United States

UX Design

Content Design

Customer Experience (CX)

UX writing

Content Strategy

Content Creation

Michael Haggerty-Villa

Director of Content Strategy

Content strategy

Design systems

Optimal Workshop

Figma

Introduce yourself, define mentoring expectations and goals. Learn and grow together.

General mentorship

Making remote and globally distributed teams work for you and your needs.

Working remotely

Understand the process of training, motivating and directing your team members.

Managing people

How to create a positive workplace culture that drives collaboration and productivity?

Fostering a good team culture

Learn the tips to successfully manage a team in a remote environment.

Managing a remote team

Learn how to properly present your work and share ideas and opinions.

Presenting your work with impact

Tips on how to work and collaborate with designers.

Working with designers

How to work with team members with different skill sets but towards a common goal?

Working cross-functionally

Methods and models of exploring, deciding and delivering design.

Building a design process

Navigating the working relationship with PM's and engineers as a designer.

Working with product and engineering

How to think about design career paths and what progression looks like for designers?

Design career path

Design team leadership:
Led a multidisciplinary team of design and technology experts—product designers, information architect, mobile architect, brand designer, visual designer, design technologist—to design and document a system to support current financial technology product offerings and a future, unified version of BILL experiences.

Design system process improvements:
Audited a partially complete design system, identified gaps and opportunities, and organized tracks of work to help the team make progress and achieve system goals. To arrive at measurable business outcomes of design consistency and quality, we organized and scoped work into specific tracks: components, design tokens and themes, patterns, documentation, training, and communication.

Design system people improvements:
Inherited an exceptionally smart, committed team of design system designers and technologists and identified ways to improve their productivity and psychological safety by working on cultural improvements, such as developing a culture of sharing, laughing, and frequent collaboration.

Design system focus, vision, and execution:
Collaborated to help the team refocus their efforts and realize that the design system, at its best, is not a component and documentation factory, but a means of gentle, persistent cultural change that results in better designs, stronger products, and happier team members.

Design team management:
Led a team of senior product designers as they collaborated with research, product, engineering, and other partners. Supported and guided the team to brainstorm, create, test, and iterate on a suite of professional tools for real estate agents and the buyers and sellers they serve.

Product design leadership and collaboration:
Collaborated with product managers, designers, and executives to set strategies for new and enhanced products, capture requirements, and coordinate plans to deliver designs that help users reach meaningful goals. Efforts included working across the organization to develop systemic approaches to customer problems.

Design system and product information architecture:
Developed a plan to audit an existing, ungoverned design system and turn its array of components and patterns into a well-documented, useful resource for designers, engineers, product managers, and other members of the Compass product and engineering community.

Design system site design:
Led the design system team’s content strategy and workflow creation efforts to design an attractive, navigable site for design standards and guidelines. Teamed with product owners and a team of designers—product, visual, and content—to design, write, and launch an authoritative, enterprise-wide design and engineering resource.

Design team management:
Lead a multidisciplinary team of product and marketing designers in establishing components, standards, and documentation, publishing and refining them, and training the entire Intuit design and content community to use systems for efficiency, cohesion, quality, and innovation. 

Design system site redesign:
Spearheaded a 12-month (and ongoing) project to redesign the QuickBooks Design System site, an effort that includes content inventories and audits, component inventories and audits, information architecture research and development, content management systems research, and visual design.

Design tools migration from Sketch to Figma:
In collaboration with an enterprise-wide team of designers and design program managers, lead the design community to a new, collaborative design tool. This effort included a research phase, ROI analysis, beta rollout, testing, training, communications, ongoing support, discoveries, and iteration.

Design community advocacy:
As a design leader, established partnerships across Intuit to nurture a design community based on standards, exploration, and sharing. These pillars are an essential part of training and ongoing communications and help boost the efforts of individual designers, teams, and projects across the organization.

Design systems innovation:
As the lead content strategist on the QuickBooks and Intuit Design Systems, established better practices in information architecture, documentation, content design, adoption, and collaboration. Pioneered efforts to integrate content style guides and patterns into design system ecosystems. 

Content design standards and processes:
Collaborated with content designers across the organization to develop content patterns, repeatable approaches to some of the most frequently encountered content design problems. Also integrated content and accessibility guidelines into components and patterns documentation. 

Content design team support and development:
Established a regular series of lunch and learns to teach content designers about content strategy trends and technology; mentored numerous content designers and helped them develop skills and advance their careers; managed content design interns; and organized content strategy meetups across California.

Content systems, tools, and processes:
Tested content creation and management tools and tracked how content designers can use other design tools. Tested accounting and finance taxonomy. Integrated style guides into strings management and translation tools.

Mobile content leadership:
Improved guest online and in-park experiences and helped mobile apps earn additional revenue by optimizing content and flows for conversion. As the principal content strategist for mobile products, directed the content strategy for mobile apps that help guests plan, purchase, and enjoy vacations at Disney parks, cruises, and other travel destinations.

Content design:
Created an award-winning mobile experience for Disneyland Resort in collaboration with product managers, creative directors, and technology teams. Reimagined content and search experiences in a redesign of one of Disney’s most visited mobile sites. 

Content migration:
Increased online revenue, boosted search rankings, and brought responsive design to Disneyland Paris by migrating their site onto a new design and technology platform. As the lead content strategist for global projects, established an international content strategy framework, bringing a unified digital experience and consistent messaging to guests in North America, Europe, and Asia. Efforts included site audits, gap analyses, redirection and deletion plans, and collaboration with management, design, and production teams around the world.

User experience leadership:
Improved guest experiences and increased customer acquisitions as the leader of a user experience design team that created and optimized marketing and customer acquisition Web flows for all of Disney Parks and Resorts.

Content governance:
Improved content and design governance across eBay’s network of sites and products and positioned content and design team for greater collaboration and innovation. As the leading content strategist in the eBay Design Systems Group, established a cross-functional team to improve the effectiveness and ensure brand consistency of eBay content. Collaborated with information technology, interaction designers, visual artists, and business stakeholders to create design and content patterns that make product development more efficient and guarantee a consistent user experience.

Content tools:
Spearheaded research and development efforts to investigate and establish new content creation and management tools for eBay, such as third-party voice and tone programs and a searchable, expandable database of site terms, jargon, and usage notes.

Content team management:
Planned expansion of eBay user experience design to encompass not only greater attention to content standards and tools but also increased emphasis on building a skilled, international team of content strategists, writers, and editors who help execute the global content strategy.

Michael Haggerty-Villa🇺🇸