Design system, rebranding, and platform migration for a photo-printing app

01. Background

Context

RR Donnelley is Apple’s printer-of-record and the largest B2B owner of print factories globally. In 2018, Apple shut down their Photos app printing services, but opened up to 3rd party photo services. RR Donnelley created Motif Photos as their first B2C business, and my team was tasked with taking the app to market. We launched in 32 countries for Mac Photos, iPhone, and iPad.

My Role

As the Design Lead at Motif Photos, I led a comprehensive global redesign and rebranding effort, and launched our first design system. I also played a core role in transitioning our marketing & support website to a decoupled architecture. Leveraging my extensive experience as a former front-end developer, my role extended beyond traditional design responsibilities.

I also worked closely with business leadership and distributed international teams to integrate UX design into cross-departmental conversations, ensuring that operational needs were met and that the user experience across all channels was cohesive.

I was responsible for several key areas:

DesignOps: Streamlined design operations to enhance efficiency and collaboration across teams.

Research: Conducted user research to inform design decisions and validate our approach.

Branding: Defined & developed the new brand, aligning the visual and interaction design with the new brand identity.

Information Architecture: Structured content to improve navigation and usability across platforms.

Interaction & Visual Design: Led the design of both the marketing website and owned specific marketing & user retention flows within the app experience.

Results

Identified workflow efficiencies - Saving the company net $200K annually and reducing web development time 98.7% by implementing a headless CMS + static site web stack allowing content editors to launch web pages in 1/2 a day (down from 5.5 weeks via offshore development agency).
Defined design toolsets and processes - Established a collaborative brand book and design system hub in Notion that facilitated stakeholder discussions and contributions, resulting in a 56% weekly active member rate in the first month of launch.
Roadmap prioritization strategy - Led quarterly workshops where our team evaluates all requests and initiatives by cost vs effort. We prioritize our top-scoring quick and strategic wins into upcoming roadmaps.
Design workshop facilitation - Facilitated bi-weekly workshops with 6-8 stakeholders to improve user experience on blog, website, and email channels through iterative cycles of research, design, and feedback gathering.
Interaction and visual design: Rapidly prototyped motion and design concepts in low and hi fidelity in order to communicate brand direction to stakeholders and direct reports for web and social channels.
A/B Testing: Improved conversion by 12% on key funnel pages through continuous testing and optimization. Creating a feedback cycle empowered business stakeholders with data-driven decision-making, and in turn garnered business support for the process of iterative design, rapid prototyping, and re-testing of ideas.