Since being founded in 2004 by Meyar Sheik and Geoffrey Hueter, Certona has been the industry leader in personalization from 2009-2016. Certona uses their powerful platfom to create predictive models that customize the shopping experience for every individual customer. Clients can apply this not only to the online experience, but also consistently apply this to mobile, email remarketing, and in-store experiences.

The Certona Experience Manager is the interface that allows users, both clients and in house Client Services team members, to visualize what business strategies will be applied to personalize which touchpoints and analyze their success. I work as a part of the Product Management team to continue evolving the interface to make it more usable and enjoyable for both internal and external users.

What I DID at Certona

  • Talked to Client Services team members to uncover what their needs are

  • Worked with product managers to understand business requirements

  • Conducted research to gather use cases and understand priorities

  • Translated the requirements into a low level design

  • Lead meetings with users, stakeholders, technical resources, and executives to get feedback on designs

  • Iterated designs based off of feedback

  • Built high fidelity designs in Visio

  • Created annotated wireframes and specifications for developers

  • Collaborated with developers to make sure the design was understood and was implemented correctly

  • Performed user acceptance testing

  • Gave demonstrations of new features to users

  • Designed, administered, and analyzed post-sprint surveys to track our progress

  • Worked with Marketing to provide content that reflects our capabilities

  • Brainstormed conceptual designs for future products

THE CERTONA ECOSYSTEM

 
 

 

The Product Management Process

 
 

The impact I've made

Research

  • Designed the first overarching usability study of our product in years

  • Opened up additional channels of communication for our users, such as a chatroom and email list for those who actively want to give feedback on products that are in design

  • Designed a post-release survey so we can track the effectiveness of our sprints over time

Design

  • Improved standardization of our pattern guide

  • Engaged with developers to formulate documentation that is easy for them to read

  • Come up with completely new design patterns to support our emerging products

Process

  • Encouraged more collaboration with members of my team and other teams

  • Advocated for users, stakeholders, and developers to be in the same meetings and not separate ones

  • Incorporated user research as a regular part of the sprint process

  • Pushed for sprint retrospecitves so we can continue improving our process