Leadership Redesign
UX Design Lead & Publishing Lead

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After Redesign - Desktop

Leadership Redesign - Desktop After

My Contributions

  • Lead UX Designer
    • Used new CMS CoreMedia components to convert existing leadership content into brand-compliant webpages with a fresh, tech-forward appearance
  • Significant Photoshop edits to old Board of Directors photos:
    • Photoshopped and adapted old, poor quality photos to work in new higher-res design styles and adapted them to work for all viewports.
    • Used Photoshop to create many arms/shoulders that were cropped in the images I was working with, in order to accommodate all viewports and consistent headshot sizing.
    • For Leadership photos, sometimes had to use Photoshop to extend backgrounds to center the leader consistently with other portraits.
  • Lead Publisher
    • Published all designs that I created, including the leadership home page, all leadership profiles, all board of director profiles, and the past leadership page
    • Worked closely with top-level leadership for reviews on all aforementioned designs; ensuring every leader was represented with respect and their approval
    • Responsible for ongoing updates to leadership content globally; designed the content to be easily syndicated and translated for Deere's 40+ supported languages

Key Results

  • Modern design for About.Deere.com that was established to easily syndicate and translate globally for Deere.com
  • Replaced custom coding that was not WCAG or brand compliant
  • Carefully incorporated both new and old photography, adapting portraits for all viewports
  • Earned trust and praise from the stakeholders (content owners), who sought me out for additional leadership updates directly as they arose (compared to going through my manager first previously)

The Leadership redesign was a direct result of needing to convert outdated and non-brand compliant content into About.Deere.com, which I was wholly responsible for publishing and maintaining. The challenge was real: I was asked to design the webpage under scrutiny from top-level leadership (including the CEO, John May), brand management, and the entire John Deere user audience.

Creating the webpage design leveraging new CoreMedia components wasn't too difficult; I had created many design concepts and quickly my manager and I zoned in on a newly added "featured stories" component that we repurposed to showcase leader portraits with their name underneath, and a hover-over effect (or in the case of mobile, ever-visible) showing their leadership job title.

By far, the biggest challenge was showcasing the Board of Directors, where photos were so dated that original high-res versions of the photos were unavailable. I could only work with the existing, extremely low-res web versions on the existing Deere.com webpage. I had to use many Photoshopping tricks to make the small-sized and cropped photos fit into the new, larger CMS size and work for desktop, tablet, and mobile cropping sizes. This not only required cleaning up the photo quality after enlarging the images, it also meant Photoshopping in entire shoulders for most portraits, cropping the individuals from their backgrounds and pasting them into a standardized background (with brand-compliant colors), and creatig a unique Photoshop template so the photos could be cropped in the CoreMedia CMS to work for all aforementioned viewports.

After solving the leadership home page, I also tackled the leadership and BoD profile pages. I created standardized templates for each, which were ready to syndicate globally for 40+ langauges supported in John Deere's website ecosystem.

After minor tweaks to bio page contnet (which I did not write, but copied from existing content), even top-level leadership was pleased with the modernized design update and I continued to maintain all leadership updates during my time with Deere.

In addition, I redesigned the Past Leadership webpage, leveraging existing John Deere photography and artwork and carrying forward the legacy of each leader into an easy-to-read tab-based format.

After - Mobile

Collage of individuals with names and titles beneath their portraits, related to leadership.

Before - Desktop & Mobile

John Deere leadership page displaying executives and board of directors with photos and biographies. Includes sections on management team and board of directors, followed by news and footer links.
Screenshot of John Deere's leadership page featuring images and profiles of executives, including John C. May, and members of the Board of Directors with their portraits and brief descriptions. The page also includes sections on sustainable practices and innovations in agriculture and forestry.

See a Live Page Samples*