Building processes and leading the designers who build them
Three worked examples show how I spot a recurring problem, bring in the people it affects, and design a fix. After them, how I get results: discover, build, lead, and measure. The work spans Cole-Parmer and Sears Holdings, across digital, email, web, social, video, and print.
One launch brought $847K in initial sales, content architecture lifted SEO impressions 50%, and seven sites now share one brand system in four languages. Each example also covers what I would do differently.
What changed
Each line jumps to the part of the story behind the number.
Example 1: Calibration requests
Customers on coleparmer.com buy a yearly calibration service to keep their equipment working to the right parameters. They ship smaller equipment to us, we calibrate it, and send it back.
- Orders got kicked outCustomers bought a calibration item online, and the order was kicked out so customer service could contact them. The manual process took time, and a held or sometimes cancelled order confused customers.
- Three business optionsKick out orders and accept the delays, send users to buy new items that are already calibrated, or let customers submit for calibration with a clear process.
- Automating was the easy callBut customers needed a way to submit their equipment and a clear view into a process with several complex steps.
- I chose bothInstead of either/or, I allowed optionality. Customers can buy new equipment on item pages if they want, or keep their own equipment through an easy option that shows how it will be calibrated.
I built this calibration form with steps so customers can request multiple calibrations for specific equipment and understand the calibration journey.
What I would do differently
I would go further in the submittal process and automate how customers send in their equipment, too.
A stretch goal I wanted was to turn this into an automated, tailored subscription service, since calibration repeats so regularly.
Example 2: On-site calibration
This service differed because customers had equipment that could not be shipped to us. We partnered with a vendor to go calibrate and service equipment on-site anywhere in the lower 48 states.
- Owned the online experienceI was in charge of the front end and of how items were organized on the site and in the PIM. I built the experience with a Product Manager who onboarded the vendor from the business side.
- Sold like any item, handled differentlyThe service is sold online as an item, often alongside equipment, and it entered a process that told the vendor and our CX team that special steps were involved.
- Mapped the journeyThe new process had to be mapped, so I built a flow diagram of the whole customer journey, including marketing contact points.
- Built the landing pageI built a page explaining the service and added the new items to the right category pages to get them noticed.
- One required field at checkoutTo keep the journey clear, we added a required field so customers provide their contact information for installation and calibration.
The on-site calibration customer journey succeeded out of the gate and led to $847K in initial sales at launch.
The landing page explaining the service is live on coleparmer.com.
What I would do differently
I wanted to keep revisiting and improving this service, with periodic updates to the process and real customer feedback. I asked for all of it in my requirements, but unfortunately it never happened.
Example 3: Certificate look-up
B2B buyers often purchase items on coleparmer.com for scientists who need the certificates that accompany those items for audits.
- Certificates get lostToo often, the certificates that come with an item are lost or thrown away when they reach a customer’s receiving department.
- Nobody misses them until an auditDocumentation isn’t missed until it’s needed, too often suddenly during audits or regulatory checks. Customers worry, even panic, and come to coleparmer.com to find them.
- Requirements for a repositoryCertificates can be proprietary or third party, so I wrote the requirements for a repository of searchable files.
- The ideal was one searchThe best online experience was one interface with a couple of input fields. That was development for a future phase.
- Aggregated without being askedI collected every place certificates were spread across and brought them into one central location in the mega menu, which I also set as a search redirect.
The aggregate page lists each certificate type to be found, because there was no time or budget to create a single-source lookup. That compromise gave customers one spot to search for their different types of certificates.
The goal of one input across all certificate types was deferred to a future state. Still, traffic growth on the aggregate page showed that finding certificates was growing in importance.
More importantly, it showed that buyers and users needed to share access to My Account documentation.
That structure was in long-term development with my junior designer. We built flows and locations to give users access to item purchase details, which would hold the certificates they were after.
From problem to proof
How I get results: find the real problem, build something that scales, lead the people who make it work, and measure what changed.
Stage 1 · Discover
The patterns behind the problems
Part of the larger process is finding the patterns that keep causing issues, then working with the people those issues affect to diagnose and stop them, and tracking the fixes. These were the core issues I partnered with stakeholders to address.
- Fragmented brand voice across channels
- Inconsistent creative quality
- Inefficient content workflows
- Lack of scalable templates and systems
- Heavy reliance on manual oversight
- Limited cross-team alignment
The opportunity was clear: work with CX, Marketing, IT, Sales, and Product Management to build a repeatable, scalable creative ecosystem that could support campaigns, launches, and evergreen content across global digital properties.
Genuine understanding of people, problems, and business needs builds trust and speeds up collaboration.
That approach creates teams that consistently produce strong work. It only works when I listen with real attention to build the relationships that drive results.
Stage 2 · Build
How I scaled quality
- Content frameworks
- Design standards
- Kickoff goal gathering and review processes
- Long-term improvement patterns
A framework that standardizes how a team plans, creates, distributes, and measures digital content lets people deliver high-quality work. It cuts bottlenecks and empowers designers to make informed decisions and do their best design.
National-scale campaigns at Sears Holdings and mygofer.com
Being deeply involved in, or in charge of, several areas of site management gave me the groundwork to see both the broad and the nuanced view of what large campaigns and projects need to succeed, and which pitfalls to avoid.
At Sears, on mygofer.com, I managed the creation of site ads, email, print, and landing pages, and led the homepage and email calendars. I managed relationships with internal and external design agencies, directed dotted-line designers with partial workloads, and directed agencies on print, email, and interactive landing page designs at national scale.
- Led creative content production for national holiday campaigns, delivering email, print, interactive landing pages, and digital asset packages on tight deadlines
- Managed weekly content calendars, promotional campaigns, and email editorial schedules across the homepage and digital channels
- Coordinated creative assets across marketing, merchandising, and design teams at national scale
What this work required
- Owning the direction of content and placement to tell consistent brand and product stories
- Balancing creative judgment with operational rigor across several concurrent projects
- Creating scalable content systems across digital channels and multilingual sites
- Leading creative workflows from concept to completion with agency and internal partners
- Mapping customer journeys and creating assets and processes that address pain points
- Writing requirements and leading kickoff meetings to move projects from concept to delivery
Stage 3 · Lead
How I lead the team
- Set a clear creative vision and standards
- Built collaborative rituals that encouraged curiosity and shared ownership
- Coached designers with honesty, context, and actionable guidance
- Advocated for design across Marketing, Product, IT, CX, and leadership
- Fostered psychological safety so designers could explore, iterate, and grow
- Made sure feedback was timely, private, constructive, and reciprocal
Building a team that understands the why
Taking on a lead strategy role for the shared creative service across Antylia’s sites, I built a culture where designers, stakeholders, and colleagues learned the reasons behind decisions and goals.
What that enabled
- Stronger design rationale
- Better cross-functional alignment
- Faster iteration
- Higher quality output
- Shared accountability
Coaching and mentorship
My coaching is grounded in honesty, curiosity, and context. When designers understand the whole picture, they make better decisions now and later.
- Open dialogue
- Reciprocal feedback
- Growth through understanding
- Slow judgment, fast curiosity
Design advocacy
I represented design across departments thoughtfully, making sure:
- Customer needs stayed central
- Business goals were balanced with UX integrity
- Conversations were constructive, timely, and grounded in shared purpose
Humanity’s superpower is collaboration, and my teams practiced it intentionally to produce thorough work we are proud of.
Stage 4 · Measure
What I owned and what it delivered
My overall impact
- $847K in initial sales from a single content-led campaign
- +50% SEO impressions through structured content architecture
- 7 sites aligned under one brand system in 4 languages
- National-scale campaign execution across digital, email, print, and interactive media
My roles
- Site UX design, merchandising, CMS, and AI widget lead
- Led designers, agencies, front-end developers, email teams, and marketing partners
- Directed creative strategy, content systems, and cross-functional workflows
- Built scalable processes that enabled consistent quality without bottlenecks
Need your digital strategy and design pain points solved? Let’s talk.
I’m looking for a team to grow with a team long term in a remote or hybrid in the northwest Chicago suburbs.