Yazan Kawar - Design Leadership

Web-based Content authoring tool

Complete redesign

Made the case to the executive team on why this product needs to be completely reimagined, from design to the platform it is built on, then completely designed and led the implementation to launch in a quarter of the time it took to build the original

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Immersive training lobby

Reimagining the learner experience

After identifying huge pain points with our learners, I led the product and engineering teams in building a whole new engaging experience, from design to code structure

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Web Portal

Redesigning a portal that's overwhelming users with the volume of information it contains

Defined vision and strategy focused on users' pain points, got alignment from many teams and stakeholders, and created space and agency for the design team to deliver a usable and enjoyable product

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Developer Site

Owning the front-end

After identifying a lack of resources on the engineering team in a critical time in the company where a developer site was needed, Design took on the front end completely and delivered ahead of time

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Design team

Build, scale and integrate a design team

I evangelized the value of design to stakeholders, built a design and CG team, and integrated them into the process of product development

Key impact:
1. All products decisions were balanced against user value, which streamlined the process of prioritization of tasks and clarified our product roadmap significantly
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2. Products now had a consistent interaction model that was vetted with users to ensure better user experience
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3. All UI was revamped to align with current design trends and our branding guidelines
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4. Defined agile process in the development cycle, which enabled efficient workflow and continued improvement sprint by sprint

Mentorship

Improve morale and career paths for my team

I led design workshops focused on building / improving my designers' skills. From learning new tools like 3D software, to animation tools to build motion design skills, to c-sharp prototyping to better equip the team to engage with the engineering team

Key impact:
1. For immersive, learning basic coding skills meant that designers could prototype functionality directly in unity
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2. Teaching my team motion graphics and simple animations meant they could raise the quality of our products
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3. Generic design challenges outside of the day-to-day work kept designers' skills sharp and up-to-date

DE & I

Work culture is key to a productive, happy environment

I created simple 1 - 2 hour design challenges for the team to build zoom backgrounds for the company that we post on slack. These included black history month, Memorial Day, Pride month and many others, and were received very well by the company

Key impact:
1. Showing acceptance to all with simple gestures like zoom backgrounds really reflected well on the design team, and the product org in general
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2. Designers get to keep their skills fresh by taking on smaller tasks that are not product related
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3. The design team was invited to influence and add to the branding efforts of the company