About me and how I can help you
I’ve always enjoyed problem solving – understanding the need, both from a customer and business perspective, looking at it from 30,000 feet, trying many ideas, iterating, and hopefully in the end creating a simple and delightful solution.
I’ve never claimed to be the smartest person in the room. The fact that I’ve made it this far is due more to curiosity, empathy, and persistence than anything else.
I am a product designer because through design I can help and delight people – that’s what drives me.
View my resume
wcroce@gmail.com
Portfolio
My Tools
I have used many tools over the years, but on a daily basis, these are my go-to’s.
Stickies are especially useful if I am working with a group and want to gather feedback from everyone present – each person feels represented. Sharpies instead of ball point pens to keep the ideas simple and less detailed.
Since the pandemic, and working fully remote with my teams, I have been using Figjam for collaborative, real-time whiteboarding.
I’ve been using Axure for over 13 years. It’s an incredibly versatile wireframing tool. It’s crucial to what I deliver.
I use Figma for visual design comps.
I regularly use usertesting.com for quick feedback on specific questions.
Finally, Confluence (or similar wiki) is really important to me as a means of keeping a project’s progress centrally organized.
Testimonials
“Warren walked into an environment undergoing a massive site redesign (front and back end); he jumped in on a project that drives a lot of customer conversion with both feet and didn’t look back! Warren is strong at design thinking and driving cross-functional design sessions to tackle a problem. I would have Warren by my side on a team any day and I hope to have the pleasure of working with him again!”
“Warren has provided tremendous value to Gazelle in a very short time. He established himself not only as UX expert, but as an integral part of our team from day one. He brings a depth of expertise in UX and information hierarchy and delivers well thought out designs, quickly. He does not require a lot of direction, is a great problem solver, and proactively collaborates with people at all levels and across functions. In each of his assignments he delivered designs that provide a “crazy awesome” experience for our customers.”
“Warren has a truly unique perspective which transcends everything you’ve read about “human factors” and makes him invaluable: it’s called simplicity. He possesses an incredible knack for ‘boiling it down’ and ‘keeping it real’ in the midst of everyone else looking inward and overthinking potential solutions.”
“We hired Warren to work on an extremely complex web app. He got up to speed quickly and wasn’t daunted by the technical details. He worked with minimal supervision and was accountable for his product from day one. He’s a strong collaborator, a seasoned designer and a pleasure to work with.”
“Warren designed a UX between our customers’ confirmed orders and their first use of our services. The new interface allows our customers to have a much deeper, more customized relationship with our company than they have ever been able to have before. We expect this will have a very material favorable impact on retention and profitability. Warren was a pleasure to work with, using his experience and expertise to take leadership of the project. He works in a very open and dynamic manner which makes it easy to have a feedback, discussion, revision, re-build and feedback loop that helped us achieve our ultimate objective very well.”
“Warren has worked on a variety of projects for Cartera. He helped move forward our responsive design initiative and also worked on a couple of innovation pipeline initiatives including our mobile app. Warren’s dependable and is particularly good at translating requirements into wireframe designs – and he does it quickly. A pleasure to work with…”
“Working with Warren has been a real pleasure. He quickly grasped our needs, and helped us realize what was possible for our new websites. Warren has a great eye and an attention to detail that doesn’t over complicate. The work we did with him on our website and for an iPhone app was elegant and well executed. I highly recommend him.”
Thoughts on Management and Leadership
I have been an IC for most of my career, but I also spent five years as a manager, and may do so again in the future. I’ve been making notes about my thoughts around management and leadership for some time, and thought I’d share them here.
My expectations
- Take pride in your craft. Design is a beautiful thing that helps people. Do it well.
- Ask questions. I get concerned when I get no questions.
- Challenge me. We can all do better.
- Take time for self-care. It’s foundational. Integrate it into your daily routine.
My Style
- I never liked reporting to micromanagers and I am not one myself. I trust people to do their jobs and will mentor those who want it and/or need it.
- I manage based on outputs, not inputs. In other words, the quality of what you produce is more important to me than the time your butt is in the chair.
Good managers…
- understand what drives you, and identify and grow your unique gift or contribution. In short, to bring out the best in you.
- keep the crap out so you can stay focused. If you’re unclear on what’s most important, that’s my fault.
- share important business information.
- are as transparent as possible.
- share wins of the team with upper management and wider audience.
- raise concerns of the team to upper management.
Good leaders…
- create a shared vision amongst their team.
- include their team on the journey.
- empower their team.
- trust their team to do their job.
- take an interest in how team members are doing in their personal lives.
- take the time to first learn from stakeholders before making big decisions.