Work / Aura
Design leadership at Aura
Aura is a fast-paced intelligent safety company aimed at keeping personal identity and children safe online. The product contains vast real estate of features and a web of different plan structures. In my two years at Aura I led the team or 12 through tumultuous shifts as we found product market fit to arrive at an incredibly strong team of full stack product designers. I kept the team framed in positivity and purpose as we navigated several pivots, re-organizations, and strategies. Through this time I was able to transformed the design culture from a siloed agency to a problem solving partner to enable a more fulfilled team and productive process. As a hands-on leader I also personally contributed and shipped design for all parts of the product from UXR to UI in Growth, Core, and 0-1 innovation projects.
2022-2024
Role: Director of Product Design
Team: 11 Product Designers, UX copywriter
Leadership • Mobile app • Web app • Extension • Desktop app • Design system • Accessibility • UXR
Illustrations done in collaboration with Lauk Haus
Transformational design called for a new way of working
Impact
89% subscriber growth YOY
14% increase in free trial survival YOY
15% increase in WAU YOY
Accessibility compliance of WCAG 2.0AA
Managed team augmentation with strategic hires, contractors, and vendors
Fostered a culture of agile testing resulting in 130+ UXR studies across the team in 2023
Reduced cost of design tooling
Recognized as company All-Star
Selected for multiple leadership development programs
Aura’s mission is to provide an all-in-one service that can protect your life and entire family. In essence it’s combining features offered by device OS, banking industry, credit bureaus, dark web scanning services, parental control apps, as well as VPN and antivirus providers.
The fundamental tension in the UX was between information and tools. The information was delivered in the form of alerts from passive processes, and tools for active protection were often buried in the IA. This problem worsened as we broadened the feature set of protections. As the company grew and discovered additional target users the overlap in relevance for each persona became less. It was time for change.
Designer as architect
Calling on my network of collaborators, I worked with a visual designer to define the brand identity. Referencing the world’s best known transit systems, utilities, and public sector identities we crafted a unique identity to match the advanced and reliable quality of the service. Colors were chosen to reflect the best in class safety, while fusing with elements of street style. Because after all the scooters have to make riders look good too. Primary among identity requirements was extreme visibility both for rider safety and for vehicle visibility on street corners. The scooters had to be visible from blocks away.
Shifting culture to design as a team
Each designer reported up the chain of the design team. The process was opaque to stakeholders across the org, and designers were not tuned into each other’s work. This led to single points of failure, lack of peripheral awareness, and a feeling of being dissociated from one another. It was all very transactional and designers never felt like they were solving problems with Product. The only way to scale the design system and product was to reimagine our team culture. Moving away from a formal scrum process and shifting toward more of a studio environment helped remove formality in meetings. Dedicating time weekly for each designer to share their work at any stage of the process increased system knowledge for all, sewed cohesiveness, and cultivated inspiration. Designers became embedded with their cross-functional squads as problem solving partners that could leverage the product design share meetings for support, critique, and inspiration.
As the team grew I focused on finding new contract collaborators and full time product designers with a diverse set of backgrounds from agency, ecomm, and other fast-paced startups. Throughout my time at Aura I always tried to ground our process and decisions in user insight from UXR, telemetry, or customer reviews. I upskilled members of the team in doing their own UXR and when we lost our internal UXR function the design team was able to keep ourselves grounded with frequent usability and qualitative testing. The result was a high-functioning team praised for its collaboration, pragmatic approach to design, and dedication to building a world-class intelligent safety experience.
Team principles
Customers drive the system
Sharing is trust
Show, don’t tell
Inspect with respect