JLL
Established a design-led corporate culture while motivating top design talent to innovate on corporate real estate products.
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Designing proptech solutions for a post-pandemic workplace
Jones Lang LaSalle, with 100k+ global employees, manages one of the largest portfolios of commercial real estate in the world. In 2019, JLL's 3,000+ tech-related employees were combined into JLL Technologies, a division which was chartered with shaping the company's future through the broad adoption of technology.
As Vice President of Design, I built out a centralized, cross-functional design organization that included product design, user research, marketing, web and brand design to support JLL’s many offerings. With over a decade of experience leading highly collaborative distributed remote teams, I was able to leverage design talent that was remotely scattered due the pandemic.
As a member of JLL's executive team and the highest ranking representative from design, I worked to infuse the corporate culture with design thinking, helped with strategic product planning, and was heavily involved in contributing to mergers and acquisitions.
The pandemic had a significant impact on the products prioritized for my team, including employee-focused applications to help workers return to the office and sustainability applications to help companies identify ways to cut energy needs. Additionally, the design organization worked on reinventing JLL's antiquated marketplace and work order management system products. Given the various products that were built in silos over the course of a decade, I championed and established a company-wide design system to unify the user experiences across all JLL products and websites.
TITLE
Vice President of Design, JLL Technologies
SCOPE
Responsible for Product Innovation, Product Design, User Research, Brand & Marketing Design
2→16
700% Team Growth
SEGMENT
Employees, Employers, Tenants, Investors, Sustainability Consultants
500k+
Users Reached
2
years (2021-2022)
JLL Jet Employee Experience Application
A mobile app helping employees adjust to life in a post-pandemic hybrid workplace
Just prior to the pandemic, JLL released a new product targeted at helping employees navigate their office environments by booking amenities, finding colleagues, filing work orders and wayfinding. The app initially launched with a poorly conceived voice-driven interface which limited user effectiveness and adoption of the offering. Upon my arrival at JLL, I prioritized research and design efforts to reimagine the app’s interface and interaction model.
While we leveraged the back-end of the existing platform, we reconceived the user experience (iOS & Android native + web/desktop versions) and added features that catered to the new needs of workers returning to offices post-pandemic. Our innovative 'Plans' feature allowed an employee to identify which days of the week or hours of a day they planned to be in a particular office then leveraged artificial intelligence to make recommendations on ideal times to coordinate meetings with teams and colleagues. The redesigned experience enhanced the usefulness of the app as well as improved the effectiveness of in-person office visits for post-pandemic workforces.
JLL Technologies Web Presence
A reimagination of the JLL Technologies website reflecting its true brand
JLL Technologies was formed in 2019 as the tech arm of a 100k+ employee company. At the time, a new website was hastily thrown together to raise awareness of JLL’s technology strengths, to market products, and to attract new talent. When I joined JLL, I identified a significant gap between the company’s web presence and its forward-leaning technology mission. While I championed for a full re-architecture of the site, I immediately led teams to drive design consistency into the existing site structure by leveraging the emerging JLL Design System (see project below). The site refresh enabled acquisition of new clients as well as industry-leading talent.
JLL Design System
A carefully crafted global design system primed for JLL-wide adoption
Having grown primarily via regional acquisitions over decades, the products and technologies that came together to form JLL Technologies had very little in common from a user experience perspective. Some products had significant market share but were designed by various teams of contracted engineers. Others were recent products but a regionally managed engineering culture led to each being designed and built in a vacuum, with varying front-end stacks. When I joined JLL, I made it a top priority to survey the current state of products company-wide. I built a team of designers, researchers and technologists who spent the better part of a year designing a modern, unified design system to be used across all products and websites. The result was the JLL Design System which I evangelized across divisions and supported with development resources to ensure adoption across the company.
