Team: Verizon Team
Timeframe: Oct — Nov 2023
Role: Junior User Experience Designer
The most recent Verizon project I worked on was a pitch where Publicis Sapient essentially had to prove to Verizon that they understand how to draw customers and what the future of the industry will look like. We came to the conclusion that personalization which makes the buying process seamless is the future. This proved to be an interesting conclusion as digital privacy is a huge issue and many people don’t want to feel like they’re being tracked when they use the internet. We aimed to find a solution that toed the line between understanding who the user is intuitively and being too intrusive.
At first, we created personas. The first persona was a woman named Sara. Sara has an account with Verizon and uses the myVerizon app. She has a kid who is old enough to own a smartphone and she wants to buy them a smartwatch. She goes to the Verizon store and looks at a couple models with an associate, but unfortunately cannot buy anything at that time. The task was to design an app experience that allowed Sara smoothly continue her browsing, pick, and buy a smartwatch. This was the prompt I worked on. I designed lo-fi mockups of a notification interaction that could prompt Sara to continue browsing. I worked with a visual designer who polished my designs.
The first was a notification that, when tapped, pulls up a personalized message written by the associate with a link to a page that compares the two models of smartwatch she was considering.
The second was more simplified. It features a notification that, when tapped, expanded a hyperlink to the two smartwatch models.
I also designed a separate interaction where Sara talks to a chatbot within the app. All screens and prototyping was done by me.
We presented our ideas to an internal team and got some feedback. Basically, our designs weren’t “next gen” enough. They needed to be more groundbreaking, more trendsetting. So, we went back to the drawing board, scrapping the personas and instead focusing on a wholistic web experience.
I thought about websites I enjoyed that were simple and easy to understand. I was inspired by portfolio sites where the homepage says something like “I am a ____” where the blank is a word that changes every so often to show how versatile and multifaceted the person is. I designed a homepage experience for Verizon using similar principles.
In this experience, the carat represents a word that can be changed. For example, for the “I am a ____” screen, other options could include “parent,” “teacher,” or “professional.”
And below are a couple unused homepage designs I made from before we got feedback.
