Team Spotlight: UX Designer Sarah Glenn
The one question she asks to make sure her work is meaningful
UX Designer Sarah Glenn joined OurStreets for a whirlwind month of researching, interviewing, brainstorming, and designing, all to bring you a refreshed and more user-friendly version of OurStreets.
Sarah worked side-by-side with UX Designer Florence Wang and the OurStreets engineering team to give the app an updated interface, streamlined workflow, and new features that users have been asking for — like consolidating categories for vehicle moving violations to make reports more specific and helpful.
To celebrate a month of progress we asked Sarah to share her approach to testing and iterating on OurStreets, and the big question she asks herself to know when a product is really ready for users.
Why OurStreets? How did you find us, and what are you looking forward to learning or accomplishing with us?
At the start of the quarantine, I realized pretty quickly that I needed to fill up my schedule to keep my sanity. Naturally, I downloaded an open-world RPG Japanese video game, as well as scouring helpwithcovid.com to locate ways to contribute my skill set.
I found a project that piqued my interest, but it turned out they were using volunteers to build out a platform unrelated to the COVID-19 epidemic (watch out for this!). Luckily though, that brought Flo and I together. We were able to jump off that project and found OurStreets.
I gravitated to OurStreets for a few reasons. The mission of Supplies spoke to me…and I’m a fellow disgruntled biker, so it was easy for me to get excited about the SafeStreets reporting platform. In the first call I had with Head of Operations Paul Klein, it was clear that OurStreets is an inspiring and positive place to work.
What role or industry were you in before UX design? How do skills or experiences from that work help or shape your approach to design?
Before user experience, I was working as a web designer, in e-commerce. While I enjoyed this, I always felt I was missing a piece of the puzzle. I distinctly remember thinking, “OK, the client is satisfied, I am satisfied, but is this what our customers want?” I was already intuitively using some UX best practices in my workflow, but this line of thinking propelled my decision to specialize in human-centered design.
What does a typical day look like? What are you focused on right now?
Since joining the OurStreets team, I’m helping build out a new concept, as well as make improvements to Safe Streets. I spend my day balancing the three products, but currently, we’ve shifted most of our focus on revamping Safe Streets.
Right now we’re synthesizing a round of user research we conducted using these insights to propel a week of redesigning.
What are you excited to share in the refresh?
Community drives the Safe Streets product, so we looked to our existing user base and found that many are motivated to report because they believe that by using OurStreets, they can make a direct impact in their community.
To help them accomplish this with ease, we are very deliberate in removing unnecessary steps in the existing flow and, overall, just focused on creating a streamlined experience.
We looked to our existing user base and found that many are motivated to report because they believe that by using OurStreets, they can make a direct impact in their community.
Download OurStreets from the App Store or Google Play today to see Sarah’s designs in action! And stay up to date on other exciting projects from the OurStreets design team by following us on Twitter and Instagram.
