Design and Consulting for Yahoo! Future of Mail
Welcome to the new Yahoo! mail
Yahoo! brought me on at a time during one of their biggest email refreshes since their email first launched in 1997. Incorporating AI and other new features was in part for the newest email users coming out of universities; the other half of the challenge were the many legacy users, some of which were still with their original accounts for decades.
What do Boomers and Gen Z have in common? A longing for connection in an increasingly fast-paced world, we learned. I worked alongside a third-party agency, the incredibly talented Huzzah Studio, to do a deep dive into the world of connection with a broad and mighty lens. None of our users knew that we came from the world of email, and the input we received was vulnerable, raw and as human as it gets. My responsibility as lead designer on the project was to collaborate with Huzzah Studio as they performed user research trials, process their findings and relay it back to each individual squad within the Yahoo! design team and consult with them on how the findings pertained to their projects. In my year at Yahoo!, I juggled being lead Yahoo! designer collaborating with a third party agency, being a stand-in PM on my squad and mentor to junior designers, while also doing squad work.
After Huzzah Studio finished their engagement with Yahoo!, I continued integrating their findings with the squads so that the important work done did not fade away as an afterthought but remained present in conversations and planning. I organized brainstorming exercises with groups made up of designers (product and visual team), researchers, and stakeholders and led the product designers in a multi-part Future of Mail vision board and designing workshop.
