Design Customer

JOE RANFT

** ********* **** *********, ** *****

617-***-**** abpy6a@r.postjobfree.com

EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT, CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE, USER INTERFACE DESIGN & USABILITY

Strategic leader and tactical director with a successful background building and leading top performing teams

focused on creating best-in-class user interface designs and customer experiences

Dynamic creative director skilled in building design teams and shaping design processes that contribute to the

completion of hundreds of online, e-commerce projects per year, which result in a highly productive and revenue

generating channel

Innovative thinker and idea generator, looking both within and outside the organization to synthesize trends in

technology, service and experience for an ever evolving and improving online customer experience

Advanced communicator and cultivator of key relationships at all levels of the organization, internal business

leaders and executives, and external industry leaders

Skilled manager, motivator and recruiter of highly skilled design team with a very high retention rate

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

March 2009 Present

Design, Usability, and User Experience Consultant

Joe Ranft Design LLC

Specializing in product strategy and management, online strategy, design, customer experience, usability, and user

research. My clients have included Fidelity Investments, Putnam Investments, Merrill Lynch / Bank of America,

athenahealth, Motley Fool, Weather.com, Cars.com, SmarterTravel Media, and several early stage Internet start-ups.

Specific projects have included:

Full-day user experience and usability seminars

Onsite and remote usability testing

Expert Reviews of live site for key usability and design feedback

Strategic prototype design for new business initiatives

Organizational consulting for creation of new design groups within client s existing structure

Creative direction for new features

Wireframing pages for new features

Product mapping and management, creating product roadmaps and schedules to fit into Agile development

timelines

July 2008 March 2009

Vice President, Design & Product

UpDown.com, C ambridge, MA

UpDown.com, a Cambridge-based, angel funded start- up, is a fantasy stock market, social community, and education

site, with over 125,000 registered members who trade $1,000,000 virtual portfolios.

I s tarted as a design and product consultant in March, and continued in this full-time role as VP of design and product. In

my short time there, my accomplishments included:

Created and maintained long-term product roadmap, breaking it down into smaller features and projects that

could be designed, developed and launched in a two-week agile development process.

Developed product specifications and designs for dozens of new features, including: investing contests, friends,

member networks, trading, Twitter integration, stock analysis, improved customer profiles.

Conceived of and launched successful Facebook application.

Worked with strategic partners on partnership concepts and finalizing deals.

Reworking of e-mail templates to double conversion rates.

Conducting user research including usability tests and surveys.

Also acted as UpDown community manager, monitoring member communication on site and in other social

networks, such as blogs, Twitter, and Facebook.

December 1999 March 2008

Vice President, Design & Customer Experience

Fidelity Investments, Boston, MA

I held a primary user experience and design role for many different Fidelity businesses over 7 years with the company,

developing online strategies with senior executives in business and development and translating strategies into highly

interactive customer experience vision designs and prototypes. I also evangelize and present strategies across the

company, develop budgets and project plans for implementing strategic vision, Break down strategic visions into multi-

year, multi-part, concurrent, cross-company projects and releases, manage the design teams who implement the projects

as tactical designs, and ensure that tactical releases remain within the intentions of the original strategic vision. Specific

accomplishment include:

Introduced concept of information architecture to www.fidelity.com, leading a redesign project in 2000 that

increased customer satisfaction numbers by 20 percentage points

Currently design director for www.fidelity.com, which handles 95 percent of Fidelity's retail trading, serves over 1

billion pages per month and is consistently awarded #1 in class by Watchfire Gomez, Dalbar, Smartmoney,

among others

Created vision for and directed implementation of Active Trader Pro, a windows-based workstation or Fidelity's.

Release of this product doubled Fidelity's market share, far exceeding original business goals of the project

Directed first large-scale redesign of www.netbenefits.com, Fidelity's 401k and work benefits site. Redesign

resulted in customer satisfaction ratings doubling and a first ever #1 in class award.

Directed redesigns of Fidelity's broker-dealer and advisor windows applications and Web sites, once again

resulting in vastly higher customer satisfaction numbers and best in class awards

Planned and participated as part of the teaching team in a Fidelity-sponsored design course at the Stanford

d.School

Responsible for numerous design and customer experience and research innovations at Fidelity, including

introducing information architecture to the company, rapid usability testing in branches, ethnographic customer

research, paper prototype testing, remote testing with WebEx

Helped create and refine the Fidelity design process, a rapid process used in designing across 10 Web sites and

Windows applications, and repeated hundreds of times per year

Led the creation of the first Fidelity style guide, which ensures a consistent user experience across all design

projects

Hired, trained, managed and directed dozens of great information architects, visual designers, and copywriters

Earned 2 promotions, from Principle Designer, to Design Director, to Vice President in first 3 years.

November 1998 - December 1999

Information Architect

iXL, Memphis, TN

iXL was an interactive design and strategy consulting agency, specializing in end-to-end solutions, from original vision and

strategy designs, to final implementations. I was hired as the first information architect in the Memphis office in order to

build the information architecture and usability practice for the office. I was also the key creative lead for major client

proposals and led the office's major projects. Specific successes included:

Developed and delivered project proposals for the three largest projects the office won during my time there

Hired and managed the teams of information architects and writers for a 2000-screen interactive training CD-

ROM

Created strategies and solutions for other large Web and other interactive projects

Developed creative treatment, structure, market analysis, navigation guidelines, and content

Conducted research and client interviews to identify audiences and goals

Wrote high- level site design documents and site maps and outlines

Created storyboards for individual pages to guide designers and programmers

Managed staff of other information architects and writers assigned to large project development

November 1996 - N ovember 1998

Internet Producer

Morgan Keegan and Company, Inc., Memphis, TN

Morgan Keegan & Company is an investment firm offering full-service investment banking, brokerage, trust and asset

management. I was hired to design, write and code their first Web site. Specific responsibilities and accomplishments

included:

Planned and developed Morgan Keegan's first public Web site, working closely with the business and technology

teams to define the site strategy and scale

Created and implemented strategy for site support, including identifying and routing high quality customer leads

that came through the site

Wrote and edited content, converting dry, lengthy printed brochures into shorter, internet appropriate content

Led the development and implementation efforts of new Web initiatives

Wrote and edited all HTML and JavaScript, with one of the Web's first dynamic menu structures and drop-down

site navigation

Created content management system that allowed site changes several times per day by one person

Designed and implemented site branding strategy and visual design assets

EDUCATION

Master of Arts, English and Education

The University of Iowa

May 1996

Graduate Studies, English, Fiction Writing

The University of Memphis

August 1990 - December 1992

Bachelor of Arts, English

The University of Memphis

August 1990

CORE COMPETENCIES

Online Customer Experience Strategy User Interface Design Redesigning Large- Scale Web Sites & Applications

Design Team Management Usability Information Architecture Customer Experience Vision Design

Rapid Design Processes Agile Development Online Accessibility Search Engine Optimization Web 2.0

Estimates and Budgeting Personnel Recruiting and Development Design Presentations Project Proposals

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