Michael Becker

About the project

Mezco is a niche collectible toy and action figure company with a huge cult following. Recognizing the opportunity to increase revenue with an online store, they first ventured into the world of e-commerce about five years ago.

The problem

Mezco’s existing Magento storefront was causing performance issues and was becoming impossible to scale with their growing business. Mezco reached out to me as a UX/UI design and e-commerce consultant to help them vet solutions and completely redesign their customer experience to match their brand and aggressive sales initiatives.

The other glaring issue that was preventing growth was that their Magento store wasn&t responsive, leaving mobile customers frustrated and hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table.

The solution

I began competitive analysis on industry competitors, as well as vetted and trialed dozens of e-commerce solutions until I landed on one that featured customizable enterprise solutions to meet Mezco’s unique e-commerce needs.

Focusing on a mobile-first design, large product imagery and simple, clear product detail pages gave customers full transparency into costs, estimated shipping dates, and product information. Conversions for desktop increased by 150% post-launch, while conversions for mobile customers increased by 1000%.

About the project

Commercial mortgage applications are one of those industries that are still playing catch-up in the design and UX arena. With a customer-facing front end already designed and built, the next step was to start designing and building out a dashboard for users to be able to view, edit, and manage commercial loan application processes.

The problem

The Fannie Mae Small Loans (FMSL) program offers products designed to recognize owners of smaller properties and their specific financing needs. Applying for a loan can be an extremely long and nerve-wracking process for both the lender and borrower. An important step of this process is the underwriting stage, which can be tedious and make-or-break the loan.

To proceed with the underwriting stage of the Fannie Mae small loan application and obtain a mortgage, the borrower needs to send additional information to the lender, Berkadia.

Discovery & strategy

I held a whiteboarding discovery session with the Product Owner to uncover the challenge, identify target users, and gather requirements. I also conducted several user interviews to discover each user’s needs and goals for the project.

This helped the Product Owner identify key goals and outcomes of the product:

• Design a dashboard based off of an automated system that allows for seamless communication between the underwriter and borrower
• Provide a clear status of where the application is in the application process
• Enhance workflow of underwriting process
• Allow borrower to easily upload documents and determine what information needs to be/has been provided
• Cut down Mortgage Banker’s involvement during underwriting
• Build a design system to use across 7 distributed teams

UI design

I put together a twenty-eight screen wireframe and prototype to help the Product Owner and the developers understand all aspects of the application, including the user flow. The wireframes stick tightly to Material Design guidelines and MDC components from our design system, making the design-to-development conversion effort minimal.

Next steps

Continue to test wireframes, prototypes, and validate assumptions. Design is never done!

About the project

Post-processing ensembles in reservoir simulation gives engineers keen and actionable insights into useful data that helps them determine the viability of reservoirs. I was tasked with determining how to display this information in a meaningful way within the B2B software product Encore.

The problem

Reservoir simulation software is notoriously slow, complicated, and difficult to use. Encore, a software solution for viewing and comparing ensemble data, aimed to focus on the post-processing aspect of simulation and concentrate specifically on streamlining user workflows. Reservoir simulation is a niche industry with complex requirements and (unfortunately) terrible UX.

Discovery & strategy

Encore required some fresh eyes and a strategic approach to flip it on its head and re-think how people use the software. After an initial product audit and user interviews, the following plan was put in place to move the project forward in the right direction:

• Create, manage, and evangelize a custom atomic design system based on design tokens to speed up development and ensure cohesiveness across the product
• Meet with stakeholders and reservoir engineers to figure out their pain points and distill their must-have features, then simplify them
• Create Figma mockups and simple prototypes to validate assumptions through user testing

UI design

Wireframes and prototypes were created in Figma to help stakeholders and developers understand all aspects of the application, including the user flow. The wireframes incorporate Encore's design system patterns which use a functional CSS approach (Tachyons), making the design-to-development conversion effort minimal.

Next steps

Continue to test the application, implement new design patterns, and validate assumptions. Design is never done!