Design Research Portfolio
About Me
My name is Titilayo Funso. Fun fact: Titilayo means — God’s joy is everlasting — in Yoruba. I’m a Design Researcher who conducts foundational and generative research to inform product strategy and the creation of lovable products and services. I also employ formative evaluations to assess the current state of an experience before foundational design research begins. I’ve worked with startups, agencies, and in-house design teams on design research projects from exploration to concept, to build and beyond.
I earned a B.S. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Georgia Tech. After graduating I joined a professional services firm as a Consulting Analyst. After a few years, I transitioned into the firm’s design group, Fjord. I’m currently a Service and Interaction Design apprentice. I’m also currently pursuing a master's degree in Human-Computer Interaction at Georgia Tech. When I’m not on the clocks I love people, food, wine, jazz, gatherings, and photography.
I know Medium isn’t the typical place to share a design research portfolio, but I love reading articles on this platform. I hope that as you continue to read some Medium magic rubs onto my portfolio. (: If you have any questions don’t hesitate to reach out.
I first learned about Human-Computer Interaction when some friends and I teamed up to pitch an idea to Georgia Tech’s startup accelerator, Create-X. Our startup efforts did not result in a successful product launch. However, our app, NexxChair, made it to Test Flight in the Apple store. I learned the value of working on a skill-diverse team of technologists, researchers, and designers. The experience exposed me to the power of design research and showed me the impact that designing technology (with humans in mind) could have on a community.
Since the start-up I’ve found projects that allow me to use what I’ve learned about designing technology to promote equity and expand access. In this portfolio, I’ll share what my project work has taught me. I’ll also highlight some design research methods I’ve adopted along the way.
My Skills — The methods I’ve adopted
- To discover — quantitative surveys, observations, user interviews, stakeholder interviews, diary studies, card sorts
- To synthesize — affinity mapping, task analysis, user flows, process flows
- To describe and inspire — user narratives, service blueprints, personas, behavioral mindsets, user journey maps, mood boards, sketching, wireframing, tension frameworks
- To collaborate — participatory design sessions, brainstorming sessions, concept prioritization sessions, live PPT editing(lol)
- To prototype and test — creating microsites, usability testing, A/B testing
- To support build — use cases, scenarios, design thinking, product thinking, Agile methodologies (design sprints, etc)
- To learn and grow — giving and receive design feedback during studio critiques, pursuing masters education in HCI, independent learning through project work, podcasts, articles, conversations with other researchers
My Tools
- dScout, Qualtrix, Dedoose, Optimal Workshop, Sketch, Figma, Invision, Adobe Creative Studio(XD, InDesign, Photoshop, Lightroom), Tableau, Microsoft Office, Python, Processing, Webflow, Canon 1dx
My Work Experience — Fjord, Accenture Interactive— 2018 to present
Being at Fjord allowed me to work with amazing people on human-centered design work. At Fjord, I’ve been tasked to answer Why questions. I’ve worked across several industries, from healthcare to hospitality. I’ve worked with skill-diverse teams. I’m worked on every stage of the process from product strategy to user-testing during implementation. The studio leadership in Atlanta supported my growth by letting my design education and client-facing contributions co-exist.
My more transformational learnings include the following:
- Always embrace ambiguity
- Design maturity is a long journey for legacy corporations
- Crafting great research plans requires adequate context and confident researcher
- Cultivating a healthy design culture takes commitment from the entire community, from c-suite leadership to entry-level researchers
- Collaborating with stockholders makes the work worthwhile, and stronger
My Project Work — NexxChair Beauty — 2017
About the NexxChair Beauty project: Nexxchair started as a conversation and then turned into a team startup experiment.
My team worked with thirteen Atlanta-based makeup artists to understand their current state experiences. Our interviews and observations lasted for three months. As we spent time with the artists we found that the makeup service booking experience was really hostile. We found that business tools the artists had access to created didn’t inspire trust between the artists and their potential patrons.
The on-demand and on-location nature of the artist’s work led us to design a mobile application. We wanted to be intentional about creating something that would help out local community members do their work better and find more work. We built a beauty services platform for a local community of traveling beauty professionals.
My contributions to the NexxChair Beauty project work: I was a multi-hyphenate on this project. I was the NexxChair service and interaction designer, as well as the product owner, as well a co-founder of NexxChair Inc. Wearing all these hats allowed me to explore the different kinds of work that happen during a product's lifecycle. I recruited the design team, recruited our developers, lead qualitative research activities, documented findings, and helped translate research findings into both user and functional requirements. I participated in team brainstorms and shared initial feature concepts with the NexxChair makeup artists for their feedback. I also planned teaming events, marketing events, wrote business plans, created pitches, managed our budget, filed our taxes, and did many other ‘co-founder’ tasks.
NexxChair application results: The NexxChair app was accepted to test flight in the Apple Store, but the app didn’t make it past alpha testing. Even though my team didn’t enjoy the satisfaction of a product launch, we did support the artistic growth of a local community of artists with our digital products and services.
This project was my introduction to design work. I hadn’t worked with user-experience designers, developers, visual designers, and strategists together on the same team. I saw the insights from our research and innovative ideas from our focus groups come to life in wireframes designed by my talented teammate, Hope. Georgia Tech created a video about Nexxchair a few years back. It’s linked here.
NexxChair Beauty project learnings: Having a multi-hyphenate role on the NexxChair project was an eye-opening experience for me. In addition to what I learned about designing for the artists’ needs, I learned about product management. I saw firsthand how misallocation of resources (talent and capital) hinders project work. For example, with NexxChair we onboarded two developers to the project before we onboarded our UI designer. We were figuring out Agile development as we went along. We had little prior experience.
Our failures taught me the importance of story prioritization and sprint planning. And since this opportunity, I’ve been able to reflect on exactly what I would have done differently if I knew what I know now.
My Project Work —Crwntype Hair Company — 2019
About the Crwntype brand design project:
A friend commissioned me to design Crwntype brand assets for his new haircare company. The Crwntype brand was designed to address the hair care needs of Black women, not the most straightforward task considering the diversity of Black hair textures. After getting the project, I recruited my copywriter friend Chika, my graphic designer friend Kamm, and a fellow design researcher friend, Sanmi, to bring the new brand to life. I contributed to the work as the project manager and designer director.
I was so excited about this design project because the work sat at the intersection of so many topics I love: Black women, care, beauty, healthy lifestyles, art, and design. Sanmi and I designed a survey to understand the factors that drive women to trust hair care products. We also used the survey as a recruitment tool for interviews. During interviews, we explored each woman’s unique journey with her hair. We created a framework to read out what we learned.
The Mural tool was heaven-sent. Covid-19 disrupted our workflow, but with Mural App we were able to keep research rolling virtually. From the 78 survey responses and 22 interviews, we discovered four prominent behavior groups.
We plotted the participants we heard from on a framework that categorized what we learned. The women fell somewhere on the spectrum between being passive with their hair manipulation and being active with their hair manipulation. The participants also fell somewhere on a spectrum between knowing how to manipulate their hair, and not knowing how to manipulate their hair. Creating this framework allowed us to segment the group.
We shared our findings of the participants with a local artist, who created the product illustrations. Then Chika, our copywriter, selected language for the products that would resonate with each group.
Crwntype results: The team delivered Crwntype’s brand story and product description language on time. Unfortunately, because of manufacturing disruptions caused by Covid-19, the project’s sponsor paused project progression. Our team’s designs did not advance to the marketing testing phase. Regardless of this result, this project boosted my confidence. I showed myself for the second time that I can pull together creative teams. Our team also flexed around Covid-19 challenges to met our deadlines.
Crwntype project learnings: I learned that many times in the real world the final fate of design work is out of the control of the designers. Even though the current status of the work is underwhelming, this doesn’t reduce the pride I feel because of my contributions to the work. This experience taught me to temper my expectations around project timelines. Most importantly the project taught me time to focus on the project factors I can control. The project also allowed me to maintain a positive outlook when project conditions got hairy. Finally, the project let me savor the process of creating, my team and I really enjoyed the work.
My Project Work — Square Seller Omnichannel Experience — 2019
About the Square Seller Omnichannel Experience project:
My team was tasked to investigate the omnichannel experience of mom & pop sellers on the Square platform. We conducted foundational research to inform Square about the needs of the Sellers. We invited Square Sellers to come and tell us about how they would design solutions to their most persistent business problems. In a friends-and-family participant search I recruited my mom to participate in the study because, conveniently, she was a Square Seller (she was using Cashapp, a square brand, to accept mobile payments for orders).
Omnichannel for Square Sellers project learnings:
I’ll never forget our presentation. We presented to the stakeholders second. The first student research team had interfaces that were higher fidelity than our final designs. After sharing their design process our Square stakeholders asked them, “What would you all investigate in future work?’. They proceeded to list out my team’s entire recommendation, which was to focus on creating educational services to help users learn more about Square Seller tools.
We signed NDAs so I can’t share the design details from the project. But I will say, I never felt prouder of centering human experiences than in that moment. My team dedicated time to get to know the user’s challenges and victories. We included the users in the brainstorming. And aside from the project work, I got to see my mom’s confidence with Square technology grow. She transitioned from creating invoices on Excel to using the Square Invoice app. She set up a Square site and her sales multiplied. She is so proud of her site. Check it out, here:https://naija-gourmet-foods.square.site/.
My Project Work — Georgia Tech Society of Black Engineers Experience — 2020
About the GTSBE service design project:
My teammate Annie and I were tasked to pair up with an Atlanta based on profit and use Service Design to create value for their brand. We decided to partner with the Georgia Tech chapter of the National Society of Engineers to elevate the experiences of its student leadership team.
Our design process https://anniechendream.wixsite.com/gtsbe/design-process
Georgia Tech Society of Black Engineers service design project learnings:
Six months after delivering the final recommendations I followed up with the President of GTSBE, Yinda, to gauge the impact of the project. The feedback I got was very useful. Yinda shared that his team struggled to adopt the workflow tools that were recommended. He shared the learning curve was too high. Some members of the team used the tools, but everyone did not have the same level of proficiency. This friction hindered adoption.
In the future, I will include change management planning in my recommendations for the next steps.
My Project Work — Losing Control, Computing and the Anthropocene — 2020
Full project documentation here: https://titilayofunso.medium.com/losing-control-project-documentation-faf21778d8c3
My Project Work — Georgia Tech Black Graduate Students — 2020
About the Georgia Tech Black Student HCI4D research project:
I am currently working on my capstone Human-Computer Interaction project. I am using HCI for Development methods to understand and improve the experiences of Black graduate students at Georgia Tech.
