About Me.
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Seasoned and passionate digital product and experience design leader with solid knowledge in defining design and product strategy and roadmap.
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Very experienced in leading multidisciplinary teams and delivering top-quality digital products under severe time and resource constraints. Extensive experience in planning, organizing, and facilitating discovery and co-creation sessions
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Hands-on experience in product and design strategy by engaging different area partners, stakeholders, and end-users to envision, plan, design and evaluate digital products and services
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Expert in building and fostering a design team while enhancing internal processes, policies and programs, in support of seamless customer experience
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Comprehensive knowledge in user research
Work Experience
2021 October -Present
Wayfair
Associate Director, Product Design
• Partnering with Product, Engineer, and Analytics leaders to define the full product and experience long-term vision and strategy for Wayfair Global Supplier Technology (a single thread organization focusing on building a B2B platform for Wayfair e-commerce suppliers to grow and manage their business at Wayfair)
• Supervising a team of 18 product designers (3 Sr. Managers) and providing end-to-end design discovery and execution for more than 20 Atomic teams, ranging from experience horizontal, onboarding, product catalog, inventory replenishment, inbound and outbound order management, payment, advertising, promotion, review, reporting, etc.
• Overseeing the user experience process and deliverables to ensure the XD team (composed of the Product Designer, Content Strategist, and Researcher) can establish a positive experience for customers through collaborative and productive design execution
• Driving a culture of learning across teams by enabling teams to dedicate time to development, actively sharing learning opportunities with them, and supporting different learning styles
• Responsible for short-term and long-term resource planning and team allocation across STO, and proactively participate in org design to identify where to restructure work/resources against priorities
2021 January to October
SnapPay Inc.
Director, Product & Experience
• Working directly with CEO and CCO to define Snaplii Digital Wallet product positioning and strategy.
• Planning and facilitating discovery/co-creation workshops with internal and external partners to clarify project directions, collect requirements, and brainstorm the best possible solutions and user experience.
• Leading, conducting, and synthesizing marketing and user research insights, to uncover opportunity areas that enhance the product-market fit.
• Prioritizing backlog items and conducting sprint planning
• Utilizing lean UX approach and creating proof of concept demos, wireframes, and high-fidelity mockups.
• Standardizing product deliverable process to properly collect product requirements and track design tasks to ensure timely, effective and efficient delivery and execution
• Working closely with vendors, developers and/or QA testers to ensure that the end-product is shipped according to experience and design specifications.
• Advocating accessibility principles and standards
2017-2020
Bank of Montreal (BMO)
Sr. UX Manager, Experience Design
• Led and managed a cross-functional team (11 designers and 12 Agile teams) and delivering large-scale end-to-end design projects from discovering problem space, identifying opportunities to ideation, creation, build, and evaluation.
• Led UX on money movement on both BMO App and Online Banking Platform by establishing clear definitions of quality to enable the team to ship exceptional user experience on various projects
• Partnered with leadership in product management, engineering and data to develop and advocate for a vision in the UX area and establishing rituals that support my team in holding a high-quality bar.
2016-2017
CIBC Business Banking
Senior UX Consultant​
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Worked directly with the Director, responsible for overseeing the creative design solutions for multiple projects and in ensuring a consistent user experience across Global Transaction Banking.
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Provided UX guidance and direction to internal and external designers, front-end engineer teams, and provided input and support during Post Implementation reviews.
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Established UX practice in “Sprint 0”, including facilitating co-creation sessions with cross-functional teams to transform client journeys from a user-centred perspective based on defined personas, users’ goals, tasks, limitations and dependencies.
2013-2016
CIBC – Investor Services Inc.
Senior UX Manager, User Experience
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Provided user-centered design solutions and user experience strategies for CIBC wealth management digital properties, including Investor’s Edge, Wood Gundy, Imperial Services, and Private Wealth Management.
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Worked collaboratively with the product teams to identify the value proposition, define UX strategies, and the critical success metrics based on overall business strategy and user research, with consideration of content generation and maintenance perspective, business feasibility, and competitive awareness.
2009-2013
CIBC
User Experience Lead, Creative Designer
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Responsible in delivering large projects from vision to execution over multiple phases by providing site information architecture, task flows, wireframes, prototypes, and User Interface Design documents.
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Responsible for providing creative solutions for CIBC Online Banking and associated Personal Financial Management (PFM) tools, in addition to online marketing campaigns, splash pages, and all daily updates based on business, marketing, customer experience, and technology requirements.
2006-2009
Prinova Inc.
Design Consultant
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Provide innovative information design solutions, such as financial statements and on-line applications for clients in the financial and insurance industry, including SunLife, Manulife, RBC, Washington Mutual, and National City Bank
Community Experience
2019-Present
dTalk International
Founder
• Facilitate 8 workshops and publish daily "Hong's Office English" notes on d.Talk's Slack Channel to help designers who are non-native speakers of English to improve their public speaking and presentation skills.
• Give back to the community and provide development opportunities to young professional designers.
Award
• Received 2019 BMO Q3 and Q4 Spotlight Award as top managers
• Received 2016 CIBC Innovation Award for my research focusing on helping visually impaired investors and novice investors to perceive/understand stock market charts, as well as for my contribution in promoting and implementing accessibility and inclusion at CIBC
• Rated “Exceeded Expectation” for most of my year-end performance reviews at both CIBC and BMO
Conference speech and publications
• HCII 2016 (Human Computer Interaction International Conference)
• SIGACCESS 2015 (International Conference on Computers and Accessibility)
• CNIB National Braille Conference 2014 (Canadian National Institute for the Blind)
Education
• Master’s Degree of Inclusive Design, Ontario College of Art and Design
• Bachelor’s Degree in Communication Design, Ontario College of Art and Design
• Business Communication Certificate Program, Ryerson University
Call
416-821-9568
Social Media