In the 4 years I was Head of Design at PADI Worldwide, I built and directed a fantastic team of 15 designers & researchers that reimagined the company’s digital product experiences to support a global community of divers spanning over 180 countries worldwide.
PADI Worldwide at a glance
- Provides the world’s most popular scuba training programs
- Taught in 180+ countries supporting 26 languages
- Used by over 135,000 instructors globally
- Certifies over 1 million divers annually
Digital Product Ecosystem & User Experience
Over 20 Product Experiences Supported
- Included core customer engagement experiences, shopping cart, travel booking engine, store locator, online community, dive logbook, student management system, retail inventory management, SMB marketing hub, custom learning experience platform (LXP), e-learning and digital teaching aids
- 4 product pods: Commerce & Engagement, Consumer Tools, Business Tools, and Learning
Web and native apps (IOS, Android) - 26 languages with support for character-based and right-to-left (RTL) languages
Key Design Challenges
- Implementing a cohesive PADI branded experience across the ecosystem
- Designing consistent product feature UX for varying platforms (e.g. web, native, e-learning)
- Platform internationalization, both in content translation and right-to-left (RTL) UI design
Child, parent, and family account creation and management - Legacy business rule constraints (50 year old company that moved from global franchisee to centralized model)
Growth & Commerce
Accomplishments
- Integrated updated brand guidelines & modernized look-and-feel
- Developed design system patterns & visual language
- Optimized for mobile-first experience
- Increased load times with better image compression
Results
- Lifted conversions (lead generation/signups/sales) & time on site
- Elevated NPS, delighted consumers & business users
- Enhanced usability & information architecture
- Increased cross-selling between learning products, travel bookings, branded merchandise sales, and paid subscriptions
Brand Spotlight: PADI Brand Highlights (2018)
Accomplishments
- Designed a new global platform experience supporting consumers, dive students, instructors, and businesses
- Implemented new design system utilized by all product pods
- Created online community for divers to log and share experiences
- Developed custom learning experience platform (LXP)
- Completely overhauled legacy student management system
Results
- Increased platform engagement across all user groups
- Improved CSAT and CES scores for key areas of the platform
- Decreased platform-based support call volume
- Launched company’s first subscription based consumer platform
- Doubled the adoption rate of digital training products versus physical ones in first 2 years of platform launch
Product Spotlight: Student Management
Mobile App Suite
We created a suite of native mobile apps to complement the online platform experience. Each app added an additional layer of functionality that allowed divers, students, instructors and dive retailers to perform tasks while on-the-go – whether logging a dive, taking a new course, or getting their next class into the water.
Learning Experience Design (LXD)
Read the Case Study of how I led the vision for digitizing the PADI training experience
E-learning Formats
- Self-paced e-learning courses
- Video-based e-learning
- Software simulations
- Digital teaching aids
Accomplishments
- Redesigned entire e-learning product experience from the ground up
- Introduced new digital training strategy focusing on microlearning and video-based delivery
- Migrated entire digital course library to new learning experience
- Introduced new modern visual style for training product creative assets
- Developed a more streamlined and cost-effective asset production process
Design Documentation System
- Brand guidelines and brand portal
- Content style guide and content portal
- Design system with design principles, brand identity, style guides, UI components and patterns, coding conventions, and design best practices
Accomplishments
- Partnered with brand leadership to develop revised brand guidelines aligned to company’s pivot to a lifestyle experience brand
- Developed a brand portal to host style guides, guidelines, and assets to support marketing and brand creative teams
- Developed a content portal to host content guidelines and tutorials for content creation teams
- Defined a set of design principles used by design team in product development
- Created a proprietary design system including design language guidelines, design patterns, UI component library, and supporting documentation
- Developed custom design workflows within Figma to ensure efficiency in designer to developer handoffs