I'm French (green card holder), Design Lead, Product Designer, very good at simplifying complex products. I have experience managing a team. My passion of design is all about the Apple way: building simple, beautiful products that people love to use.
HISTORY
I started my career in France learning about advertising, visual design, packaging, desktop publishing, typography on a Mac with Photoshop and Illustrator 1.0. I helped many companies to move the production from manual tools to the digital way. I learned why quality matters.
In 1995, I got rewards for an interactive CD-Rom made with Macromedia Director for the promotion of the Euro currency.
Between 2001 and 2015, I created innovative, very successful Apps for Apple platforms loved by customers for the simplicity and the great user experience. I became an expert of UI/UX before the terms were adopted by the industry.
PRESENT
Since 2016, I'm in the United States and I have the great opportunity to work for many startups. I contributed to build high quality products, services and websites for consumer, b2b or enterprise markets.
SKILLS
I care about high quality, consistency and simplicity. I'm always the advocate of end users, often misunderstood by geeks, not thinking the same way. My current tools are Adobe Creative Suite, Sketch, Framer, Figma, Invision, ProtoPie.
During the year of 2018, I was part of an ambitious project of a startup. With an amazing team, we built a very innovative mobile application for local communities. It was a native application for iOS, Android but we also built a web version. The challenge was to create a competitor of NextDoor with a better user experience.
In this section of my portfolio, I'm explaining the different steps of the project and my way to handle different tasks , challenges.
I led the design of the product between February and November 2018. I stopped working on the project because the startup was struggling to get more funding but the App was launched on the App Store and the feedback of the first users was very positive.
NOTE: to comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted and obfuscated confidential information in this case study.
For me, the most important about team collaboration is to find compromises, to be positive.
Consistency, quality, simplicity are essential during all stages of a project. Why? Humans are very talented to create a mess or to complicate things. 15 years of experience building different type of products helped me to focus on these three priorities.
I worked with the team to determine what goals the project needs to fulfill. It's mostly about the list of problems to solve.
It's not a simple task but the key is about communication, listening to all opinions.
This step was in close collaboration with the CEO, managers and stakeholders but I also like to involve engineers.
If questions aren’t all clearly answered in the brief, a whole project can set off in the wrong direction.
For Jackpot App, the CEO had a main idea but no directives on features and type of users.
With the team, I worked during few weeks to define the default features. We studied competitors and determined the pain points. We tested more than 10 apps with different focus.
It was clear after this period that we can build a much better product than Nextdoor.
We had to find something special, different from other competitors because the UI/UX was "Deja Vu", not creating any Wow factor.
I selected the design features into four main categories: “Efficiency of use”, “Location flexibility”, “User engagement” and “Privacy”.
We worked on many brainstorming sessions and we found a creative way to connect with people around a specific location.
To keep user privacy, we decided to allow the user to create a spot on a map at any location he wants.
The spot will be a way to chat with other users visiting the same area/topic.
This is a period where we also studied the technologies to use for the product. We tested different SDKs, and we selected Mapbox as the main framework for the map experience. For the backend, we selected Amazon AWS services. This is also the stage where I created a persona, figuring about which type of users are going to work with the product. For the native App, we targeted users between 18 and 30 years.
At this stage, I started digging into the user flow, defining how the content and features we defined in scope definition will interrelate. It's very important to describe the relationships between the various pages and content elements. Although a wireframe doesn’t contain any final design elements, it does act as a guide for how the project will ultimately look. During this process, I thought about how the layout and content could be structured to satisfy user and business goals in a technically feasible way. I created a UI requirements document to outline all the features and elements I wanted to incorporate into the design. Once this was complete, I started creating digital wireframes for the main screens in Sketch.
I always prefer to build a prototype in order to test the user flow. I asked engineers to test out the prototype's usability. During brainstorming sessions, we were debating about each feature and interaction. The goal of the team was to validate the UI/UX that is enough obvious for any kind of user. This helped us identify user frustrations we needed to address so we could improve the design. I often went back to the drawing board to adjust key task flows accordingly.
One of the most exiting things about building a new product is being able to experiment and take risks
After updating my wireframes to incorporate the feedback, I moved on to visual design.
I started working on the identity of the product, the look and feel of the app.
This part of the design process will often be shaped by existing branding elements, color choices, and logos, as stipulated by the company but in this case,
I had to start everything from scratch.
I wanted to keep the interface simple and minimal, yet colorful as well as playful and attractive.
I created an interface which make it easy and pleasant to add information.
Colors quickly inform the user what he/she can interact with and where the important pieces
of information can be found. I submitted many iterations of the logotype and style of the UI/UX to the team.
A theme inspired by earth with a specific blue and green was appealing for most members of the team. Next, I started brainstorming logos.
Coming up with brand adjectives helped me narrow my vision. I sketched ideas first, and then created digital versions of my favorites.
The logos were added to the Style Guide and UI Kit, a comprehensive collection of all site components and UI pattern useful for the developers.
At this step, it's time to make sure that everything works. It's important to detect user experience issues before to launch a product. Errors may be the result of small coding mistakes, and while it is often a pain to find and fix them, it’s better to do it at this stage than present a broken product to the public. It's the period where we can still make changes before to launch the solution. Collecting the user feedback is critical after the launch of a product. Issues and frustrations explained by users should be fixed asap otherwise the word of mouth on the product will be negative.
From JackSpot project, I learned that spending time with engineers to explain the value of some design decisions is worth it. They were more happy to implement features and appreciated the assistance in their coding effort. They realized that it was moving the product forward, with a much better quality. I also learned that compromises are needed all the time with managers and stackholders for many reasons. I will never forget this period of my life as most members of the team are now close friends.
JackSpot is very cool to use. The user interface is beautiful and intuitive. Compared to Nextdoor, it's like day and night.
I built the full backend of MacWeb.com. Engineers can monitor the behavior of servers and the marketing team can also monitor the sales level. For NDA reasons, I can only showcase the mockups made at the beginning of the project
I built the MVP version of a new tool for Splunk customers. Instead of contacting the sales team per phone, customers can use this online tool to get the right topology for servers. I worked as a design lead for the project at Splunk San Jose in collaboration with the design team in San Francisco. I worked with managers of the SVA team and stack-holders. I followed the design system already used for previous applications. I completed the project in time and got many positive feedback. I mostly worked with Sketch and Invision. I also worked with Overflow for the user journey and ProtoPie to explain the micro-interactions to engineers.
You can see more on my Sketch cloud account
Wireframes | Final Mockups
I worked during 4 hours on a design Challenge for EngageCo, a company providing b2b solutions. The main goal was to explain my design process. There is no mockups on this project, only some wireframes. Click here to see the PDF
I have 20 years of digital experiences. I display some work made in the last 5 years
On this section, I'm just describing the most recent experience.
Check my LinkedIn profile for more information.
I'm helping to build awesome business communication tools and services with a company featuring a great culture, focusing on innovation and modern design.
I was delighted to work for a very ambitious project of Wells Fargo Experience Design team (XD). The new design effort of the company is led by Kaaren Hanson. The goal is to raise the bar in design, to delight customers with a modern evolution of the brand, UI/UX. I worked on two major projects related to the design system with an amazing team. One was about data visualization and dashboards. I learned a lot of things about banking regulations, accessibility and Figma. It was a short contract, remote assignment from Artech staffing agency.
NOTE : During this contract, I realized that I'm a better fit for tech companies building the future with a stronger innovation, focus on high quality user experiences.
During Covid-19 crisis, I was helping many startups to focus on design: Skylys Aircraft, Ecos, MacVitamin, Avatar Medical
I was assigned to Splunk San Jose by Virtusa staffing agency. I built the MVP version of a new interactive tool (web application) managed by the Marketing team. I completed the project in time, got congratulations from multiple managers for the quality of my work and the way I handled it (love to get things done). I worked with Sketch and Invision. I also used ProtoPie to explain the user experience to the engineering team.
I was the Design Lead at MacWeb for almost a year. I created the branding of the company and the new website. I worked on the consistency of the user experience for all products and services. I joined the company because I have a strong passion about Apple products and servers. UPDATE AUGUST 2020: the company is now getting a record level of sales. Customers love the simplicity, the user experience and the quality of the services.
I was the product designer but also the project manager for a great startup and a great team. We built together an innovative product named JackSpot. Basically, we were trying to build a competitor of NextDoor, but with a better user experience. Website
I was helping a very nice startup. I believe in the concept and the people. Both are very important for the success of a product. I was leading the design direction for the company and the product. I designed the logo, the website and the UI/UX of the app. CoffeeNow is about connecting people sharing the same interests when they have nothing to do. Visit the website for more information.
I was building Apps for Apple platforms during 15 years. Some products were top sellers at the App Store. I managed a team of designers and developers.
I like these sentences from famous people. It's all about simplicity.
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."
"In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity."
"If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself."
"Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated."
"Simplicity is the glory of expression."
"Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity"
"It is vain to do with more what can be done with less."
"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak."
We can be in touch per email or from social networks
E-Mail: patrice@digicali.com
Location: Phoenix, Arizona