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Katrina Hilliard, PhD

Executive Director - UX Research & Design

Customer-centric, impact driven, collaborative leader solving business and technical challenges while delivering pleasing user-centered solutions

User Experience

Leader | Advocate | Manager | Mentor

Katrina Hilliard, PhD

Executive Director - UX Research & Design

more about me

Hello!

I'm a highly skilled Senior UX Leader with a passion for managing, mentoring and advocating for ux teams. I am proactive, collaborative and a problem solver who enjoys delivery exceptional insights and design solutions.

With a diverse educational background in Electrical Engineering (BS) and Industrial Engineering (MS/PhD) as well as over 20 years of hands-on experience conducting ux research and design, I have a keen understanding of the technical and business needs within the product design and development process.

Having over 10 years experience managing and mentoring UX teams (i.e., researchers, designers, strategist, accessibility experts, writers), I develop creative ways to advocate for UX and employ consistent collaboration with cross-functional teams and executive leaders. I also have experience leading UX efforts and mentoring ux team members in ensuring an effective use of the user-centered design process methodology including conducting studies and positioning research and design appropriately into the vision, strategy and roadmap of digital solutions.

Katrina Hilliard, PhD

executive Director - UX Research & Design

Testimonials

Katrina personifies Usability in all its incarnations. She applies multiple disciplines, first to understand and confirm, and then lead the delivery of great UX design. Research is foundational to who she is. Informed design is a talent she is able to instill in her teams. Watching her guide business leaders through enterprise product deliveries, managing vendor relationships, and connecting users to new digital experiences, has been amazing to witness. Her ability to see across a landscape of platforms and connect employee experiences is a rare find. Katrina demonstrates the vision needed to develop and execute enterprise UX strategies and possesses the skills and talents to lead business leaders, her teams, and partners to deliver high-performing digital experiences.

Oscar Monahan, UX Design Sr. Manager

I have been the Accessibility expert working for Katrina for three years. Katrina is one of the best managers I've had the pleasure to work for. She provides excellent guidance and gives reasonable deadlines to complete goals. Plus, she is a good listener and always pays attention to the details. Her understanding of people’s needs is outstanding, so that everyone working under her feels inspired to achieve excellence in their own work. On top of that, Katrina is a great motivator. She instills positive energy in every team member, keeping everyone focused on what needs to be achieved.

Susan Wade , Accessibility lead

Katrina possesses exceptional strengths, both as a User Experience (UX) manager and a “manager in general”, but what sets her apart is her remarkable ability to identify and nurture her team members’ strengths, creating an environment where every team member feels valued for their unique contributions. Furthermore, she adeptly matches those team member contributions with projects that align with corporate objectives and key results.

John Grishin, PhD. UX Researcher

As head of the user experience team, Katrina has been a great business partner. She advocates for her team to be included early in initiatives to maximize the value they can bring to a new effort. She is able to communicate well at all levels of the organization. Her focus and voice for the customer is crucial to the team’s overall success. Katrina is a pleasure to work with.

Mia Price, Technology Delivery Sr. Manager

Katrina Hilliard, PhD

executive Director - UX Research & Design

On the next few pages, view samples of projects where I led design, research and accessibility teams in the delivery of design solutions and impactful results using appropriate user-centered design methods.

Portfolio - Recent Projects*

The impact of a great user experience is achieved by a user-centered design approach. Understanding how and when to utilize ux methods is key to successful design implementation.

User-Centered Design Methodology

*Condfidentialiy agreement prevents detailed designs

Katrina Hilliard, PhD

Executive Director - UX Research and Design

Unified Employee Service Portal (POC) - Background

Motivation: The enterprise employee product teams were interested in exploring a design for a unified employee service portal to improve the way employees engage digitally across HR, IT and Corporate Properties.

Approach: Two step plan:

1. Gain a deeper understanding of employees‘ needs in order to effectively design a smart, unified and intuitive employee service portal for HR, IT and Corporate Properties.

2. Design a proof of concept (POC) by leveraging ServiceNow capabilities to illustrate a seamless cross-channel user experience while preserving individual lines of business (LOB) identities.

Results : Followed a UCD, double-diamond approach to assess current state employee experience and design a unified service portal (POC):

Discover: Conducted SME discovery workshops to capture current state baseline understanding of end-user behaviors, needs and painpoints to identify the opportunity space
Define : Summarize user insights via proto-personas, assess ServiceNow features to understand technology capabilities and define the solution
Develop: Leverage user insights from discovery workshops to create experience narratives, demonstrate how and where ServiceNow capabilities elevate the UX across and within LOBs
Deliver: Applied learnings/insights to develop an interactive POC in Figma

POC delivered a seamless cross-channel UX, uncovered a reduction in employee touchpoints, providing curated and personalized content, advanced search capabilities.

Katrina Hilliard, PhD

Executive Director - UX Research and Design

Design - Proof of Concept (POC)

Portfolio

Excerpt, CA prevents detailed view

Katrina Hilliard, PhD

Executive Director - UX Research and Design

Quantiative Usability Study - BackGround

Motivation: After the implementation of a new cloud-based HCM, HR Product Management & Transformation teams wanted to capture baseline measures to understand the user experience

Approach: To help product, business and technology teams gain a better understanding of the overall experience and identify future areas of opportunities, a mixed method, layered research approach was employed to obtain metrics across critical aspects of the new Workday tool experience.

Results : Mixed method research captured both attitudinal and behavioral data. Captured analysis of user interaction when completing common/critical HR tasks using Workday, including the following data:

System Usability Scale (SUS) score
Time on Task
Success/Failure rate
Confidence, Ease of Use and Satisfaction
Cost/Task breakdown

Provided cross functional teams (i.e., product teams, technology, executive leadership, etc.) with data driven insights to help measure the experience. Uncovered an analysis of the top usability themes to ensure future state decisions are grounded in research (evidence) to drive impactful change. This baseline study is repeatable and can be compared and tracked over time.

Katrina Hilliard, PhD

Executive Director - UX Research and Design