Portfolio
Happy Yak Product Design
Viasat Virtual Event Experiences
STRATEGY / USER INTERFACE DESIGN / ART DIRECTION
When COVID hit, I helped the Viasat events team pivot from physical to virtual events. I not only was the lead (and sole) creative on the effort, I also researched and helped determine the best tools for our purposes, which started with webinars and continued with multi-day Viasat-hosted events.
​
One of my challenges was to create highly modular templates that would be easy even for a non-designer to use. That meant limitations to the design, but an elegant, branded, successful solution nonetheless. An example is the template shown below, for a landing page for corporate virtual events.
Happy Yak
PRODUCT+VISUAL+INTERACTION DESIGN / BRANDING / USER RESEARCH
The goal of this project was to design a competitive digital product that would address a common hiking need. From user research to problem definition to branding and implementation, I designed a usable prototype in Figma and produced an in-depth case study and demo.​​
The Problem
Hikers looking to enjoy trails that are off the beaten path often don’t have cell coverage, and therefore feel like they’ll be unsafe or have unpleasant surprises on those trips. This causes them to feel anxiety when trying new trails, especially when hiking solo.​​
The Solution
Happy Yak is an AR hiking tool that works on a GPS-enabled smart phone and provides a curated trail experience: You can download the experience for the trail or park in advance, and based on your location, the tool will help you navigate trails, provide updated trail info from recent visitors, point out flora/fauna/points of interest (comparing to downloaded data), provide safety alerts, etc. The data comes from a combination of park services (whom we partner with) and crowd-sourced user input.
With Happy Yak, hikers can be more comfortable being on their own: There’s less risk of getting lost and fewer unpleasant surprises. There’s also less reliance on being in a group where different needs must be accommodated. And the overall hiking experience is made more enjoyable for those interested in learning more about what they see and hear.
The Process
My process included user interviews to determine the user journey and audience pain points, a competitive audit, problem definition, ideation (from brainstorm sketches to a solution, storyboard to wireframe sketches), building the prototype in Figma, creating the name and logo, and defining the brand and the entire design system. Iterations with usability testing resulted in the final functioning prototype.
