Designer. Creative Director. Agency leader. Over two decades designing exceptional digital experiences for people.
BIO
Prior to my current role as Head of Design at Proximity Lab, I spent 13 years contributing to the growth of Mad*Pow, culminating in its merger with $5 billion dollar global digital design leader, Tech Mahindra.In prior years, I built a full-service web design team at the Timberland Company, managed the digital design group at Bose, and paid my dues doing it all: packaging, environmental graphics, B to B websites, co-running a two-person firm, copywriting, and forward-thinking front end web development.What's kept me passionate about my work for the past 25 years is my unrelenting drive for creative problem solving. Early on, I more often used the elements of visual design to make experiences more beautiful and more usable. These days, I'm still using relentless creativity to solve problems, at a business leadership level.When I'm not in front of a computer, you'll probably find me in the beautiful New England outdoors, where I live with my wife, two daughters, a cat, a dog, and sometimes, a horde of chickens.
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Scott leads from the front. He's always willing to put in the work it takes to lead and he clearly articulates his vision while still being willing to adjust when the situation warrants it.
Anonymous Peer Review
WORK
For many years, it's been my job to ensure talented people have the skills, space and tools to create world class digital design solutions that balance both business and customer needs.One such example of this is a project Mad*Pow completed for Cigna. Our team was asked to repair and expand their global digital experience and document it all in a design system.
Cigna.com Refresh & Design System
THE CHALLENGE
We had seen it a hundred times. Over many years of varying guideline interpretations, a global brand's digital properties grow into an angry mess of competing elements, colors, layouts and tone, eventually contributing to a disjointed brand personality and poor usability.In Cigna's case, the disparate brand components began lagging behind digital standards of accessibility, the years of ungoverned content additions to the global site made it difficult for members to complete simple tasks, and things were generally looking dated and staid.After a 137,000 page audit, a research phase that led to defining an experience strategy, a deep exploration of brand elements and a content and SEO overhaul, Cigna was handed a responsive site that improved non-branded keyword search 438% and increased site traffic 81%, while also improving site desirability and task completion.Check out the live site
Experience Strategy
After conducting member interviews, a card sort and a usefulness test on the current Cigna site, the team was able to develop a clear experience strategy that would take the form of four parallel work tracks – content revisions, IA improvements, a visual brand refresh and an analytics strategy – all driven by the following design principles:
Human Centered
Empathize with and understand our customers. Test visual design desirability early and often with real users.Accessible and Inclusive
Digital brand elements/experiences should be easy for everyone to use, read, understand, and navigate.Simple and Consistent
Common design elements across digital properities builds trust by communicating a strong, unified brand.Differentiated
Establishing new and thoughtful design elements will help Cigna stand apart from it’s competitors.
Pushing the Brand Further
As a global brand, Cigna already had strong corporate guidelines, but to complete the project goal of modernizing the visual representation of the brand within the digital space, Mad*Pow facilitated co-creation workshops with the Cigna team to imagine what a new manifestation of the brand online should feel like for a member. That led to the following "experience attributes":
Focused
Calming
Personal
Intuitive
Empathetic
Fresh
These design guidelines would act as the north star for the UI designers to explore as many new manifestations of the digital brand as possible within a cadence of intensive design sprints.Using element collages (h/t, Dan Mall), the team was able to explore a large amount of type, color and layout approaches freely and at a high level before using reviews with the Cigna team at the end of each sprint to hone in on which ideas would move forward.At the end of this highly iterative phase, the team had arrived at a new proposed design direction for the Cigna digital properties.
Documenting a Foundation for the Future
Once the final design was blessed by members and stakeholders alike, it was time to wrap things up by communicating every design decision in the form of a design system.Typically a design system, like the one created for Cigna, documents everything from brand styles to modular components and the code it requires to make them to the internal organizational governance of the design (who will and how to keep things updated).
Work Samples 2010-2020
Specialty Insurance Purchasing Experience | 2019
A Fortune 20 insurance company asked my team to imagine how to make buying insurance, a notoriously difficult task, so easy that its customers could do it themselves, from any device they wanted. After an extensive research effort typical of our process at Mad*Pow, the team created an experience flow which spanned two insurance products (Umbrella and Valuable Property) for two different audiences. The team delivered on time to a very happy client who is currently implementing the solutions.
Blue Cross Blue Shield Product Onboarding | 2018
Blue Cross Blue Shield wanted to rethink how insurance products were delivered to their customers by reframing the experience as an unboxing of an exciting new purchase. The experience needed to be friendly, approachable and fun, but also extremely clear and available on all devices. Under time and budget constraints, the team used focus (the product name) as a visual metaphor to create a whimsical solution the client loved.
Eaton Vance Integrated Branding | 2017
I led the Eaton Vance account for four years, over which time, our teams provided everything from development support to production design to content work to organizational change strategy. The fruitful partnership culminated in my team helping EV evolve their brand forward by using their existing base elements in new ways. After many explorations, the client moved forward with our concept of utilizing a bolder interpretation of the "cornerstone" element found in their logo. We then extended that element to brochures and ultimately a refresh of their website and a full style guide for the client to build and scale the solution into the future.
Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Site Redesign | 2015
The team did some truly amazing work for Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. Their site was causing them legal issues due to its lack of accessibility and market share issues due to its lack of consistent branding. The team set out to differentiate HPHC from their sea of "blue" insurance competition with a fresh color palette and use of patterns and iconography. A full, working prototype was created and stringently tested by the Carroll Center for the Blind for accessibility (it achieved its WCAG AA rating). Using extensive user research and usability testing, the most important tasks were moved front and center and the whole site made responsive. Customers overwhelmingly loved the new design and the client ended the project the best way possible - with a celebratory party.
Grand Circle Travel Site Redesign | 2013
Grand Circle Travel had an antiquated site that had such a large amount of improperly organized content that people were becoming frustrated and migrating to competitor sites. Through extensive user research and testing, our team of designers and content strategists incorporated traditional e-commerce best practices to simplify the content and maximize conversion. We delivered a completely reimagined design along with a comprehensive style guide to help the GCT team develop it to the high standards required.
ESPN Customer Marketing & Sales Site Design | 2011
ESPN has been one of Mad*Pow's longest standing clients and as the first manager of the account, my team set that strong foundation with an ambitious project to design a site that would house and manage every piece of marketing ESPN created. The site had two major audiences - the internal group managing the marketing and external ad buyers, who ESPN wanted to wow with a bold design. At the time, full screen imagery and an interesting layout did the trick and set us on a course for a great partnership for years to come.
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