Daily responsibilities

As a product designer at Orion, my daily responsibilities include conducting internal and external interviews, understanding web analytics, journey mapping, creating surveys, conducting usability tests, analyzing research, creating visual designs, and prototyping.

The teams I support

At Orion, I currently support designs for the Trading platforms. I previously supported designs for the Billing system and the Compliance system, and have created designs for the various other products offered at Orion.

About project

Shortly into my career at Orion, I was assigned to take over the project of a refresh to the Billing software.

Solution

Consolidate the various Billing apps into a single app, reorganize the structure to support the various apps, combine similar features, and get rid of features no longer needed.

Process

Starting with an original consolidation design, I redid the work using our current design system. Being new to Orion, I also spent much of my initial time meeting with collegues to understand the Billing software, and conducting external interviews to understand how the software was incorporated in user processes. I was then able to section out the large project, to focus more completly on redesigning the visuals and experiences of smaller parts. Once complete with my initial design, I conducted usability tests, focusing on tasks common to users. With this new user insight, I was able to finalize the redesign in time for the expected date of development to begin (a few months after starting).

About project

About a year into my work at Orion, my position switched to supporting the Trading software, also known as Eclipse, in order to assist with a revamp of the product.

Solution

Simplify workflows within Eclipse, and bring the design into our new design system.

Process

This is an ongoing project that I am still in the process of. I am currently taking individual tools and pages within Eclipse and focusing on each redesign in order for development to take place while I continue to redesign other parts. With each tool I redesign, I interview internal and external users to understand the workflows. I map out the various processes taken with each tool, and find places to simplify them. I use web analytics and my research analysis to validate design decisions. As I design and prototype the tools and pages, I meet regularly with stakeholders, other designers, and developers, in order to ensure the experience is working and doable. After creating hi-fidelity prototypes, I conduct usability tests with both frequent and new users, to receive a range of feedback. I redesign the works, and continually make improvements as new questions rise during development.

About project

My product design team and I worked together to create a new design system for Orion that would be up-to-date and more complete than previous Orion design systems. I played various parts in the creation of the new design system, but my top roles included identifying the core icons for the design system and recreating the design system in dark mode.

Core icons

One of my first projects with assisting my team with the new design system, was consolidating our icon usage and bringing in the new Font Awesome icons. I started by collecting as many icons as I could find on Orion and organizing how they were being used. This collection gave me an idea of how we currently used icons and what situations an icon was needed. I consolidated the situations, and identified the core icon needs. I organized what icons could be used for the various situations based on research of common meanings of icons and looking to other design systems. With input from my team, I finialized the best icons for situations and came up with the list of core icons for the new design system. In addition, I created rules, advice, and examples on when the icons should be used and their specific situations. Amongst my team, I am now known as the Icon Queen, as I continually look to ensure the proper usage of icons.

Dark mode

After the completion of the new design system, I created a dark mode for the system. I started with how the design system colors would translate to dark mode, giving me a basis of the dark mode colors of each light component. With the help of a Figma plugin, I was able to take each light mode component and switch the colors to their dark mode counterparts. For refining the components, I started with researching dark mode and how it differs from light mode. I looked to other design systems, and played around endlessly with switching my various apps from light to dark and noting the differences. With understanding the basis of how components work in dark mode, I was able to refine the dark mode design system elements. I also met up with the developers to understand how they would be translating the component changes. I continue to work on the dark mode components, as I create the new Figma variants for them, so to make it easier for other designs to use them.

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