The Fino design team felt strongly that the blog’s design didn’t represent the skills of our department or the culture of our company. We used a one-week Design Sprint, where we spent 1-2 hours a day redesigning the Fino Blog with the following goals in mind:

1. Create a design for the Fino blog that represents the strengths of the design team and company culture
2. Execute the team process in an ambitious, abbreviated time frame
3. Present process, learnings, and design to the entire company at the end of the week

Problem

Current company blog did not reflect company brand, culture, or talent.

Strategy

Monday: Competitive Analysis & Requirements Gathering

1. Team members individually survey blogs, looking for best practices, innovative design, etc. Each person to be assigned one of the following: corporate/company blogs, general interest blogs, digital magazines, blogging platforms, design/UX research pertaining to blog best practices 

2. Team shares findings and discusses

3. Team develops a set of requirements for the Fino blog based on findings

Tuesday: Ideation & Sketching

1. Review requirements from Monday meeting

2. Individual sketching time

3. Group white boarding and sketching; should culminate with a shared central vision

4. Split into two groups to flesh out remaining details, based on shared vision

Wednesday: Prototyping

1. Divide and conquer—one group works on the landing page, the other the article pages

2. Execute plan

3. Complete a prototype that can be utilized for user testing

Thursday: User Testing

1. Whole group learns how to use verifyapp.com

2. Set up various tests as a group: A/B testing, menu, feedback, etc.

Friday: Iteration

1. Review results of user testing

2. Define any guiding principles based on testing results

3. Determine how we want to update designs

4. Discuss how we want to share with the rest of the organization

Research Findings / Blog Requirements

Landing Page

• 1 big call to action (similar to: Huge.com/ideas)

• Include summary of the article topic. Summary will be written specifically for this purpose (similar to: NYMag)

• Curate a set of content categories. This is not the same as tags—tags are dead

• Information hierarchy will make or break this page

• Avoid visual clutter

• We are positioning ourselves as experts speaking to our peers

Articles

• Follow general guidelines for content usability: Big fonts, big margins, lots of space between chunks of content

• Content authors should use bullet points in their writing to improve readability/skimability

• Use design elements to improve readability/skimability, potentially for things like block quotes, executive summary, key takeaways, etc. 

• Author photos

• No comment section, instead encourage sharing via Twitter

• Author contact information

DON’T CALL IT A BLOG. Ideas for section name:

• Ideas

• Thought Leadership

• Journal

• Concepts

Prototyping

A/B Testing

I created campaigns and corresponding collateral to attract both interns and full-time employees for company recruiting events.

College Campus Visits

The college career fair campaign centered around the idea of 'making.' We wanted to recruit interns that had a passion for making and convey the idea that our interns (and employees) have autonomy in what they make.

Our signage was interactive—we asked students to tell us what they are passionate about making. And our employees wore shirts that said "Make something you love."

Uncubed, NYC's Annual Digital Skills & Jobs Conference

We served margaritas at our Uncubed recruiting event, so swag followed suit. I created drink recipe cards, coasters, and bottle openers.   

I led a small team of writers and developers to redesign the Fino website.

Personas

The website needed to be designed to appeal to two audiences.

1. Potential Client
   A C-level employee of a mid-sized company, particularly those in the Energy Sector, who values thought leadership (as demonstrated by LinkedIn activity). 
2. Potential Employee
   A talented recent grad to mid-level employee who wants to love their co-workers as much as their work.

Site Map and Wireframes

Project Management

As project manager, I organized the kanban board, writing stories, logging bugs and assigning tasks. 

UI

Fino Holiday

Sunscreen Drive for a Local Shelter

Fino Data Science Week