This project will always be a defining point of my career in pushing me to think beyond the design and experience, but also the direction of e-commerce on Complex. Being the solo U.S.-based product designer on a small design team for an acquisition company merger placed a large responsibility on my shoulders to be more than a designer. I owned the design process end-to-end across research, ideation, stakeholder alignment, and engineering handoff. Much of my role on this project involved translating business objectives and requirements into scalable experiences. In collaboration with product, engineering, and leadership, our alignment resulted in building an experience at Complex that seamlessly integrated commerce into entertainment.

Unlike my previous projects, this project rapidly pivoted to meet the business goals of the time, resulting in a lot of ambiguity in the product strategy. By conducting user interviews and research myself, I truly understood our users, which in turn allowed me to adapt the design process quickly no matter the changes in strategy and/or requirements. Due to time zone limitations, my role expanded to support all design handoffs to ensure a point of contact with engineering at all times. This helped reduce friction during development and ensured the final product closely matched the design’s intended experience.

Ultimately, this project strengthened my ability to lead design within a high-stakes environment without compromising on the user experience. It reinforced the first lesson my design mentor taught me: “design is 20% of the job.”