Strategy, product, web, brand, animation, editorial
2021-Current / Director of Design
Company website
At Socialive, Justin led the design of breakthrough technology products from AI Video Editing to omni-channel marketing campaigns.
As Director of Design, Justin provides design and product expertise that helps founders, investors and department leaders make strategic decisions about product roadmaps and vision.
Provide users with a high-level overview of core platform functionality.
Designed to provide a middle-of-the-funnel asset to engage first time and repeat users on the marketing website. The goal of the video is to educate and engage users and drive them towards requesting a full demo of the platform.
Creative Director, Animator, 2024
Providing users with powerful AI video editing tools, right in their browser.
Designed to democratize and scale the video editing process by using AI-powered tools to automate and streamline workflows for video novices and pros alike.
Director of Design, Product + Interaction Designer, 2024
One of my most impactful projects at Socialive was leading the design and user experience initiatives for our best-in-class video editing platform. Our focus was clear: create a user-centric design that streamlined video editing workflows for video professionals and video novices alike.
Working cross-functionally with product, engineering, customer-facing teams, and senior leadership, I took ownership of the day-to-day design decisions, fostering iterative development that remained laser-focused on delivering unparalleled user experiences. I ensured that each feature did not just meet users' needs and expectations, but obsessed over interaction design that would provide moments of delight and discovery for users.
My role extended far beyond design execution; I heavily contributed to shaping the product vision, roadmap, strategy, and hierarchy, participating in prioritization discussions that aligned our design decisions with strategic business goals. I conducted market research and did numerous competitor deep dives to identify trends, and opportunities for innovation. Striving to make data-driven decisions, I facilitated customer and user testing sessions which directly led to the identification of pain points, enhancement of usability, and drove rapid adoption.
The success of this project stemmed from successful cross-collaboration and a rapid iteration mindset. This experience reinforced my belief in placing people at the core of design decisions and obsessing over the details that bring them joy. As an added bonus, we simultaneously used the newly established designs to update and enhance our legacy component library to ensure future builds are fast and consistent.
Dozens of high-fidelity, interactive Figma prototypes were created to clearly illustrate design and development goals. These prototypes served many purposes, including: Gaining stakeholder buy-in, user testing, design validation, boosting early adoption, pipeline generation, customer expansion and retention.
One of my first tasks at Socialive was to concept, execute and activate a brand refresh. Socialive was in need of a brand which reflected the category-defining technology it avowals, with a greater focus on our Enterprise ICPs.
To capitalize on existing brand awareness, flagship elements of the brand remained untouched — like the logo and primary colors. But in order to turn the Socialive brand into a confident visual language, large overhauls were made to device mockup styles, typography, animation styles, brand devices, photography, color proportions, and iconography. Combining the brand foundations, verbal identity, and visual styles into a comprehensive brand guidelines provided us with a single source of truth for all things "Socialive".
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From concepting to wireframing to design, I have been responsible for the creation of numerous cornerstone pages on the Socialive marketing site. The strategic planning behind these pages led to drastic improvements in user engagement and leads. Page on time skyrocketed (+46s), and bounce rates plummeted (-44%). Users found the new content and messaging useful and engaging, and we saw this reflected in both the number and quality of conversions on those pages.
The amount of traffic Socialive's website received was trending well, but landing pages failed to engage audiences, and leads were being impacted. After the development and promotion of a series of interactive landing pages (which I created in Webflow, and migrated to our primary Wordpress site), we saw astounding improvement in engagement. The aim of these landing pages was to position Socialive as a thought leader by providing quality content and an enjoyable experience to users. Landing page bounce rates dropped significantly, and the average duration of each visit skyrocketed. This led to an increase in both lead quantity, and quality.
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In collaboration with our Social team, I successfully elevated our social media presence to new heights. Through strategic planning and creative execution, I implemented a comprehensive social media strategy that aligned with our brand identity and ICPs. By consistently monitoring and analyzing performance metrics, we were able to optimize our social media campaigns, resulting in increased brand awareness, improved engagement, and ultimately driving significant growth in our online presence. With a fresh voice and elevated visuals, we are now well-positioned as a trendsetter in the video creation space.
Socialive's end-to-end platform is vast and can be overwhelming to users who are unfamiliar with it. After beginning at Socialive, I realized quickly that educating users on nuanced platform features would be greatly aided by platform explainer animations. I developed an animation style which simplified a complex UI in order to support accompanying copy and ensure users were able to digest the most essential information.
Video production was something I had never done before Socialive. Being a leader in the cloud video production space, producing quality video content was non-negotiable. V into the unknown, I began learning the basics of video creation, editing, and production. I was able to successfully produce several video content, including our most highly viewed video — our platform demo.
To further brand awareness and thought leadership, we developed numerous data studies, e-books, tip-sheets, and white papers. This long-form editorial content proved to be extremely valuable to our target audiences, and we received a high quantity of quality leads. Through all of these deliverables, I served as both Creative Director and Designer.
