Work ~
Management and leadership
A selection of initiatives I worked on as a manager at BuzzFeed:
Product Design Team Transparency Expectations
What: I drove an initiative to clarify transparency expectations (i.e. expectations for sharing work) across the Product Design team. I collaborated with design leadership to align on expectations and draft clear documentation. Then I rolled it out to the rest of the team.
Impact: Because expectations were clearer, designers shared their work more regularly in more venues, which resulted in more feedback, higher quality work, and more opportunities for designers to grow by practicing giving and receiving feedback.
Product Design Management 101 Documentation
What: I led an initiative to craft onboarding documentation for first-time design managers. This included education about how to have effective 1:1s, how to work with your own manager, and how to set goals with your reports.
Impact: These docs spread existing knowledge and best practices more widely, supporting three new managers we onboarded to our leadership team. It also gave the seasoned managers a chance to align on things like the cadence of setting goals with our reports.
Product Design 101 Documentation
What: I drove an initiative to create a set of onboarding documents for new hires on the Product Design Team. This included information about tools we used as well as team rituals like design critique.
Impact: Information for new hires was centralized and easy to access for new hires, making joining the team just a little bit easier.
Teaching Others Documentation
What: I wrote a document to clarify what it meant to “teach others,” which was a big part of the Staff Product Designer role at BuzzFeed. I shared this resource with designers who were looking to level up to Staff, and also facilitated conversations with some of them to go deeper into the topic.
Impact: Designers looking to level up to Staff had a much clearer picture of what they needed to do to hit the points on the ladder about teaching. The further impact is a team that supports individuals’ growth across the entire team, and utilizes feedback moments as opportunities to teach.
BuzzFeed Tech Org Team Leads Expectations
What: I drove an initiative to clarify the expectations for Team Leads across the BuzzFeed Tech Org (each cohort of team leads are responsible for owning a cross-functional team, overseeing strategy, execution and health of the team). I did some research to uncover how Team Leads understood the role and to challenge my own assumptions. Then I led a cross-functional working group of senior leaders to craft new documentation based on how the Tech Org had evolved since the original expectations were written.
Impact: Unfortunately I wasn’t able to see this work to the very end, as I left BuzzFeed before being able to complete it. The desired impact was to increase collaboration and sense of accountability across Team Leads, and ultimately drive more impact across all teams.
Project Timelines Documentation & Coaching
What: I wrote documentation for the Product Design Team about creating thoughtful timelines for design work, educating the team about why it was important and how to approach it. After, I coached many designers on the process of creating timelines for their work by digging into how to estimate timelines based on the questions they needed to answer in each phase.
Impact: This documentation and my coaching helped spread the practice of creating design timelines to multiple teams across the BuzzFeed Tech Org. The impact was that teams were able to plan their work more easily, and spend their time more thoughtfully.
Directed product design work
A selection of work I directed as a manager at BuzzFeed:
Community Feed, Tasty App
Designer: Lisa Maldonado | My role: Tasty Team Design Lead & manager
The work: The Tasty app was born as a utility product, but in 2021 we decided to build a community on top of that utility, taking signal from how users were already engaging with the app. The Community Feed allows users to share what they cooked, follow each other, and engage in conversation. The goal of this experience is to enhance the value of the app by creating connections between users, deepening their experience with Tasty, and therefore drive engagement and loyalty.
My influence: As Design Team Lead for Tasty, I collaborated with Product and Engineering Team Leads to define the execution strategy for this work, which was broken down into multiple tightly scoped A/B tests. As Lisa’s manager, I provided feedback and direction along the way. I gave direction on the carousel on the Discover feed, which takes users directly to the Community Feed, specifically about using the existing gray “card” pattern, and direction on how to make the card feel visually balanced and scannable. I also helped direct the creation of the Community Feed itself, influencing not only the name itself but also the way it plays off existing patterns from familiar feeds like Instagram’s.
AdAdapted ad unit, Tasty app
Designer: Lisa Maldonado | My role: Tasty Team Design Lead & manager
The work: This was the first native ad unit we introduced into the Tasty app. Powered by AdAdapted, it was integrated with our existing shopping functionality. Users would now be able to add individual grocery items from the ad unit right into their Tasty Grocery Bag. This was the first time the app featured grocery items that were not tied to a specific recipe.
My influence: Given this was the Tasty app’s first native ad unit, I stressed how important it was for the unit to feel native to the app. I gave direction on visual design specifically around using existing patterns, achieving visual balance through spacing and typography. I also gave direction on the placement of this ad unit within the app, keeping in mind what would be best for the user experience.
Shoppable Cookware, Tasty App
Designer: Gabe Campo | My role: Tasty Design Team Lead & manager
The work: This project introduced the ability for users to shop Tasty cookware at Walmart, in addition to already being able to shop for recipe ingredients at Walmart through the Tasty app. The cookware would be specifically target to each recipe, and would integrate into the existing Grocery Bag experience. The goal of this work was to increase Grocery Bag size.
My influence: As Tasty Design Team Lead, it was my responsibility to ensure this extension of the existing Shoppable Recipe experience felt native and easy to use. I gave direction on copy and visual design – specifically being direct and simple with the header of the carousel unit, and around using existing patterns and in order to make the unit feel native to the recipe page.
Flip Your Feed, BuzzFeed.com
Designer: Gabe Campo | My role: Manager
The work: This sponsored ad product prompted users to “flip your feed” by triggering a toggle which would adjust the background color and the content on the page, as specified by the client who bought the sponsorship.
My influence: I was Gabe’s manager, who designed this while working on the Partnerships team – a team that created custom sponsorship products for clients. I gave a lot of feedback and direction on the UX of this experience, wanting to ensure it was easily understood by users. I suggested using a toggle instead of a button or another affordance, as it was the most easily recognizable UI for turning something on and off.
My product design
A selection of work I did as an individual contributor at BuzzFeed:
Customizable Cookbooks, Tasty App
The work: Customizable Cookbooks enabled Tasty app users to organize their saved recipes, replacing a system where the app automatically generated groups of recipes into “cookbooks.”
My role: End to end product design including competitive analysis, UX design, visual design, art direction on illustration. Collaborated with product manager to craft product definition and scoping.
Reflection: I was so excited to work on this because users had been requesting it for years. This turned out to be more complicated than we anticipated, as we ended up needing to redo the IA of the Profile tab with the introduction of this feature.
The work: The BuzzFeed homepage was refreshed in order to better represent BuzzFeed’s breadth of content and give the page a more modern look and feel.
My role: I picked up the work from another designer who had already completed the information architecture work for the page. I took the work to the finish line, mostly focused on visual design.
Reflection: This was a fun one, but also challenging because I was tasked with figuring out how to apply a new visual language that had been created for the BuzzFeed brand.
BuzzFeed.com Homepage
The work: Tasty partnered with Walmart to make it easier to buy ingredients for Tasty recipes. This was a massive undertaking, as we built the ability for Tasty app users to add recipe ingredients into a “cart,” then complete their checkout with Walmart.
My role: End to end product design including competitive analysis, UX design, visual design, art direction on illustrations. Collaborated with product manager and stakeholders to craft product definition and scoping. Also participated heavily in client presentations and stakeholder management.
Reflection: This was one of the most exciting and challenging projects of my career. It was packed with UX complexities, and it was incredibly fulfilling to bring this to life with my team.
Shoppable Recipes, Tasty App
The work: The Tasty homepage was refreshed in order to better reflect the breadth of the Tasty brand and to give editorial teams more control over the content.
My role: End to end product design including competitive analysis, UX design, visual design. Collaborated with product manager and stakeholders to craft product definition and scoping.
Reflection: The Tasty.co homepage hadn’t been touched in years so this was a much needed redesign that I loved working on. It felt good to bring some life onto the page and figuring out how to adapt some of the Tasty app elements for web was an interesting challenge.
Tasty.co Homepage
The work: Tasty.co had outgrown its original navigation, as the nav no longer represented the breadth of content the site offered, nor did it allow for us to promote seasonal and timely food content. So, we redesigned the navigation to solve these problems.
My role: End to end product design including competitive analysis, UX design, visual design. Collaborated with product manager and stakeholders to craft product definition and scoping.
Reflection: I loved working on this and am so proud of what we shipped! We were able to provide our users with such a better content discovery experience, and we were able to provide editorial teams with the flexibility they needed to adjust certain nav items as necessary.