Hi, I'm Julien, I live in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
I've been an interaction designer, a UX designer/consultant, and I'm now focusing on design management. I'm passionate about design strategy, user-centered approaches, and about how design can support long term business strategies. I'm a problem solver who loves concise, fast, and clear solutions.
The past 5 years, I've been building an efficient experience design team at Article.
I have a strong background in both the creative and technical aspects of design and have a proven track record of successful product launches.
I am a team player and a strategic thinker with a keen eye for detail, and I am always looking for ways to improve the design processes.
Backbase always had the idea of delivering a plug and play banking software as a product, ready to be used “out of the box”.
Backbase mobile banking app is the translation of this concept to a native mobile app.
As UX Consultant at Backbase, I helped financial institutions bring modern and up-to-date experiences to their customers. Mobile banking quickly became a must-have for most banks, and the responsive or hybrid app was quickly reaching its limits. As I had worked with a couple of native applications with our clients, I temporarily put an R&D hat to pioneer a native, mobile-first, experience for Backbase core banking products.
In a couple of months, we had a working beta and we started to use it during pre-sales meetings. The ease of use and ease of management really spoke to our user base and really allowed us to bring in new customers.
Our short-term strategy was to focus on daily banking activities and redirect the user to a desktop experience for more complex journeys. The app had to be accessible to all types of users, regardless of their technical expertise, streamlining the information architecture to make it simple and straightforward for day-to-day activities.
The structure evolved into a main “home” environment, dedicated to the most frequent banking tasks, supported by a better way to navigate into more complex, yet quite frequent, demands.
The “home” contains the accounts overview, money transfers, remote checking deposit, secured messages and shortcuts to the other tasks.
Project done at Backbase, working within an Agile team on this internal project, with Adobe Creative suite, Sketch and html/css/js for prototyping (Ionic framework).
Investment Banking Journey
When an old and renowned private bank comes to you and asks for help to create its next generation of online portfolio, you get excited, with the great challenge ahead.
The biggest difficulty was the amount of data we had to deal with. As well as the very specific terminology. I was lucky to have a business analyst from the bank to help me understand it all.
But for users the problem isn't with data, it is about understanding how their portfolio is currently doing. To answer this we didn’t only need changes in the visualization or interaction with data, we found out that we needed to give the users a source of knowledge about investment and the financial markets globally, including access to targeted news, blog articles, exhibitions, contact with banking professionals… all they need to feel in control of their money.
We worked first on the landing page (that serves to present the services), the login process and the personal portfolio, all key features into this new journey with the bank.
As a native tablet app was already planned, the website took a tablet first approach as well.
After rounds of quick interactive low-fi prototypes, mainly done with sliced wireframes and html/css/js, we reached a state where we could try the interface and gather feedback.
The public home page is a dashboard-like horizontal navigation board and the portfolio is a more visual representation, mixing infographics with tabular data to better visualize the information.
Project done at Backbase, working within an Agile team, in direct relationship with the customer, using Balsamiq, Adobe Creative Suite and html/css/js to prototype.
Aircraft Engine Maintenance
For this proof of concept, I needed to enter a complete new world. Our customer was a plane engine manufacturer and they needed a way to tie together within a single service their engine ordering or servicing and billing.
The scope of this project came from the fact that when you own a plane, or fifty … You can’t just go to your local dealer to order spare parts and do maintenance. You need to be constantly in relationship with the manufacturer and send engines back to them.
This application allows plane owners to centralize all the maintenance services from ordering parts, paying for them to tracking engines sent for servicing and much more. Admins are able to allow members of their crew to access only specific functionalities, that way accountants are able to manage payments processes and mechanics to follow engine servicing status.
The result is a set of role-based applications. The dashboard becomes your personal space and you can organize it, with your apps, the way you want. You can set each tile’s size, depending on its importance, to display more or less information. Tiles then act as a shortcut to the complete application.
Project done at Backbase, working within an Agile team, in direct relationship with the customer, using Balsamiq, Adobe Softwares and html/css/js to prototype.
Credit Card Enrollment Journey
Choosing a credit can be difficult. Rewards points, interest rates, terms and conditions, many reasons why bank customers often prefer going to a branch to open a credit card instead of doing so online. Our goal was to free up bank tellers time in branches by offering a simple, easy to use, website to choose and apply for credit cards and loans.
The content wasn’t completely defined yet when we started the project so we ensured extra space would be available for additional content and made each sections adaptable. Application forms already existed but only as paper forms and had to be translated to digital forms. But the most important task was guiding new and existing customer into the maze of possible options for their credit cards, detailing all of the different advantages.
Project done at Backbase, working within an Agile team, in direct relationship with the customer, using Balsamiq and Adobe Creative Suite.
eBuddy XMS for Windows
eBuddy, after its initial success with its online messaging portal, decided to compete with real-time messaging applications, such as WhatsApp or Line.
The focus was on major platforms with iOS and Android but all the other platform needed to be supported to be competitive. When I started to work on XMS, Microsoft was just releasing WindowsPhone7. I was in charge of creating Windows specific designs for WindowsPhone7, and later for the newer versions. Then also worked on all platforms.
Supporting Windows OS came later in the development process so most the use-cases were already well defined, and prioritized, for iOS and Android. From there, I worked per features, creating wireframes, prototypes and visual mockups. Each features was then reviewed with all the designers from the other platforms as well. When approved, the feature went into development while I was already working on the next one.
With its strong visual identity and disruptive way to navigate, Windows Phone brought a very fresh concept to the mobile world at this time. Adoption wasn't large and the development wasn't always straightforward so it required almost all features to be re-thought. Windows Phone is no longer available but I think there is still some nostalgia among the designers who worked on/with it. I think it was a very innovative system, with great interaction patterns.
Project done at eBuddy, working Agile with multiple teams, using Balsamiq and Adobe Creative Suite. My knowledge of Microsoft .Net language was a great help and I was very often creating prototypes directly in Visual Studio.