Resume & Portfolio

Jesse Richards ~ NYC

~ My Portfolio: Product & UX ~

Reverse chronological order

Voxy's new AI activities

My roles: Leadership and oversight as Chief Product Officer / Research / Idea generation

As Chief Product Officer at Voxy, I oversaw the initiative to redesign and relaunch Voxy's self-study activities, designed to teach learners new languages. Careful analysis of customer and end user needs revealed several problem statements that were then addressed by the project: the need for more exciting activities to drive user engagement, the need for increased platform accessibility for people with disabilities, the need for increased scaffolding to help beginner learners, and the need for more hands-on activities such as those focused on speaking and writing. To address these, we decided to create all-new activities, and roll them out as MVPs in an "Activity Lab" to test with users and gather iterative feedback. The new activities used Gen AI in innovative ways, such as giving more support to beginner learners through an increased use of their native language, generated on the fly, and offering detailed Writing suggestions and feedback. Feedback from learners was positive, and the focus on accessibility opened new large enterprise opportunities for the business.

Tinybeans Home Feed

My roles: Product & UX leadership / User research / Product conception / Product/project management

As Head of Product, I led user and market research that expanded the core value prop of this baby journal consumer app. We reoriented the product from focusing solely on baby photo-sharing to a more robust digital family album. To drive this shift, we reoriented the iOS and Android apps around a new activity feed as the home page. This drove ad revenue and higher usage of all features. Prompts to add photos and answer fun questions helped build the baby album, and relevant articles were included to help busy parents.

Tinybeans projects

My roles: Product & UX leadership / Product conception / Product/project management / Design leadership

As Head of Product, I oversaw several projects for Tinybeans, a baby journal consumer app. I built out an entirely new product/design/engineering/data team of 15 in NYC to expand the Sydney-based company. During this time we grew the userbase from 1.75M to 3M, with MAU increasing from 650k to 1.1M. We redesigned the entire brand, included iOS, Android, and web apps. We also rebuilt the photobook flow, increasing conversion 2x YOY and printing margins by 2.15x, resulting in 3.3x quarterly revenue YOY.

Grovo's new direction

My roles: Product & UX leadership | User research | Product conception | Product/project management | Design leadership

Acting in Product and UX roles at Grovo, I worked on an intensive 6-month research project into the nature of workplace learning, which led to a new product direction for the company. I then led the entire team to embark on and build this industry-disrupting new product, from scratch. To coincide with its release, I also led our design team to launch a new visual rebrand for the company.

Vitals Local

My roles: UX leadership | User research | Ideation with Product | Wireframes/flows | Design leadership

The most fun project I worked on as Director of UX at Vitals was Vitals Local, a map of all health resources in your area. You can search doctors and filter by their hours or if they take your insurance. You can click on a doctor and see other doctors that doctor most refers to. You can compare neighborhoods rated by their available health care, and learn more about each neighborhood. In this image you can also see part of the site flows I worked on.

Vitals.com and VitalsChoice

My roles: UX leadership | User research | Wireframes | Design leadership

I oversaw redesigns of both sides of Vitals's business: their public web site of doctor reviews, and their B2B doctor portal. I liasoned with a design agency to rebrand the company, and then led the UX and design efforts on all the products.

Offerpop Fan Admin

My roles: Product leadership | Product conception | Product/project management | Wireframes/flows | Design & UX leadership

As the head of Offerpop's Product department, I oversaw their expansion into a wider platform of social media management tools for brands. This included insights into Facebook Page performance along with a new Categories feature, and a fan database showcasing Page fans. A balancing act was needed to showcase individual details where possible, while focusing mainly on aggregate data in order to protect privacy.

Offerpop social media promotion products

My roles: Product leadership | Product conception | Product/project management | Wireframes/flows

I also worked on planning and designing new additions to Offerpop's core suite of social media promotion products. The web app shown here is called Fan Stream, which lets brands show a leaderboard of their Timeline content with positions updating in real time, and shows a flowing stream of fans who engaged with each post. We got to watch it being used live with during the MTV Movie Awards, our client.

Proust web app

My roles: Product & UX leadership | Product/project management | Wireframes/flows

Proust helps you tell your life story by prompting you with questions, and then showcasing those in a storybook. Shown here is the storybook page of the product, along with some of my annotated wireframes for another page. We were able to iterate on the main flow of the product many times based on data and user feedback.

Proust.com web home page

My roles: Product & UX leadership | User research | Product/project management | Wireframes/flows

As the Director of Product for IAC startup Proust.com, I helped launch the site, and then worked on a biweekly sprint launch cycle of dozens of features and updates. Shown here is the home page design (one of the A/B testing versions) as well as some of my initial sketches.

Proust map & timeline

My roles: Product & UX leadership | Product conception | User research | Product/project management | Wireframes/flows

Two of the biggest projects I conceived of and managed with Proust were the Map and Timeline. In addition to the Storybook, these were creative ways that data was visualized to tell your life story. These ended up being eerily prescient of the Facebook personal timeline (it used to be just a wall before it was a timeline) and map features that launched shortly thereafter.

Facebook app: Know Me Not

My roles: Product & UX leadership | User research | Product/project management | Wireframes/flows

I planned and managed implementing a Facebook app for Proust, a game that lets you create a quiz about yourself to challenge your friends. The app served to drive traffic to Proust.com, with users' answers becoming the starting point for sharing their larger life story on Proust.

Meetup redesign & themes

My roles: Product leadership | Product conception | Product/project management | Wireframes/flows | Design

Meetup had wanted to redesign its web site for years, but it took a radical change in the company structure for it to get done. Given complete freedom to choose projects, the team I led as a Product Manager decided to ambitiously redesign and streamline the site, paving the way for group customization features. When we launched customizable groups, I designed all the template themes available. At left: before and after. At right: themes available.

My own Meetup group

My roles: Group leadership | Product conception | User research | Design

As I was interviewing to be a Product Manager for Meetup.com, I organized a Meetup Group of my own to better understand the user experience. I designed the customized site, and used my group to find bugs, test new products, study group dynamics, and look at analytics and feedback. One of the ideas that spun out of my group experience was a customizable printed nametags feature. Today, my group is still going strong as one of the largest Art meetups in the world.

Other Meetup projects

My roles: Product leadership | User research | Product conception | Product/project management | Wireframes/flows

As a Product Manager, I led many other projects at Meetup. I worked on a series of iterations designed to integrate Meetup with Facebook and other social networks. This was controversial at the time, but it ended up creating successful new ways to drive traffic and engagement. Another project eased Meetup's Support Team's response burden by redesigning Meetup's Help section to be filled with dynamic, voteable, contextual content that could be easily added by the community. Another restructured the auto-scheduling feature to encourage and make it simple for groups to repeat events.

Local business web sites

My roles: Product leadership | Product conception | Product/project management | Wireframes/flows | Design | Development

I worked at Need2Know first as a front-end developer and designer, then moved up to creative directing and managing all of the agency's projects. For five years I worked on hundreds of web design projects with diverse clients. Shown here are a handful of the local business web sites I managed and launched, some of which I designed and helped build hands-on myself.

Luxury brand web sites

My roles: Product leadership | Product conception | Product/project management | Wireframes/flows | Design | Development

I worked on several luxury brand sites with Need2Know. I planned, designed, and built these sites, which included animation, with a team at Need2Know and then managed ongoing content updates and new features with the clients.

B2B Industrial web sites

My roles: Product leadership | Product conception | Product/project management | Wireframes/flows | Design | Development

I worked on many sites for industrial and B2B clients with Need2Know. I planned, designed, and built these sites with a team at Need2Know and then managed ongoing content updates and new features with the clients.