/Webfolio/Thomas Lansing

Context Sponsored by Volvo Group & MACK Trucks, part of recent graduate study at Carnegie Mellon.

Key Stakeholders | Feature development for industrial-electric vehicles, sponsored by Volvo Group & MACK trucks to improve the experiences of drivers and other stakeholders in the commercial electric vehicle industry.

Our Mission To learn and improve as product innovators and to motivate change in a legacy company to help underserved users.

User Research | Conducted 15+ extensive interviews & deployed surveys {n=187} to research & validate product requirements.

Human Centered Design | Participated with our team of 6 Carnegie Mellon students through a comprehensive integrated design & product definition process (detailed below).

Led the final delivery phase of our 6 month process.

Useful, usable, and desirable design for sponsors and users.

User focused innovation presented to the product & innovation teams at Volvo Group and MACK Trucks.

Our Mission Create a new economy based on sustainable fishing practices to replace the harmful chemical-agricultural techniques that dominate our food production in the western US.

Context Improving a public domain fish-protein-hydrolysate manufacturing process from an old USDA journal then building a business.

Design | Conceptualized product roadmap from market opportunity & product definition, through launch and growth, then balanced features informed by both user feedback and manufacturing requirements.

DFM | Created a new supply chain by applying commercial salmon fishing techniques in a new domain, and rapid prototyping. Then built a multi-channel distribution system by finding and developing channel partnerships.

User research | Customer interviews, co-design sessions, web analytics.

Package Design | Maintained ISDA compliance (don't get me started), lead a design team to create packaging for 3 retail SKUs.

CPM | Opened new sales channels, maintained channel partner relationships, developed referral program,

3 retail SKUs with strong customer retention and a fantastic brand.

Improved the product over time through customer feedback.

Exited the business with a rich collection of failures and lessons learned.

Our Mission Create a delightful, contactless service experience for customers.

Context Haven't we all thought about owning a food truck? The recent global pandemic was my team's opportunity to provide a contactless social experience and flip a food truck.

Design | Assessed a new market opportunity and designed a service to match.

Marketing | Created brand identity, developed assets, Go-to-market planning and deployment.

User research | Interviewed competitors customers to identify and prioritize product differentiators.

Leadership | Led a team to improve and operate a mobile food service business.

Management | Scaled the business with structured customer feedback. Kept the books and staffed the company.

Product market fit.

Sold business for profit (+24.1% ROIC) after 2 years profitable operation & summer wages for the team.

Delightful product for thousands of happy customers.

The Mission Learn to host an online store outside of CMS environments and build on HTML/CSS skills.

Context I noticed a collection of terrible products on Amazon, and want to build an alternative. After co-design with a manufacturer and a big import/shipping rodeo I have a garage full of excellent yoga mats and this web project is to help me sell them.

Market research | Deployed web scrapers on Amazon reviews to inform product definition and value opportunity analysis.

Design | Co-designed with the finest exercise mat manufacturers in Guangdong Province.

Connected manufacturing specifications (size, thickness, color, material selection) to features and benefits from user research.

Developed product and brand identity from competition research.

Illustrated the functional and decorative elements for the exercise mat to drive meaningful product differentiation in a saturated market

Novel product innovation for yoga mats.

An online shop for my product development experimentation.

Learned about Github & version control.

Still selling yoga mats

keyboard driven web browser

unusual & powerful modal interaction model

extensible in Lisp to the point of madness

Help the engineering team develop a web browser to machine augment the web browsing experience.

Programmers need three things to operate; a coding environment, a terminal, and a browser. This straightforward use case has millions of permutations, and my ongoing work is to make sure that the product is useful for the people who use it.

Established pre-series-A milestones.

Conducted business model innovation process.

Designed and conducted mission critical Lean Startup experiments.

Established product metrics.

Designed and conducted experiments for three business models.

Defined market opportunity.

Conducted 20+ user interviews and 2 surveys.

Completed JTBD task analysis.

Validated customer personas with user research.

Validated customer journey (pains, gains).

Persistently nudged engineers to prioritize positive early user interactions (~380 UX related Github contributions in a 16 month period).

Published a tutorial for new customers.

Published instructional video series.

Collaboratively structured, then delivered the visual design system & coherent brand identity.

Designed and delivered several beautiful theme extensions.

Delivered layout and written content for the homepage-conversion-machine.

Illustrated compelling graphics for published content.

Provided much needed business model clarity, and changed the fundamental output of the project from assorted code to validated learning.

Tested and confirmed value hypothesis & growth hypothesis.

A system for observing demand in our early-adopter niche.

Data validated monetization strategy to carry the company forward for years to come.

Identified a Blue/Purple Ocean of competing factors.

Delivered valuable context for narrowing the scope of engineering efforts.

Published content for community engagement, data driven insights for discovery phase.

Communicated customer requirements to engineers and beyond.

Prioritized product roadmap with data and a clear product strategy.

Dramatically improved early user experience to increase user activation.

Improved activated user experience & product visibility.

Simplified and unified thousands of decisions in ongoing interface development.

Launched paid extensions that you can buy today.

Attractive homepage with increased conversion rate.

Delightful illustrations that communicate the purpose of the product.

My previous career was selling and installing photovoltaic solar systems.

That industry is a hot mess and I wanted to generate some insights to improve a few small parts of it.

Elaborating human dimensions in the process of selling solar PV systems.

Learn a great design process and elaborate a better way for people to navigate buying solar panels.