SIERRA WILLENBURG

Author: Sierra

  • Practical Use of AI: Micro Case Studies

    Practical Use of AI: Micro Case Studies

    These short case studies highlight practical ways I use AI tools to support research, analysis, communication, and decision-making. Rather than replacing human judgment, these tools help me reduce manual effort, move faster through early exploration, and focus more time on synthesis, strategy, and execution.

    Summarizing user research interview transcripts

    Tools: Microsoft Copilot, Claude

    I have used Microsoft Copilot and Claude to help analyze usability interview transcripts. The AI anonymized transcripts (using “Interviewer” and “Participant” instead of names) and summarized each question and response while preserving the interview structure. This removed filler words, repetition, and small talk, making the transcripts significantly faster to review.

    I then fed the cleaned transcripts back into the AI and asked synthesis questions, such as “What did the participant say about the images on the website?” These prompts allowed the AI to pull insights across multiple responses. I also requested direct quotes for reporting, which helped speed up stakeholder-ready summaries.

    Drafting emails and messages

    Tools: Claude, ChatGPT

    These tools are effective at turning informal notes into structured messages. I often start with a rough, conversational draft and ask the AI to rewrite it in a more concise or executive tone. This helps tighten language, clarify intent, and reduce time spent polishing routine communication.

    Exploring new areas of expertise

    Tools: Claude, ChatGPT

    When starting work in an unfamiliar domain, I use AI tools to quickly build foundational understanding. For example, I asked Claude to explain SEO considerations for LLM-based search, including concepts like schema, GEO, and how these overlap with traditional SEO practices.

    I’ve also used AI to learn the basics of deal registration and bidding in sales contexts. When possible, I ask the tools to cite sources so I can validate information against trusted references, helping me get up to speed without hours of unstructured searching.

    Image generation for user personas

    Tools: Miro AI

    AI image generation is useful for quickly creating persona portraits. I can specify clothing color to visually group or color-code personas, and generating images is faster and more flexible than searching stock photo libraries.

    Creating draft research plans, surveys, and interview scripts

    Tools: Claude

    Claude can generate an initial research plan based on unstructured notes, providing a useful scaffold when no template exists. I’ve also used it to expand draft interview questions into full scripts, including introductions, instructions, and contextual explanations for participants.

    This approach speeds up early drafting and allows me to focus my time on refinement.

    Finding websites associated with properties owned by a management company

    Tools: Microsoft Copilot

    To identify stand-alone websites for properties owned by a specific property management company, I used Copilot to generate lists of potential URLs. While the results were not always accurate, the process was faster than manual searching.

    Copilot provided a list of clickable links that I could quickly validate, reducing overall time spent gathering the information.

    Analyzing the audience for a website

    Tools: ChatGPT

    I provided ChatGPT with websites from different property management companies and asked it to assess who the homepage content appeared to be targeting. The tool was able to accurately summarize likely audiences and identify whether shopper-focused content was present.

    Importantly, it explained which elements it used for its assessment, allowing me to evaluate whether those elements really supported shopper needs or were being interpreted incorrectly by the AI (e.g., property listings that were not actually designed for shoppers).

    Generating realistic dummy content for mockups and wireframes

    Tools: Claude

    While designing a marketing dashboard, I needed realistic placeholder content related to joint business plans and marketing development funds. Claude generated a sample report that reflected the type of data the dashboard would contain.

    This saved time on research and brainstorming and allowed me to focus on design using context-appropriate content.

    Evaluating portfolio case studies for a new career focus

    Tools: ChatGPT

    When transitioning from UX to Project Management, I used ChatGPT to evaluate my existing portfolio and case studies and identify how they could be reframed through a project management lens. Based on the content I provided, it rewrote sections to emphasize leadership, planning, decision-making, and outcomes rather than design artifacts.

    I instructed the AI to ask clarifying questions where information was missing, which prevented fabrication and allowed me to expand on aspects of the work that hadn’t been highlighted in my original UX-focused case studies.

  • Led the strategy definition phase for a website redesign

    Led the strategy definition phase for a website redesign

    This project took place in 2025 while I was a Lead UX Strategist, at Truematter

    Overview

    The client, a retail leasing company, had observed growing engagement from shopper users on their corporate website, which primarily served leasing-focused visitors. The challenge was determining how (or if) the site should evolve to support shoppers without compromising the needs of its core audience.

    As part of a large-scale initiative to modernize this decade-old website—updating its codebase, upgrading underlying technology, and preparing it for long-term scalability—I led the strategy definition phase of the project to inform product direction for the redesign.

    Product & Business Problem

    Expanding scope to support a new user group introduced meaningful risk: added complexity, slower delivery, and the possibility of overbuilding without clear value.

    Early on, we needed to answer:

    • What do shopper users actually need from this site?
    • How do those needs differ from leasing-focused visitors?
    • Where do the needs of these audiences overlap?
    • What level of investment was justified during the rebuild?

    The goal of this project phase was to reduce uncertainty and produce clear, evidence-based recommendations to guide the next stage of the project.

    My Role

    I led the strategy definition phase end-to-end and was accountable for:

    • Defining the overall discovery approach
    • Planning and sequencing multiple research efforts
    • Leading a design sprint focused on shopper users
    • Conducting research focused on leasing-focused visitors
    • Synthesizing findings across both audiences
    • Translating insights into actionable product and experience recommendations

    I proposed the stage activities to leadership (and received approval), incorporated the stage activities into the project statement of work, presented stage plans to the client, and partnered closely with client marketing and IT stakeholders throughout the project.

    Strategy Definition Approach

    To balance speed with rigor, I structured the work around two complementary discovery streams, each focused on a different user group:

    • Discovery Sprint (Shopper-Focused)
      I led a condensed discovery design sprint adapted from the Design Sprint methodology, including collaborative stakeholder sessions, rapid prototyping, and usability testing with shopper users.
    • Supporting Research (Leasing-Focused)
      In parallel, I conducted research in the form of usability testing, interviews, and surveys with the site’s core leasing audience to understand their needs, expectations, and critical workflows.

    Synthesizing these research inputs allowed me to evaluate product direction through the lens of both current (leasing) and emerging (shopping) users.

    Outcomes & Impact

    Bringing together insights from both research streams, my team and I created a unified set of recommendations for the website redesign. While the sprint confirmed that a shopper-focused experience was usable and understandable, it also showed that shoppers needed less dedicated content and complexity than initially assumed. Interviews and surveys uncovered that shopper user needs overlapped with those of leasing-focused visitors.

    As a result:

    • Extensive shopper-only content was deprioritized
    • Redesign scope was clarified and reduced
    • Shared user needs were emphasized
    • The team avoided unnecessary feature development

    These data-backed recommendations directly informed planning for subsequent project stages and helped the rebuild move forward with greater focus.

    Reflection

    This phase demonstrated the value of structured discovery as both a product strategy tool and a risk-reduction mechanism. By integrating insights across multiple user groups, we replaced assumptions with evidence and aligned stakeholders around a clear direction. In future iterations, I would expand shopper testing to further validate edge cases, but this work successfully established a strong foundation for delivery.

  • Led a project that reduced ticket load on an internal team by over 70%

    Led a project that reduced ticket load on an internal team by over 70%

    Role: Manager of Product Design

    Year: 2023

    Overview

    As Manager of Product Design, the Product Design team I lead worked on a feature to offer configuration options that would allow internal teams to make customer-requested configuration adjustments to a website widget more quickly.

    The Product Manager presented the main inefficiency for our internal teams: Any
    edits to this widget had to be custom coded by the Design team

    Allowing Customer Support reps to make minor configuration adjustments dramatically cut down on the amount of time needed to make these updates. This lead to a 72% reduction in Design team tickets related to this widget.

    Business Problem

    At the time the project kicked off, the Design team had to custom code any configuration change to the widget, no matter how small. Allowing Customer Support reps to make some config changes themselves would lessen the time it took for the edits to be made, as well as take pressure off the Design team.

    Solving this issue supported the organizational goal of workflow efficiency for our support teams

    My Role

    I managed cross-functional collaboration for this project, aligning Product Design, Design, Product Management, Product Marketing, Training, and Support teams. I oversaw research, synthesis, design, and engineering handoff, provided onboarding strategy, and reported on post-launch feature performance.

    The Project

    Through interviews with Customer Support team members, analysis of Jira ticket patterns, and ongoing collaboration with the Product Manager, we identified a recurring operational bottleneck: Customer Support representatives had to submit tickets to the Design team in order to access data or make even minor configuration changes to a site’s widget.

    This dependency created unnecessary handoffs, increased ticket volume for the Design team, and slowed response times for customer requests.

    Based on these findings, the project team identified that enabling Customer Support to make approved configuration changes directly would address the root cause of the inefficiency by significantly reducing Design team involvement.

    Successful delivery depended not just on shipping the feature, but on ensuring adoption across teams. I partnered with Product Management, Product Marketing, and Training to plan and execute onboarding ahead of launch.

    This included:

    • Defining a new workflow for Customer Support teams
    • Coordinating cross-functional communication prior to rollout
    • Delivering a Lessonly training module alongside the release so teams could quickly learn and adopt the new UI

    This approach ensured teams were prepared to use the new capability immediately, maximizing the project’s impact.

    Outcomes & Impact

    In the month of October, the configuration screen was visited 149 times. Over the course of October, only 15 Design tickets were created relating to the widget – a 72% reduction over the prior month.

    Read the product design case study

    Case Study – Homepage Search Widget Config
  • Solved user and business problems while reducing project scope

    Solved user and business problems while reducing project scope

    Role: Manager of Product Design

    Year: 2023

    Overview

    This project focused on improving internal workflow efficiency for Customer Support and Data Support teams by addressing friction in how inventory import and export data was accessed. I worked cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, UX, and Support stakeholders to define the problem, align on scope, and deliver a solution that reduced internal ticket volume and support effort.

    A small update to the product led to a 9.4% reduction in exports-related Data Support team tickets.

    Business Problem

    Customer Support representatives frequently needed access to inventory export data to resolve customer issues.

    This meant:

    • Customer Support frequently opened tickets with the Data Support team
    • Data Support was pulled into routine, repeat requests
    • Resolution times increased due to unnecessary handoffs

    This inefficiency needed to be address to meet the broader organizational goal of improving internal workflow efficiency for support teams.

    My Role

    I contributed to this project as the manager of the Product Design team, partnering closely with:

    • Product Management (Inventory)
    • Engineering
    • Customer Support
    • Data Support

    My responsibilities focused on problem definition, stakeholder coordination, and solution validation, including:

    • Supporting solution definition and validation prior to development
    • Partnering with Product Management to clarify the problem and success criteria
    • Overseeing research efforts with internal support teams
    • Ensuring findings became clear, actionable requirements

    The Project

    The initial project assumption was that exports-related support issues would require a larger effort to combine the Inventory Imports and Exports screens into a single experience.

    However, through interviews with Customer Support and Data Support teams and analysis of support ticket patterns, we learned that the core issue was not screen separation but lack of access. Customer Support teams simply needed the ability to download exports data, not a fully unified workflow.

    Based on these findings, we recommended narrowing project scope to focus on enabling export downloads for Customer Support teams. This allowed the Product teams to address the root problem with significantly less engineering effort, reduced delivery risk, and faster time to impact.

    Outcomes & Impact

    By validating assumptions early and using research to guide decision-making, the Product team was able to:

    • Avoid a larger, higher-risk rebuild
    • Deliver value faster with a targeted change
    • Reduce engineering effort while still meeting business goals and user needs
    • Align stakeholders around a more efficient path forward

    In the 3 months after the new feature launched, an average of 136 exports-related Data Support tickets per month were entered by Customer Support. This was a 9.4% reduction in average number of tickets over the 2 months prior to launch.

    Read the product design case study

    Case-Study-Imports-Exports.pptx
  • Designed and implemented Product Design team project process

    Designed and implemented Product Design team project process

    My Role: Manager of Product Design
    Teams: Product Design, Product Management, Engineering, Executive Stakeholders
    Year: 2024

    Overview

    While leading the Product Design team, I was responsible for establishing project processes for the team. After a few years of experimentation with our project process, my team was ready for a concrete and refined process for handling UX projects, especially large and complex asks.

    The previous year we had established our team mission and values, as well as identifying our UX maturity level as “Structured” per the Nielsen Normal Group’s UX maturity model.

    Business Problem

    After retros and discussions with my team, two main areas of improvement emerged.

    Large projects got bogged down and delayed due to misalignment with stakeholders on project goals. This lead to continuous rework, and frustration from the Product Design team.

    Considering the overall company OKRs of improving efficiency and working more rapidly, I saw how an updated team process would align with business goals.

    We made our core 2024 team OKR “Solve the right problems, faster.”

    My Role

    I lead retrospectives and collaborative working sessions with the Product Design team to define our OKR and process updates, and engage the team in learning and shaping the new process. I spoke with Product Managers, Engineering Managers, and executive stakeholders to make sure we addressed areas of improvement where Product Design’s work overlapped with other teams.

    I refined and documented our improve project process, based on the IBM Enterprise Design Thinking framework. I accompanied this diagram with a Miro talktrack explaining how other teams would interface with the Product Design team at each stage of our process. This made it easy to share our new process with other team leads and answer initial questions.

    I also followed up with team leads to discuss their feedback on the process and continued to refine our project approach with my team.

    One of our Miro slides, tracking initiatives’ progress toward our OKRs

    The Improved Process

    The process diagram calls out where to start the cyclical process based on how the project starts: from a feature idea, from a problem to solve, or from a place of pure exploration.

    This updated process tailored our work approach to the types of projects we often found ourself faced with: large, complex issues which needed solutions sooner rather than later.

    As a team, we also put emphasis on three areas of our process we wanted to strengthen:

    Setting project metrics of success

    This would allow us to better align with stakeholders one what the end goal of the project was – rather a focus on building a feature, we could switch to helping solve a problem. This helped ensure the design solutions we provided were providing the right functionality for the right users.

    Running ‘North Star’ design sprints for feature ideas

    Many of our projects to date had begun with a request to design a specific feature, that was often already well-socialized among stakeholders. Yet often these features ended up being scrapped or needing major rework after design effort had gone in and user research revealed that they were not meeting customer needs.

    Running design sprints to rapidly prototype and test these feature ideas let us engage the ask to produce features, but without spending unnecessary time designing for a feature project that would ultimately be canceled.

    Post-launch reporting on project success

    The other side of the coin to setting project metrics of success, post-launch reporting on projects allowed us to better demonstrate our team’s value to the business, as well as providing concrete, easy-to-digest ‘scores’ for project success (you can see one such report here).

    Outcomes & Impact

    The Miro board I created to house project our process documentation became a reference and resource for my team as well as Product Management and Engineering. We were able to roll out the updated process with enthusiastic support from other teams as of April 2024.

    After the process roll out, the Product Design team was able to approach projects more confidently, work more quickly, and deliver measurable results for the business.

  • Created shopper research report for automotive sector

    Created shopper research report for automotive sector

    Year: 2023

    Role: Manager of Product Design

    I produced this report as part of the Product Design team initiative to become more informed about our users and make more data-driven decisions. This report rolled up persona and other research into one easy-to-reference document.

    Getting to know Automotive Shoppers – 2023
  • Evaluated the performance of a new page layout

    Evaluated the performance of a new page layout

    Year: 2023

    Role: UX Designer / Manager of Product Design


    Responsible for optimizing page layouts to boost conversions on legal firm websites. Employed a standardized report created by the Product Design team to evaluate project success. The report, tailored for quick stakeholder communication, highlights key project metrics and the designer’s assessment of project performance.

    Although the project achieved its success metrics, a small sample size and variations in site performance led to a cautious evaluation. The outcome was ‘Some Success’ due to these considerations.