Among many other small activities, two major efforts occupied most of my time at HP.

The setup and onboarding experience for devices like printers, computers, and accessories is excessively complex and time consuming. Users regularly fail, and must call to resolve issues or simply return the products. Even in testing while researchers watch, setting up a printer can take 30 minutes and many simply give up.

We analyzed dozens of research reports, worked with product teams and investigated technical requirements such as deep dives into the messaging protocols the printers use, and were able to reduce the setup flow from over 60 steps to under a dozen, reducing time to using the device from over 30 minutes, to less than 5.

Much of this was design cheats; we didn’t shorten the time it takes to do various tasks like connecting and calibrating, but instead just “folded” the flow, so non-dependent user tasks happen while slow and boring tasks occur in the background. We also moved on from requiring users to do everything a specific way, and allowed more flexibility; now only people who don’t know how to install ink or load paper see instructions for those steps, and they pick how much assistance they need instead of everyone seeing a long video about it.

We also provided wayfinding cues so that users know where they are in the process and how much is left. All in all, usability testing showed near complete understanding and satisfaction with the new process, and began to explore ways to push and otherwise provide shortcuts instead of making the user launch and navigate to further reduce effort and time.

All this setup work overlapped a new unified application that merged many small apps, and created opportunities for all new opportunities to upsell, proactively help customers to avoid care interactions, and provide new customer value.

When it became clear that there were difficulties implementing a real new design, I proposed and created, mostly within a week, a Quick Conversion style guide, of 6 changes to bring all the disparate page designs into basic alignment. These included text alignment, text size changes, color changes and the like.

While supporting the Quick Conversion, I led (though did not manage) a team that created a series of design Libraries — design systems, with code widgets and all, but subordinate to the corporate design system and brand — to create a unified look and feel for this app made of disparate experiences from different departments.

We worked with many design teams and product managers in different departments to gather their requirements and their own design ideas using workshop methods, to create the unified design language for the whole new product.

The same team building the library also created a series of future concepts, to be placed into a next-generation Library, to expand the product past the simple website-as-app concept, and make the customer experience much more engaging and seamless.