LIVEOAK TECHNOLOGIES
Video Conferencing Design
My Role
Project Lead / Senior UX Designer in a team of three
Client Team
Co-founder / Head of Product, Engineering team
Duration
8 months (October 2019 - June 2020)
Scope
Information Architecture, Visual Design, Prototype
The Big Win
LiveOak was acquired by DocuSign in 2020 because of the Online Notarization flow that my team created.
Liveoak Technologies was an enterprise software startup that provided secure video conferencing and document collaboration to banks and insurance companies.
The Interesting Bits…
I had to gain their trust as a designer
When the project began, I was the lead designer and was partnered with a manager for internal reviews. LiveOak wanted to start off with a small trial project to see how I would approach the redesign of an existing component. After a successful first project, I was tasked with reworking existing components and creating new ones to fit seamlessly into their UI. The work started out with small interaction fixes but eventually grew into larger components and entire flows.
I insisted on adding more people to my design team to keep up momentum
As time went on, the manager rolled off the project and I was the only person working directly with the team. The needs of the client grew to the point where I had to handle 3-4 different medium to large interaction design projects at once. I recognized the need for help and convinced my manager to let me add more designers to my team so that we could deliver on time.
I managed a revolving team of designers and kept everyone on task
Onboarding internal team members and delegating work became essential to getting everything done. Because of the company’s heavy workload at the time, help was based on availability, which resulted in having to onboard new designers nearly every week.
To make onboarding go smoothly, I created a concisely detailed document that included the objective and supporting details for each in progress project, links to the files and component library, important deadlines, and designer assignments. I communicated with my team via Slack and set up Zoom and offline internal reviews so that we could move quickly and efficiently.
I broke large projects into manageable design tasks, creating an efficient work flow
Once the walkthrough and user flow of larger projects were complete, I created a spreadsheet that separated the project into sections and had the client add a design priority. I assigned tasks to internal teammates so we could work on different parts simultaneously. The spreadsheet was helpful in tracking ongoing work, creating transparency across the team, and setting clear expectations.
Outside of internal reviews, we met remotely once a week with the client to review our work, get live feedback, and ask questions with the expectation that we’d iterate on the flow for the next meeting.
The massive multi-designer project that helped LiveOak get acquired
My team created the Online Notarization flow from scratch. It was a large project that was comprised of several user flows and lots of details. My efficient project management techniques, the detail oriented nature of my team, the consistent communication, and productive iteration processes led to LiveOak being acquired by DocuSign for $38M in July 2020.
A Real Client Review
Want to know more?
Contact me at linwincreative@gmail.com