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SHOWCASE OF OLDER WORK

Content, product, and conversational designs

Earlier content strategy, content design, conversational AI, and product design work, ordered from most to least recent.

01 2022

CarMax shipping status SMS flow

Shipping program success

CarMax's shipping program was successful from its launch. However, the shipping process was a black box to many customers, particularly between the time the car arrived at the store and when the car was ready for the customer to test drive.

Overwhelmed with manual processes

In addition, store employees were overwhelmed with calls from customers about car status. To help keep customers informed AND to give time back to store employees, we created an automated SMS shipping status update flow, keeping customers informed of their shipped car.

Opt in
Welcome
Prep & Ship
Quality check
Car ready

Outcome

With the success of these texts, we later expanded to provide updates on the car once it was ready for a test drive, allowing us to hold or release inventory based on the automated conversations with the customer. Ultimately, these flows were incorporated into CarMax's virtual assistant, Skye, and a seamless line of communication with the customer was handled from Skye to live chat agents to phone escalations where necessary. The learnings from these early building blocks eventually provided customers with a seamless agentic AI experience.

02 2021

AT&T Signature and Appreciation Programs

Background

The AT&T Signature Program and AT&T Appreciation Program are membership discount programs offered to 11 different customer segments, like firefighters or teachers.

The initiative

In 2020, AT&T launched a multi-team overhaul of all dotcom screens and components serving the programs. I was the sole content strategist on the initiative. The UX designer and I worked closely together, as my content dictated the design direction.

Page from the Content Requirements Document showing the specific sign-up flow for teachers
Required documents upload flow for teachers

The approach

These programs span the entire upper funnel, buyflow, and lower funnel, with components crossing those pages. In addition, the sign up and confirmation pages are specific to each customer group, multiplying the complexity. Patterns needed to be repeated and individualized to the specific group. Voice and tone needed to be consistent across upper funnel marketing, mid-funnel forms, lower funnel documentation uploads, checkout, and email communications, all of which I developed the content strategy for and wrote the content.

Content defines design

 The designer and I worked very closely with development, pivoting frequently based on limitations to data or build version. The full Content Requirements Document (pdf opens in a new tab) gives insight into the complexity of the project and shows my vision for how the screens should work. The MVP was successfully released with a Phase II fast-follow released roughly a month later. 

Phase II upload flow, all segments

Outcome

141%

increase in new conversions

Reduced sign-up friction across all segments 

Significantly reduced sign-up abandonment in certain segments

03 2021

AT&T conversational AI skills

I designed these two flows as part of my conversational design work for AT&T. One skill is a device order status skill and the other is a data usage skill.

Order status skill

The order status flow was a simpler flow, but was made more complex due to the variables around method of delivery and status types.

Order status skill
Data usage skill 

Data usage skill

The data usage skill looks complicated, and it was. This flow had many variables and conditions and was one of the earliest flows I worked on. 

04 2020

Expedia co-branded conversational AI flow

The business was developing a cobranded travel rewards credit card. To support the new initiative for the Hotels.com Visa Credit Card Loyalty Program (co-branded with a banking partner), we developed a conversational flow in line with Expedia's in-house Conversations Platform that was part of a larger initiative building an AI-Powered Service Agent.

Learning into better customer service

To help the model learn while also providing great customer service, we created a mixture of utterance-based actions and quick replies. At stage 0-1, we also leaned heavily on escalations to live agents while additional skills were built out and the model was trained.

The six skills at launch

The six skills at launch

01

Unauthenticated user sign in

02

Authenticated user sign in

03

Rewards card skill

04

Start over skill

05

Chat end skill

06

Format check skill

05 2017

Gerken Getaways website rebuild

Site rebuild for niche travel agency

Working with a design and development triad of visual designer, developer and me, we delivered a complete website update for a travel agent who was rebranding and pairing down her target clientele. 

The client started her business trying to be all things travel agent to all customers, and she was struggling. She and I worked together to decide who her target customers really were. I interviewed her clients that fit her target and ran market research and competitive analyses. 

Gerken Getaways home page
Gerken Getaways travel stories

Findability

Once I fully understood the market and her targets, I created an information architecture and wireframes for the site. I wrote the copy for the entire site, wrote initial blogs for the site, and developed her newsletter and marketing emails. I received approval from her to proceed with the build, and I passed the website collateral along to the visual designer and the developer. 

Upon launch, more traffic was driven to her site and she was immediately attracting her target customers.  

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