Design Director / Product Designer

Forge Change.   Torch Limitations. Empower Hearts.

Design Director / Product Designer

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Evidence.  Focus.  Enrichment.



Hello, my name is Aaron Shepard and I’ve been creating value and delivering results in UX/product design for over 20 years. I’ve helped to reduce costs at Anthem.ai by $70 million, boosted adoption at Deloitte by 600%, and improved productivity at Caterpillar on a global scale. The complex problems that I have solved for these organizations from research to release has been through stakeholder collaboration, deep understanding of business goals, and identifying, defining, and aligning on user needs.

Evidence: Prove that there is a problem and that we are alleviating this pain better than anyone in the marketplace.

Focus: There are too many distractions in life, design should be captivating, intuitive, and a highly personalized unique experience for the user.

Enrichment: Our design should aim to make lives better, contributing to an improved quality or enjoyment of life while delivering genuine value.

My core beliefs:

  • Listen, understand, and obsess over customers

  • Value created and value delivered through partnership

  • Consistently push the limits of what is possible

  • Persistent, dedicated & entrepreneurial spirit

 

Software products that I have recently designed:

  • Created and built data-driven dashboards at Deloitte to enable B2B marketing professionals to inform, manage, and optimize their marketing activations and campaigns. Through research, strategy, and UX increased usage and adoption by 600%

  • Product Design Lead at Anthem.ai building an AI driven Insight Optimization Tool and a Comparative Treatment Efficacy System that reduced costs of care by $70 million annually and helped clinicians improve health outcomes for patients - Anthem case study

  • Led UI/UX design, (research, wireframing, prototypes, web, mobile) for a continuous integration and functional testing web application which increased adoption and helped save 375 person years of effort & time for the engineering team at Walmart Labs - Walmart Labs case study

  • Facilitated Research, UI & Design Sprints for product databases within the Innovation Division of Caterpillar to reduce waste & global man-hours while improving efficiencies and productivity on a global scale - Caterpillar case study

  • Product design lead at Compass for Authorization, Authentication and RBAC permissioning concepts, including diagraming & modeling, implicit and explicit sharing, and an interactive educational tool for Compass Real Estate. Saving engineer and product teams countless hours of frustration and time.

  • Designed the IA and led product design for a tablet-based healthcare app at Becton Dickinson, including journey maps, personas, user flows, which not only increased the health & safety of patients, but saved 25-50% of nurse managers time - Becton Dickinson case study

  • As Design Director for Renovate America, I led a billion-dollar company to an improved UX, established the brand, optimized site content, and created a comprehensive design system, which resulted in an increase of leads by 44% - Renovate America case study

 

Clients & Companies:

UX Skills:
User Psychology, Mental Model Diagrams, Emotional Contagion, Cognitive Empathy, Product Roadmaps, User Research, Job Stories, User Stories, Information Architecture, User Flows, User Profiles, Personas, Design Systems, Wireframing, Prototyping, Task Analysis

Professional Skills:
Brand Identity, Brand Strategy, Brand Positioning, e-Commerce, Product Marketing, Lead Generation, Market Research & Analysis, Pricing Models, Display Advertising, Affiliate Marketing, Advertising Campaigns, Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, A/B Testing, Multivariate Testing, Market Opportunities & Segmentation

Industries:
Fintech, Healthcare, Automotive, Analytics, Health Benefits, Fitness, Home Improvement, Real Estate, Defense, Aerospace, Entertainment, Enterprise, Life Sciences, Musical Instruments, Clean Energy, Pharmaceutical, Finance, Outdoor Recreation, Consumer Goods

All of these skills, software products, and teams I’ve worked on are backed with 20 plus years of experience focusing on human-centered design.