Elizabeth C Maloney

2 years with Nectar! 🤘🔥 My favorite highlights: → Our team’s growth from 23 employees to 90 employees. Product alone grew from 6 of us to 21 strong now 🙌🏼, and we’re a sleek, efficient, resilient team under Brian Cressall and Nate Tingey. → Established Nectar’s Design System and built our component library, significantly improving speed, consistency, and quality of design and implementation. → Completed a massive UI design refresh for the existing product (bless the devs still building it 🫡 ). → Launched Nominations, the largest and most impactful new feature we’ve built at Nectar yet. → Completely scrapped a project, because it was the right thing to do. Grateful to work on a team that’s hyper-focused on our ultimate goals, and is sincerely willing to let sunk costs be irrelevant. → Ideated, designed, and launched our new product Internal Communications in 8 weeks with a small, mighty team 🤯 I’m still amazed we managed it. → $40M Series B funding in April 2024 with PeakSpan Capital. → Saw our efforts, motivation, and passion pay off when Nectar was recognized as the 2nd Fastest Growing Company in Utah County, 1st fastest growing software company in Utah, 8th fastest growing software company in the U.S., and 87th fastest growing company in the U.S. (across all industries). → 300% increase in revenue in Q3 2023 vs Q3 2024 (Q3 was also 50% above our revenue Q2 2024). → Saw every department at Nectar grow in excellence. I’m in awe of the caliber of Engineering, CS, Marketing, Sales, and what they accomplish. → Relished the challenge and variety of asks in the beginning as Nectar’s sole designer, including working on print design (looking at you, 28’ tradebooth) and animations for the first time. That animation announcing Nectar’s new logo a year ago? That was my first animation, and I’m still proud of myself for figuring it out enough to make that 😂. → Spent way too much on Holiday gas station runs (RIP old office). This is a long list, but for the record I cut it in half from what it was 😅. I’m grateful Nate reached out on LinkedIn right at the perfect time when I was looking to switch things up, and that we’ve made a great team ever since. Getting to work closely with our little product design team—Nate, Mason, Tyler, and Maya—and many, many others keeps me growing and keeps me motivated on the daily. Nectar’s mission and way of working resonated with me from the beginning. It’s rewarding to see our company continue to gain momentum and maturity, all while seeing how much room we still have to grow. Very, very grateful to be part of the journey. As we say, it’s still Day 1 at Nectar. 🚀

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I've spent the majority of my career as the only designer on an isolated team—or the only designer at the entire company. This experience has been invaluable, allowing me to take ownership of countless projects and rapidly gain expertise in various aspects of design. But there’s a flip side. Without a team, there’s no clear career path, no organic mentorship, no healthy peer competition… It’s easy to feel like you’re in a bubble, unsure of how you stack up against the wider design world or what you need to improve to reach the next level. To be honest, I’ve felt lost at times. Recently, my manager gifted me a book that has been a game-changer: The Path to Senior Product Designer by Artiom Dashinsky. If you’ve ever felt lost in your career, want to advance, or simply feel like you’re not doing enough, I can’t recommend this book enough. It provides clear guidance on how the industry grades and evaluates designers at all levels, with practical exercises to help you map out your journey to the next stage. Read it, follow the exercises, and you’ll know where you stand and where you need to go.

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For those designers out there working on Enterprise software — don't underestimate the amount of UX work that's likely being done by solutions teams at your company. They are on the front line with customers, often creating experiences (and sometimes issues) that might *totally* be off your radar. Reach out and find out what's going on in their world, there's a lot of overlap between us! #design #ux #enterprise

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🤦‍♂️ "Just hire more designers!" ...said every exec who's never managed a marketing team. Stop throwing bodies at the problem. I learned this $200,000 lesson the hard way. Adding 5 new designers to our team actually SLOWED us down for 6 months. Onboarding chaos, inconsistent outputs, and endless revision cycles. The real solution? We built a template system that 3X'd our output with the same team size. Quick breakdown: • Audited top design requests • Created flexible templates • Trained team on the system Now my designers focus on innovation instead of recreating the same buttons 50 times. Plot twist: We're delivering more projects than teams twice our size. Sometimes the best solution isn't hiring more people - it's working smarter. #DesignOps #B2BMarketing

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Last week I attended an in-person networking event every single day of Philly Tech Week. Most of the events were open-ended, allowing any and all topics to flow through. It was great - but a little overwhelming. As a fan of book clubs, discussion groups, Slack channels and Discords, I got to thinking about how new networking relationships can be better sustained through more targeted and intentional interactions. I also started thinking about how I can better pass back knowledge gained over the past few months to my local Design and Tech community. I have a new goal to create an open call for Philly or NYC-based Seniors, Leads or Managers in Product or Design to grab coffee in exchange for an industry-related book. The goal is to have a coffee chat about lessons learned in the book, and continue the conversation throughout the duration of its read. My goal is to build meaningful connection and put some great resources back into the community. The first book I’d like to pass on is “Thrive Through It” by Brittany N. Cole. I originally obtained this book through a WICT event late last year. To be considered, please direct message me 1 paragraph about how you’ve embraced resiliency in your career. Even if you don’t get the book, I’ll probably still ask you to coffee 😀. We’ll pass the book on when we’re done! If you can’t direct message me, please email [email protected] Hope to chat soon! Thrive Through It will help you: - Elevate your emotional intelligence as you journey through change and loss - Communicate through differences and difficult decisions to build connection - Practice empathy as an ally and advocate for others - Remove your cape and mask to take up space and allow yourself to be seen #networking #bookclub #passiton #philadelphiatech #phillytech #phillydesign #philadelphianetworking #phillynetworking #philadelphiatech #nyctech #nycdesign #nycnetworking

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🍿 Who doesn't love a good debate on hypotheticals? I don't think there is a magic ratio of designers and developers that can apply to every company, like 1:5 or 5:1, and I don't suppose Jared does either (literally) but I appreciate the sentiment that he'd rather have more researchers than designers if he had to pick one extreme or the other. However, I can say that hiring *and empowering* SOME designers and SOME researchers are much better than trying to build, release and maintain products or services with product and engineering alone, for example. I understand budgets are tighter, but true expertise in UX research and product design is not something to skimp on, one way or the other, if you want happy _________ (users, customers, employees, partners, etc) and long term viability.

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Isn't it strange how the types of process materials in portfolios is different than how real work is done in UX? I talk about what materials we commonly see in portfolios that are never used in real work, then I talk about some that we really do use. https://lnkd.in/g45JT7Qk

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This is spot on, very true, Laura Baker. Your Venn diagram clearly illustrates what designers have historically felt. I agree with all the ingredients you've listed. I would also add that educating through successful examples can be extremely impactful and persuasive — for stakeholders, esp. Product and Marketing who are not so familiar with the positive power of Design's hand in the process. Design led organizations (e.g. Apple, AirBnB) are strong evidence which stakeholders respect, and can help leadership visualize the value of Design for their own success.

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I've been reflecting on something that many UX and product professionals grapple with—translating our work into clear financial impact. This is crucial because if we can't convey the value we're adding, we risk not effectively communicating with executives and senior leadership—or worse. In some cases, when we're unable to translate what we do into business terms and show that we're moving the needle in the right direction, we could lose our jobs. After all, a business hires employees to ultimately improve its position, not make it worse. Over the past several months, I've learned that to successfully engage and persuade executives, we need to align our messaging with their top five priorities: 1️⃣ Increasing revenue 2️⃣ Decreasing costs 3️⃣ Growing the customer base 4️⃣ Expanding existing business (sales expansion) 5️⃣ Ensuring long-term sustainability (can we thrive for another 10+ years?) Whenever we interact with executives or senior leadership, it's essential to frame our work in terms of these priorities. As we do this, we'll be much more successful. #UX #ProductManagement #Leadership #BusinessImpact #ContinuousLearning

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I wrote about one of my favorite parts of the design process - refining concepts through user research. One key part as you're prototyping out your concepts is to ground your participants in actual reality and be selective. Check it out, and let me your thoughts about concept testing! https://lnkd.in/gNUkA_pR

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Design without reason is like building without a foundation. In my latest newsletter explain what design rationale is.

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Design doesn't die; it puts you at the forefront. It leads you to creating unimaginable experiences and brands that people love, whether it's a startup or a scaled business. P.S: A following read after Christopher Costuna’s post.

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Hot Take: There is a pervading concept in UX that designers have intentionally avoided responsibility to the business and/or the product team for our design work. I think that's a myth, out and out. I've never seen designers actively try to put their product outcomes on others except in the following 2 cases: 1) Design is so junior as to not be capable of driving conversations about product strategy (skills and experience lacking) or 2) There was an epic battle over strategy and the designer was threatened/bullied/harassed by leadership into being quiet. I've been in both positions many times. Once I learned strategic product skills, I stopped being a victim to the former. After that, I was exclusively a victim of the latter, in nearly every design gig I held. If you don't want change or strong opinions, don't get design involved. If you want to blame design, don't do it around me unless you want an earful.

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Many designers complain that they can’t get their ideas into a product backlog. Most of the time this is true depending on the maturity of your team and if your company sees value in the design field, but most of the time, backlogs are product driven. If you want to advocate how to get your ideas you need to convince how the designs are going to impact the business. Saying to PM’s: “The UI looks bad and outdated” is such a bad pitch and will fall on deaf ears. You need to speak “business” and as a designer you need to know how your ideas can make them money. Now, you’re probably thinking “well how can I do that” considering it’s hard to use ARR on designs. This is where we introduce the RICE framework. https://lnkd.in/exaD4xNY . Learning this will help you know the impact of your designs, the reach of the customer base, how confident you are on the designs and estimations and how much effort the business needs to invest in this idea. I will be writing an in depth post on this soon but thought I’d leave this tip on a Sunday night as I am having the designer insonomia.

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If you’re solely relying on your UX team to solve all your product usability problems, you’re in trouble.   Don’t get me wrong, a kick-ass UX team is mandatory, not a luxury, but if you expect to hire a couple of designers, pat them on the back while saying, “Go get ’em,” and expect that to make your product a delight for your customers, you’re in trouble. I’m not trying to minimize the importance of good designers, and I assure you that this isn’t another “UX needs a seat at the table” screed. Rather, I’m telling you that building functional, usable products your customers love is a team effort.   If your Product Managers can’t (or *gasp* won’t) find space in product releases to prioritize design quality and improvements alongside new feature requests, technical debt mitigations, never-ending backlog excavations, etc., etc., you’re in trouble.   If your Development Teams can’t (or *horror* won’t) school themselves on the tenets of solid UI development practices and seek guidance on usability questions when they don’t have the answer instead of just winging it, you’re in trouble.   But it doesn’t stop there!   If your Technical Writers aren’t flagging 20-step documentation guides as usability issues that need to be fixed in the product and not with pages of text descriptions and countless screenshots, you’re in trouble.   If your QA Testers don’t tag in, or better yet, assign the UX team as owners of usability defects instead of engineering, you’re in trouble.   If your Account Teams don’t know when or why to bring designers into customer conversations to hear feedback firsthand, ask questions, and trust them to build their own relationships with said customers, you’re in trouble.   If your Salespeople can’t sell usability upgrades as equally beneficial to customers as new features, you’re in trouble.   If your Technical Support doesn’t know when a problem needs UX participation to help address it or how to bucket related usability issues common across customers for UX follow-up, you’re in trouble.   This isn’t about spreading around the problem, nor the responsibility!, of poor usability; it’s about realizing that delivering good UX is a team effort accelerated by shared responsibility and process redundancies to catch even minor issues before they wind up in the customer’s hands. And if you don’t understand that, you’re in trouble.

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👀 Designers: Is your portfolio missing this crucial element? New in my "Nessa's Knowledge Bombs" series: "Show Your Design Process in Your Case Studies." As a hiring manager, I can't stress enough: don't just show the final product. Reveal your journey! Read more: https://lnkd.in/eQu4vrTd #DesignPortfolio #UXDesign #CareerTips

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Freelancing is 100% option, but it isn’t for everyone. Not only does it mean designers need to be able to do the design work on their own, it also requires a lot of effort in personal marketing and skills in stakeholder and business partner relationship management. It is a very different beast than working most 9-to-5 design jobs. The fact of the matter is that the design job market is VERY over saturated. It feels like there was a bubble that blew up between 2018 and 2022. It inflated salaries and also pushed a LOT of people into design camps with the promise of great remote jobs with high pay. Designers could rapidly drive up their salary by job hopping every 1-2 years into jobs at the same level or a step up. That bubble is popping and design teams are no longer growing. The highest paid designers are at higher risk of layoff, and companies are using return-to-office mandates to cut back teams. Companies are also taking advantage of the large pool of less experienced designers to replace the more senior ones getting laid off. I don’t have numbers, but I predict salary growth of design professionals is also stagnating. A smart move for currently employed designers right now is to focus on skill building - not only in design processes and strategy, but also in adjacent roles like product and project management, content writing, accessibility and possibly even coding. If you are able, build relationships and your value in your current role and wait. (This post was NOT written using AI. All thoughts - and possible errors - are my own.)

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