Global Design Director @ Fierce™, Fearless™

I’m an Industrial Designer turned UX Designer, turned Service Designer, turned (accidental) leader. 

Since moving into the digital space over a decade ago, I’ve seen the same patterns repeat: 
Design teams are being asked to deliver more impact and faster; but often without the levers to make it happen. 

Now as Managing Director at Fearless, I work with senior Design and business leaders to help navigate some of these challenges and embed Design as a genuine strategic capability. 

We help organisations: 

- Embed Service Design and DesignOps as a strategic capability
- Build and scale in-house design teams that deliver measurable business impact
- Design operating models that connect design, delivery and strategy
- Prove the value of Design through operational outcomes (as well as beautiful outputs!)

Our agency + talent services model blends the depth of a large consultancy with the agility of a boutique partner. 

We act as an extension of our clients’ teams - helping them move fast, think big and of course deliver meaningful change. 

If you’re navigating cost-cutting, change fatigue or the constant push to “do more with less,” you’re not alone. 

There are always smarter, lower-risk ways to build momentum (and Design can be the lever that gets you there). 

I’m always happy to share what’s working or swap notes with other leaders facing similar challenges; feel free to reach out.

—— 

Proud to lead a team that truly lives its name: authentically Fearless 😎

Laura Baker

‼️ Available Service Designers ... a fun role for you ‼️

Contract details:
-  6 month contract
-  Senior / lead level
-  Start ASAP
-  Day rate: ~£550
-  Mostly remote but may require a few days in a London office (UK only)
-  Must have insurance / complex financial / consumer duty experience

Work details:
-  Complete outstanding Phase 1 customer journey maps across the client’s products and build on these in Phase 2 to create more detailed, actionable artefacts
-  Embed FCA Consumer Duty requirements and address the needs of vulnerable customers, while supporting cross-functional collaboration to inform solution development and continuous improvement


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Thank you as always LinkedIn :)

Niche

Staff Product Designer

Eckart Design

Secured and led design projects for 10+ major companies, including Boulevardier Group, HeartFire Media, Four Leaf Farms, Handmade Digital, Evermarket, Yokel, Coliseum Baptist Church, and the San Antonio Current.

•Improved client retention, referrals, and project success by cultivating client relationships to determine expectations, design vision, scopes of work, budgets, and deliverable timeframes. 

•Realized clients' visions and dreams through brand design and digital presence, including performing case studies on clients' target audiences and create and present style scapes.

•Collaborated with hospitality companies to develop brands that engage their demographics and attract business.

Freelance Designer

audiochuck

Spearheaded the transformation of a single-show podcast application into a comprehensive multi-show fan club platform, scaling content capacity and enhancing the ability to increase subscriber value while overseeing the design and development of a tailored content management system to streamline production workflows.

• Championed a rigorous product management approach, maintaining a dynamic product roadmap and backlog aligned with organizational OKRs, driving strategic direction through meticulous user research, stakeholder alignment, and evidence-based decision-making.

• Led user-centric design initiatives, including ideation, visual design, and extensive usability testing, resulting in a robust user experience that reduced content management errors and decreased user turnover rates.

• Implemented advanced research methodologies encompassing heuristic evaluations, generative research, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement and data-driven design refinement.

•Directed a cross-functional development team executing critical product features, ensuring seamless integration and alignment with long-term business goals and enhancing team capabilities in story development and roadmap execution.

Key Projects: 

Fan Club App Design: Reconstructed the information architecture and visual design to be able to accommodate content for any number of shows, thereby significantly increasing user engagement and subscription value.

Content Management System: Conceptualized and designed a new content management system to facilitate seamless content updates by production teams, reduce administrative error risk by 90%, and enhance overall content delivery efficiency.

Product Management & Design

Led the design strategy for the client pod, acting as a strategist for teams creating scalable and holistic experiences for clients and employees across the organization.

• Decreased the time to configure new client leads by 75% by creating a more intuitive interface that broke down complex tasks into more simplified processes and enabled our ability to scale.   
 
• Mapped out the client onboarding process into a service blueprint to identify all the channels involved to make recommendations for product features and business processes for the executive leadership team. 

• Created a new design operations initiative to increase the design team's efficiency while educating the product teams on human-centered design by creating a repository of templates and articles for methodologies and activities.  

Key Projects:

Lead Delivery - Analyzed existing lead delivery tool for usability and scalability while redesigning the tool reducing time to create lead configurations by 80%.    

Design Operations and Enablement - Helped establish the design operations, including a toolkit of human-centered design methodologies and activities for other designers, and established weekly professional development fireside chats.

Direct Admissions Strategy - Partnered with key stakeholders to provide a product vision based on student and college needs,  bringing a new product to the education sector to revolutionize how students and colleges move through the enrollment process.

Senior Product Designer

AIGA Cincinnati

Board Member

Fifth Third Bank

Co-led the Fifth Third mobile application redesign, acting as an enabler for other product designers through process guidance, mentoring, and collaboration with product owners and developers.

• Increased digital account opening adoption and average initial funding by designing new features and overhauling the visual design for the account opening flow. 
 
• Lead efforts to improve the current mobile application to reduce complaints by 20% within the Loan Servicing flows. 

• Created a process for accessibility blue lines to help designers and developers communicate accessibility requirements and standards. 

• Supported and coached the consumer design team in cycle planning to deliver work 4-5 sprints ahead of the development team's schedules.

Key Projects:

Conversational Design - Explored the customers' desires to interact with a banking organization through a smart AI-driven chat, creating experiences such as conversation-led product recommendations and account opening. 
 
Mobile Application Redesign - Led the redesign of the new mobile application to refine the current app and provide the users with a more seamless and easier-to-navigate experience.

Design Process and Toolkit - Established the design operations, including creating a new design producer role and a toolkit of human-centered design methodologies and activities for other designers.

Senior Product Designer, Officer

Senior Digital Product Designer

USAA

Performed complex design tasks under limited supervision while leveraging pro-level user functional knowledge of design principles and processes to produce intricate design deliverables. Mentored junior team members.

•Created a new custom CRM for an F500 bank after winning the bid against Deloitte, Pega, and Salesforce.

•Developed a design language system focused on our power users in call centers working through the same applications upwards of 50-100 times per day.

•Spearheaded company support of diversity and inclusion, introducing accessibility standards for software and applications for the call center, and ensuring each tool is usable by everyone.

Key Projects

Educational Storefront - Achieved a 156% increase in engagement by designing engaging, educational digital storefront experiences for members and prospects of USAA, including redesigning the marriage and family advice.

Car Rental Comparison Tool - Redesigned the USAA car rental comparison tool, reducing the number of user dropouts between the start of the flow and being sent to rental companies by 33%. 

Interaction and Visual Design Lead - Led the interaction design and visual design of a new, completely custom, customer relationship management tool to reduce the amount of time call center representatives spent on moving between workflows, generation cost savings to the company by designing for digital ergonomics.

Creative Designer

UX/UI Designer (Consultant)

Massage Heights

Created innovative design packages to elevate and differentiate branding, marketing, and advertising initiatives while managing up to five projects simultaneously and meeting daily deadlines for each store's needs.

•Developed eight national marketing promotions that exceeded the expectations of all 150 stores. 

•Expanded the reach for franchisees through their digital channels of choice by designing customized web advertisements, website updates, and innovative social posts.

•Provided UX guidance to developers while contributing to the creation of a new online booking application.

Senior Creative Designer

Good Sports Outdoor Outfitters

Conceptualized and implemented design solutions to meet marketing strategies by gathering requirements information and materials, planning website concepts, and studying and analyzing user data. 

•Assisted with increasing sales 37% by researching and analyzing the competitive landscape for the outdoor industry, leading to an understanding of goals, behaviors, and pain points of e-commerce consumers to improve the website. 

•Created email campaigns reaching 120,000 consumers generating a substantial increase in driving web traffic.
 
•Utilized market research and brand equity to direct users to products, increasing sales weekly by 25%.
Cut returned orders by 36% by developing concepts to help users make informed decisions about sizing.

Lead User Interface Designer

San Antonio Current

Print Media Manager

Marketing Promotions Coordinator

Passionate product designer, thought leader, and US Army veteran.

Passionate product designer, thought leader, and US Army veteran, respected for nine years leading digital experiences from research and strategy through execution and optimization for F500 clients. Proven track record of solving complex problems through design by producing mockups, prototypes, and high-fidelity designs. Known as an empathetic, collaborative leader who fosters and promotes inclusion reflected in teamwork and throughout the design process. Out-of-the-box thinker committed to partnering with cross-functional units to ensure high-quality and forward-thinking development and user experience in competitive markets.

I look forward to meeting you!  You can reach me at caleb@eckartdesign.com

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