Kevin Lafferty Email & Phone Number

I work with organizations of all sizes—from startups to Fortune 500s—to build strong design cultures and integrate product design effectively. I partner with entrepreneurs to turn ideas into reality, delivering scalable, user-centered solutions that drive growth and tackle unique challenges.

Kansas City, Missouri, Us

Developed and executed a new product strategy and UX vision emphasizing improved data usability to help democratize data and enhance user experiences.Launched Seek, an innovative product developed to empower non-data-savvy users to explore public and private datasets with confidence and ease. Through design iterations, user adoption improved by 25%.Simplified the platform user experience by unifying geographic region selection patterns, which improved engagement and reduced a complex flow to a single screen.Led the curation of comprehensive data guides, collaborating with subject matter experts to provide users with valuable insights for more informed decision-making.Conducted expert reviews, refined platform language, and improved usability with new UX writing methods.Managed a junior product designer, fostering their growth and expertise through critiques and knowledge sharing.Collaborated with Product and Engineering leadership to drive a user-centric approach and improve UX maturity.Streamlined design workflows by leveraging Fontawesome's third-party icon library, leading to significant savings in design and development resources.Engaged in Agile processes, ensuring effective communication, collaboration, and alignment of business strategy with product development and design efforts.

Led the design of a new platform to address industry-wide challenges with insurance policy document comparisons.Spearheaded product pivot to a new checklist solution, resulting in more than a 70% increase in policy checking completion rates.Created a cohesive visual design system that reflected brand identity and user-centered design principles. Collaborated with Engineering and Data Science to deliver an engaging user experience that also aligned with business objectives.Conducted more than 30 interviews and working sessions, gaining deep insights into insurance practices, user needs, and contextual factors related to policy checking across the industry.Shaped company culture during rapid growth to build a positive and collaborative work environment. Played a key role in hiring dozens of technical professionals to support the company's expansion.Redesigned the platform's branding and user experience, ensuring consistency and visual appeal.Worked cross-functionally to plan sprints, prioritize the backlog, and translate requirements into comprehensive design specifications to help deliver user-focused solutions.Strategically sourced furniture and designed new office interiors, creating an environment that encouraged collaboration and innovation while saving the company more than $20k in relocation costs.

Prairie Village, Kansas, Us

Grew UX into a core Product function as the Netchemia team expanded fivefold after an acquisition by Vista Equity Partners for PeopleAdmin.Led the design of a large-scale workflow tool and middleware project, integrating tools from five acquired companies into a comprehensive and user-friendly offering.Developed a conditional workflow tool that enhanced Netchemia's TalentEd platform, enabling sales and driving adoption in large and complex school districts.Streamlined new staff onboarding checklist management for school districts with an interactive visualization tool, improving their task management and operational efficiency.Created a custom report builder, saving school districts weeks of manual work and improving efficiency for customers and internal support teams.Designed a mobile app integrated with TalentEd's performance management tool, simplifying teacher evaluations for school principals and administrators.Addressed a long-standing customer need for mobile access by developing a dedicated mobile portal for the SelectSuite higher ed HR platform.Collaborated in Agile processes, ensuring alignment between product and design while translating business goals into actionable strategies.Mentored new Product team members, facilitating their transition into the growing Product organization.

Lexington, Kentucky, Us

Led the design of content capture, third-party integrations, and mobile clients for the ImageNow ECM (Enterprise Content Management) platform.Created consistent and intuitive user interfaces using the Perceptive design library, which was based on Microsoft's Aero design system.Developed new components and design patterns for the transition from Aero to the Metro design system.Collaborated with Interaction Design, Usability, Technical Writing, and Product stakeholders to address engineering challenges and make informed design decisions.Advocated for users, validating design decisions with usability studies to ensure their needs were addressed.Designed a physician-friendly mobile app for doctors to accurately associate clinical imagery with patient charts.Supported scrum teams through active participation in standups, planning meetings, and sprint reviews.Organized and led Design Principles workshops, with the aim to increase UX maturity and promote a shared understanding of effective user-centric design practices.

Windsor, Connecticut, Us

Led a branding effort to revitalize the visual identity of DST's AWD (Automated Work Distribution) platform.Created a promotional video with motion graphics showcasing the platform’s productivity and global capacity.Collaborated with Engineering, Technical Writing, and other Designers to develop a self-serve conditional logic builder enabling users to customize (BPMN) business rules in workflows.Led the visual design for a Fortune 20 engagement by adapting our platform interface components to be fully aligned with the styling of the client’s visual design system.Developed design documentation that became the gold standard for large projects and new client engagements.Member of a collocated, cross-functional team of Business Analysts, Engineers, and UX Designers, working on a range of projects for internal and external clients.Conducted ethnographic research to design the physical environment and client touchpoints for DST's Call Center of the Future B2B service concept.Actively engaged in design discussions, critiques, and feedback to drive continuous growth and improvement.

Lawrence, Ks, Us

Designed and produced a variety of media and marketing pieces promoting student services, outreach, degree programs, research institutes, and recruitment programs.Created branding assets, graphics, logos, layouts, videos, infographics, presentations, and illustrations for print, wearable, and digital media.

Ma, Interaction Design

Bfa, Industrial Design, Ceramics

Design