members to voice their opinions and share ownership in the work we do.
Always Be Learning
I love finding new problems to solve, uncovering new insights, and testing possible solutions. I believe in thinking bigger than the initial ask.
Design Isn't the Center
Design isn't the center of our product worldview. We're all part of one team to help create meaningful experiences for our business and users.