Jennifer Ng

Vida Health

Vida provides therapy to people diagnosed with depression and anxiety. An important aspect of cognitive behavioral therapy is learning how to balance your thoughts. To obtain this skill, many therapists (and digital programs) ask patients to pay attention to and evaluate their thoughts via a thought tracker. Therapists asks members new questions on the thought tracker as they increase their skill level around balancing thoughts.

The thought tracker was delivered as a survey on the mobile app. To leverage digital capability and reflect growth, I led the design by facilitation ideation with cross-functional members, developed concepts and wireframes, identifying common pain points with competitive thought trackers with real users, validated concepts through user testing, directed a junior designer, and socialized the design to stakeholders.

• Role: Design & research lead
• Duration: 2 months

Vida Health

Vida provides a service to help members reach their health goals through a health coach and personalized program. When I first joined, the team was in the midst of envisioning the mobile app to better support members with their health goals and take off burden off the health coaches. After witnessing churn for a month, I successfully pitched the design sprint process to align cross-functional stakeholders and increase collaboration toward outcomes. I organized and facilitated two design sprints including user concept testing and socializing the results. The main output was a concept for better consuming content and tracking habits.

Our main sprint questions were:
- Will we overburden with too much to do in their day-to-day life and priorities?
- What’s the mix of the coach-driven and digital experiences to make users successful in achieving health outcomes?

After the sprints, I led design for developing functionality for tracking habits. Before the project, coaches and members would discuss building healthy habits. However, members would forget to complete their habits. Using the sprint output and levearging the BJ Fogg behavior model, I developed a concept for habit tracking including habit creation/editing, habit tracking and celebration. Working with a junior designer and engineers, we further detailed the interaction and visual design into functionality on the app. I conducted and organized all user testing to confirm each piece of functionality. I led all design reviews with executive stakeholders.

• Role: Design & research lead
• Duration: 6 months

Livongo Health

Livongo Health aims to support people with chronic conditions, starting with diabetes, by providing connected devices and coaching. To enhance the service provided to people with diabetes, the mobile app is designed to support maintenance of wellness, specifically around diabetes. Designed for iOS and Android, the mobile app connects members directly to a live certified diabetes educator and provides insights for blood glucose checks.

As a research consultant, I led in-home studies and diary studies to inform the product strategy and other efforts at Livongo Health. These insights led to personas and journey maps, which highlighted an opportunity for a mobile app. I also led mobile user experience design, built a prototype, and worked closely with a visual designer to develop the final specifications. I led two rounds of usability tests to validate user satisfaction and ease of use.

The mobile app, available only to Livongo Health members, launched on iOS in November 2015. The Android app arrived in 2016.

• Role: Lead service designer and experience researcher
• Duration: 7 months

Keenwawa / Eatsa

Keenwawa aims to create a fast casual restaurant concept, named Eatsa, that efficiently delivers satisfying food. By leveraging technology, Eatsa would streamline the ordering process. As a design consultant, I led research sprints and design sprints to quickly prototype a fast casual experience.

I led unfocus groups, comparative analysis, and fast casual restaurant follow alongs. Working with a product manager, I designed initial kiosks and prototyped the service. I led usability studies through an experience prototype.

• Role: Lead design researcher and user experience designer
• Duration: 3 months

Barnes & Noble NOOK Shop

Shop is the shopping experience for all digital content on the NOOK device. Users can purchase books, subscribe to magazines and newspapers, and browse content. I led all interaction design of Shop to finalize the production for the NOOK HD hardware release at the end of 2012.

Because Shop is closely related with the barnesandnoble.com shopping experience, I worked with a marketing team in New York to produce appropriate merchandising. I led a weekly meeting across all teams to achieve consensus across product management, engineering, marketing, and design.

Day to day, I worked closely with a visual designer and a front-end engineer to quickly develop prototypes.

• Role: Lead user experience designer
• Duration: 4 months

Barnes & Noble NOOK Future Concepting

NOOK searched for new ideas for the future of book reading. As an external consultant, I led the User Experience initiative by leading workshops and setting new process to establish design strategies.

• Role: Lead user experience designer
• Duration: 2 months

Barnes & Noble NOOK OOBE

To prepare for an international launch of NOOK in mid-2013, I helped the team apply good user experience practices to primary touchpoints including the login screen, Shop, interface elements, and other setup screens. The focus primarily was on the Windows 8 tablet.

• Role: Lead user experience designer
• Duration: 1 month

Barnes & Noble nookCOLOR

Barnes & Noble came to Nectarine Group seeking help to build the user experience framework for a new undeveloped product: a color e-reader intended to change the electronic reading space. Nectarine Group helped Barnes & Noble develop an initial concept and led design strategy.

During the first phase, I led brainstorming sessions and user interviews to immerse the team in the reading space. I developed a survey and led user interviews that collected valuable insights from over 50 people. From these insights, I helped the team generate a design concept that was presented to the Barnes & Noble CEO to greenlight the project.

In the second phase while working closely with the engineering, I developed and designed general interaction behavior. From there, I designed the interaction for content management, reading experience, and home screen. During the latter part of this phase, I also designed and moderated usability test sessions for over 6 participants to inform design decisions. As an internal user experience team was being built at Barnes & Noble, I supported their transition through daily meetings and documentation.

• Role: Lead user experience designer and researcher
• Duration: Phase 1 - 3 weeks, Phase 2 - 12 weeks

HP webOS Research

As part of the in-house webOS design team, I led user research for the communications and productivity group (messaging, phone, calendar, tasks, etc.) As goals changed in the company, I led user experience design for an eBook reader.

As a user researcher, I worked closely with user experience designers and visual designers to answer research questions with research studies. In addition to weekly usability studies, I initiated generative research studies that included in-home visits, user interviews, and diary studies. To further engage the team toward design thinking, I led workshops with product managers, user experience designers, and visual designers. Small "magical moments" resulted from these sessions.

All design and research were ready for production for the next release of webOS. However, the webOS tablet was cancelled shortly after launch.

• Role: Lead user experience researcher
• Duration: 12 months

HP webOS Kindle App

Working closely with a visual designer, we updated the existing webOS Kindle app. I conducted usability studies on the app. Based on usability feedback and internal feature requests, I refined the interaction design. My focus was primarily on maintaining webOS platform consistency.

• Role: Lead user experience designer and researcher
• Duration: 1 month

Connected Digital Cameras

In late 2009, a client came to Nectarine Group to develop concepts to disrupt the photography and video space. Through competitive review and user research, we developed six concepts to showcase what a connected device can do.

• Role: Lead user experience designer and researcher
• Duration: 3 months

Motorola Medios TV

Motorola came to Nectarine Group to develop a new living room experience through a tablet and a connected television. The final solution debuted at CES 2010.

• Role: Lead user experience designer and researcher
• Duration: 6 months