Resume Karl Schultz


I work with major brands and startups as a product designer specializing in user experience (UX) design, user interface (UI) design, interaction design (IxD), information architecture (IA), and user research to create products and services that are engaging for users and successful for the business.

Direct evidence from user insights provides confidence about which experiences to design, build, and launch—and which not to, saving valuable time and resources.


Work Experience

Coalition Inc.

UX Research Lead
San Francisco, California
1/2022 — 2/2024

Provided deep knowledge with user research about a diverse range of customers and users, helping product managers, designers, developers, and stakeholders deliver successful product launches at a startup provider of comprehensive insurance products and proactive cybersecurity tools, assisting organizations to manage and mitigate risk

  • Conducted user research
  • Led qualitative user research projects for a team of two dozen product managers and five product designers, conducting generative (discovery) research to help the organization develop a deeper understanding of complex users and customers to find opportunities for solutions and innovation to achieve business objectives
  • Provided user research to understand a complex set of users’ goals, tasks, and motivations to map user scenarios and user task flows, identifying opportunities and product requirements, including the broker quoting platform (B2B) to improve core and supplemental lines of insurance products; the risk management platform (SaaS B2C) to improve customer engagement, usability, and to reduce loss ratio; and, improving API documentation for external affinity partners (B2B)
  • Ran various methods to conduct user research, including user interviews (Listening Labs), concept testing and task analysis for product design development and usability (both moderated and unmoderated), card sorting studies, and surveys and questionnaires to learn from a range of user personas, including external B2B (brokers) and B2C (risk management SaaS) customers and internal stakeholders
  • Collaborated with product managers to implement all logistics for user interviews, including determining goals, writing moderator scripts and email templates, cleaning target data, recruiting and scheduling, conducting interviews, and following up with candidates
  • Wrote and presented user research reports based on feedback analysis that validated working hypotheses, identified opportunities, and made recommendations for actionable insights on product design and development to achieve business objectives
  • Represented the business to new and existing external users, cultivating relationships based on trust

  • Partnered with the product team to implement a user research strategy
  • Collaborated with product managers and designers to write and implement the user research strategy plan
  • Partnered with product managers and product designers to plan (including writing user research project plans with goals, requirements, and definition of success), conduct, and deliver user research with actionable insights that informed product design development and strategic roadmap planning
  • Contributed to quarterly planning for user research projects sizing and capacity
  • Collaborated with the product team on a framework to ‘know your customer/user’ outlining an easy way (template) to conduct and document a customer interaction to showcase with the broader team customer goals and pain points, video clips, and takeaways
  • Built custom Airtable forms for product managers and product designers to contribute insights directly to the user research database
  • Provided support and advice to product managers and product designers conducting independent user research
  • Provided support and advice to cross-functional teams with user research and logistics for user interviews to learn opportunities from strategically targeted user groups, including writing interview guides and email templates, identifying qualified candidates to solicit feedback, and ways to capture findings

  • Improved processes and created tools to help the startup scale user research for product design
  • Improved the user research process by collaborating with IT to create a customized Jira project specific to user research for planning, sizing, and tracking all user research workload, providing a way to prioritize and update as needed
  • Improved the user research process by creating a Confluence user research project template to centralize all project details, including research goals, requirements, resources, and outcomes
  • Created a database (using an Airtable base) to document, manage, and analyze user research insights
  • Created a database with dashboards (using an Airtable base) to manage user research projects, size requests, determine capacity, track deadlines, and prioritize tasks—including a dashboard for management to view work status
  • Improved the user research process by developing tables in the customer/user research database (Airtable), creating efficiencies to quickly pull insights ad hoc for product managers, marketing, and intern requests
  • Improved the user research process by automating data entry of audio transcripts into Airtable to quickly synthesize findings for research reports, improving workflow and increasing research capacity

  • Continuously communicated ways to achieve business goals
  • Reported monthly to product managers, product design, and engineering teams about recent user research, including user insights, validating working hypotheses, and identifying new opportunities for current and upcoming product planning, product design development, and improving operational support services
  • Collaborated frequently (weekly/bi-weekly) with product managers participating in weekly and bi-weekly check-ins to manage research project workload and adjust priorities when necessary
  • Created a user research repository on Google Drive and Confluence to document all user research reports for reference

  • Planned and facilitated product workshops
  • Collaborated with the product managers to create and run service design workshops, including helping the operations team align to write a service vision statement, framing the common goal and how to achieve it, and helping product teams write product experience principles that describe the desired user experience, enabling cross-functional teams (product, design, and engineering) align on product development priorities
  • Lead product design sessions to collaborate on how to build more cohesive, best-in-class, seamless customer/user experiences when a team of dozens of product managers and product designers work on multiple projects simultaneously
  • Identified a framework to provide focus for virtual brainstorming workshops to learn ways to improve internal user workflow
Coalition Inc.

Senior UX Designer
San Francisco, California
11/2019 — 12/2021

Created clean product designs to simplify complex user experiences for a diverse range of customers and users for product design and development at a startup provider of comprehensive insurance products and proactive cybersecurity tools, helping organizations manage and mitigate risk

Applied design thinking framework to empathize and understand users, define their problems, ideate on creative solutions, and prototype realistic representations for user feedback

  • Product Design
  • Simplified the user experience by creating elegant product designs and innovative solutions to solve complex user scenarios, task flows, and usability problems (detailed forms for a regulated industry)—including: consumer risk management platform (SaaS) (B2C), including landing pages and signup flows, nav structure, notifications, and product naming (branding); broker quoting platform for core insurance products (B2B) and related internal users’ operations platform; and affinity partnership platforms (B2B) selling directly to consumers
  • Improved the earliest stages of product development with vision prototypes for potential solutions, enabling conversations for stakeholder product development alignment
  • Created wireframes and prototypes to iterate designs, learning how best to develop the product to improve, streamline, and enhance the user’s experience
  • Managed multiple design projects while collaborating with a growing team of product managers and product designers to collectively build seamless products that improve the user’s holistic experience
  • Met frequently with product managers to review workload and progress and collaborate in working sessions to quickly hash out ideas and solutions, saving time and resources
  • Partnered with developers to effectively communicate design concepts, requirements, and solutions throughout the development process

  • Conducted user research
  • Conducted user research as a product designer to develop a deep understanding of a wide range of customers and users (brokers, B2B; and policyholders, B2C; and internal), providing insights about user needs, motivations, and requirements informing product design (executed both directly and indirectly), marketing, and organizational leadership
  • Wrote, launched, and reported on user surveys identifying goals, needs, and motivations for opportunities in product development by helping users and minimizing loss to the business
  • Championed user empathy with product team, engineers, and stakeholders, providing insights about user scenarios and challenges, helping teams align on viable solutions to solve user needs
  • Created user-centered tools describing complexities of users with personas, user scenarios, and flow diagrams/journey maps, helping the organization understand the user’s context, aligning teams to prioritize user experience improvements and operational support

  • Improved product design development process
  • Improved the product design development process for the new B2C (SaaS) risk management platform and B2B broker quoting platform by establishing UX guidelines, design patterns, and experience principles to keep the user experience simple as the product team scaled

  • Conducted workshops
  • Facilitated service design workshop to diagram the current operational support services customers’ journey and identify opportunities for improvement
  • Facilitated persona workshop for marketing to understand who target users are, their goals and needs are, and determine tactical advantages

  • Supported the operational growth of the startup
  • Assessed tools and resources for product development productivity, including Figma, Miro, UsabilityHub, UserFocus, and Airtable
  • Participated in hiring panels for product managers and product designers during the startup’s fast-paced hiring phase
  • Moderated Product Design 101 for onboarding new hires, mentored junior UX designers
  • Identified knowledge gaps in product development, wrote the job description, made the case for a solution, and accepted responsibilities to work as the dedicated user researcher
Atlassian

Senior Designer
San Francisco, California
6/2018 — 9/2019

Provided all aspects of product design to craft clean user experiences, user interfaces, and visual designs, with customer research, ideation with storyboarding, prototyping, conceptual modeling, and testing to improve the purchase experience for (SaaS) products for software developers and product managers (B2B)

  • Drove user-centered design process to solve complex customer problems
  • Collaborated cross-functionally with multiple stakeholders to solicit and synthesize feedback for alignment on product development
  • Iterated design ideas, sketches, storyboards, concept models, and prototypes
  • Facilitated design discussions to improve design solutions
  • Applied design systems for continuity in user experience
  • Conducted customer research and applied findings
  • Gathered customer feedback to validate ideas and improve design solutions
Macys.com (Macy's)

Principal UX
San Francisco, California
4/2016 — 5/2018

Conceptualized and designed successful multi-channel customer experiences and product designs for a consumer retail digital platform (Macys.com) as a UX design leader using in-depth user research to understand customers and their needs, applied research insights to synchronize multiple product design initiatives to achieve customer engagement and conversion

  • Conducted user research, discovered opportunities, synthesized and reported findings from user research to identify, understand, and advocate for the customers (intend to “buy”) and users (intend to “use”) products and services
  • Drafted hypotheses and validated assumptions to mitigate risk
  • Moderated on-site and remote customer interviews for generative user feedback
  • Conducted participatory design for rapid user feedback
  • Conducted moderated/unmoderated usability studies
  • Analyzed clickstream and A|B test data
  • Collaborated with the User Research team to plan strategic product development studies (wrote screener/protocol, scheduled, handled compensation, etc.)

  • Synchronized multiple product design initiatives with a holistic viewpoint to improve the user experience across multiple touch points (seamless omnichannel) for customer development
  • Served as an effective communicator, advocating for the customer, advising business stakeholders, and socializing new business opportunities
  • Promoted the UX discipline, shared capabilities, and represented the department to the broader organization
  • Facilitated workshops to partner, enable, and optimize the product development for optimal user experiences
  • Aligned stakeholders to the vision, mission statement, and goals (defined with a definition of success)
  • Outlined long- and short-term strategies for product design and customer development
  • Defined requirements to plan and implement product development, connecting resources and prioritizing tasks

  • Provided leadership for the UX design team
  • Introduced and applied design framework, including design thinking and user-centered design, customer development, service design, intent planning, lean startup, innovation accounting, listening labs, journey mapping, and object-oriented UX as ways to deliver improvements to product design
  • Onboarded new members, trained, inspired, and motivated the UX team
  • Mentored UX designers: provided advice, shared resources, led collaboration exercises, and developed tools to support best practices
  • Reviewed product design work and details of interface/interaction designs (flow diagrams, information architecture, wireframes, prototypes, and visual design/animations) for product designers
Macys.com (Macy's)

Senior User Experience Architect
San Francisco, California
10/2014 — 3/2016

Conceptualized and designed successful customer experiences and product designs for consumer retail digital platforms (Macys.com and Bloomingdales.com) using Lean UX techniques

  • Conducted user research to understand customers and achieve business goals
  • Learned about customers’ context, pain points, and opportunities through the discovery process; identified and advocated customers’ point of view to the business stakeholders
  • Created user-centered design tools, including personas, customer journey maps, and user scenarios
  • Synthesized user research with core capabilities to identify and develop a strategic customer experience vision

  • Partnered with the team to improve the product design development process to deliver improved customer experiences
  • Partnered with product managers and stakeholders in product planning to define projects that best address user needs, achieve business goals, and meet technical capabilities
  • Collaborated and brainstormed with product managers and stakeholders to improve the customers’ experience, both holistically and at specific touchpoints
  • Supported cross-functional teamwork and communication by facilitating discussions about the users’ experience, exposing key questions, and identifying requirements and opportunities

  • Advanced UX best practices to validate customer-centered hypotheses with Lean UX and reviewing user behavior from Coremetrics analytics to inform design decisions

  • Supported product design team, served as UX subject matter expert, promoted best practices, and mentored team members
Razoo Global Network

Senior User Experience Designer
San Francisco, California
07/2013 — 01/2014

Advocated UX best practices, created rapid feedback loops to improve product development workflow, conducted user research, and provided cross-functional communication for a startup online fundraising platform for organizations creating fundraising campaigns

  • Advocated UX best practices
  • Advocated UX best practices for a startup peer-to-peer donation platform, focusing on a user-centered framework
  • Created personas, customer journey maps, and user scenarios to help investigate, ideate, prototype, evaluate, and produce improved user experiences
  • Trained product and engineering teams on how to use Lean UX methods (innovation accounting) to mitigate risk and gain maximum learning with minimal effort

  • Created rapid feedback loops to improve workflow
  • Administered a framework to prioritize workflow with limited resources—rapid prototyping for mobile-first tests
  • Built rapid prototypes with Proto.io, InVision, and POP app

  • Conducted user research
  • Coordinated user research to understand user behavior and learn opportunities
  • Conducted user interviews for insights and prototype feedback
  • Reviewed customer service data, user comments, and weblogs for additional user insights
  • Analyzed quantitative user research from Google Analytics to identify opportunities from web traffic data
  • Collected ad hoc feedback with potential customers from prototypes for quick validation
  • Wrote ads, composed interview scripts, and maintained a database of candidates for user interviews
  • Recruited candidates for customer interviews in Listening Labs (Creative Good)
  • Managed remote online user testing, including multi-variate Usability Hub (FiveSecondTest), UserTesting.com
  • Developed design variations for A|B testing
  • Administered all aspects of user surveys (using Wufoo), including writing, formatting, posting, tracking, and analyzing for user insight
  • Ran a fundraiser campaign as a case study to empathize with fundraisers, donors, and volunteers
  • Researched competitive audits for product development, including corporate giving, petitions, and social activism domains

  • Provided cross-functional communication
  • Partnered with the startup executive team and wrote a product design and development strategy based on validating working hypotheses
  • Worked closely with the startup marketing team to align product design with branding and advertising goals
  • Consulted nonprofit and social media business partners to learn about best practices and new opportunities
Hotwire (Expedia, Inc.)

Senior User Experience Architect
San Francisco, California
09/2009 — 06/2013

Designed and improved user experiences, applied Lean UX principles to product development, conducted user research, and wrote UX strategy proposals for a travel marketplace selling discounted inventory (B2C)

  • Designed improved user experiences
  • Designed a new user interface for the primary enterprise product (hotel) that improved user engagement and increased business profits
  • Developed extensible product design for multiple international markets, which launched globally

  • Applied Lean UX principles to product development
  • Partnered with lead Product Manager and lead Engineer to provide Lean UX findings for Agile product development team (hotel)
  • Collaborated with the product team to identify and build product features with proven value for the user and the business
  • Created UX designs to solve user problems and validate working hypotheses for continuous product design improvements
  • Iterated new design ideas quickly to provide continuous product design improvements
  • Gathered user feedback from prototypes and live ‘sandbox’ app
  • Measured A|B test performance and assessed results
  • Coached other Agile teams to improve software development

  • Conducted user research
  • Conducted user research, including Listening Labs and usability testing (in San Francisco and London), to identify new business opportunities
  • Wrote candidate screeners, interview scripts
  • Moderated user-customer interviews
  • Analyzed user research and wrote reports of findings, including UX recommendations
  • Oversaw remote usability testing, including Usertesting.com and Usability Hub (FiveSecondTest)

  • Wrote UX strategy proposals
  • Wrote user experience strategy plans with recommendations aligning customer research, stakeholder collaboration, and business plan analysis
CNET

Manager UX Design
San Francisco, California
02/2006 — 02/2009

Designed engaging user experiences and managed UX team, projects, and resources for digital media publications on consumer technologies

  • Designed engaging user experiences
  • Conducted user research for product development
  • Discovered new opportunities from users with unmet needs
  • Advocated for user empathy from stakeholders with user-centered design
  • Identified and described users with personas, storyboards, and workflows
  • Conceptualized their optimal user experience
  • Drafted concepts to address user needs to improve user engagement
  • Constructed mock-ups using rapid prototyping methods (paper prototyping, low-fidelity clickable mock-ups, etc.) to demonstrate new concepts quickly
  • Validated proof of concept with user interviews and usability testing

  • Managed UX projects and resources
  • Performed in a fast-paced environment to deliver projects and meet deadlines
  • Developed and tracked project plans—including project sizing estimates with the duration of tasks to organize and prioritize design workload

  • Managed a team of UX designers
  • Oversaw and coordinated work with subcontractors and vendors
  • Mentored design intern

Education

BFA with distinction Graphic Design, May 2003
California College of the Arts

Skills

UX, IxD, and IA
Figma
Airtable
Miro
Looker
Google Analytics
InVision
Sketch
Axure RP
Balsamiq
Proto.io
Microsoft Visio
HTML5
CSS3
Bootstrap
D3
Print
Adobe InDesign
Adobe PhotoShop
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Acrobat Pro
QuarkXPress
Motion & Sound
Adobe After Effects
Apple Final Cut Pro
Training
Goal-Directed design (Alan Cooper)
Agile Scrum (Jeff Patton)
Lean Startup (Eric Ries)
Listening Labs (Creative Good)
Intent Planning (Normative Design)
Service Design (Adaptive Path)
Front-end Web Development (General Assembly)

Contact

Karl Schultz
601 Van Ness Avenue, Unit 18
San Francisco, CA 94102

(415) 407-1229

Email: karl.schultz@yahoo.com

LinkedIn: Karl Schultz LinkedIn profile