Steve Erwin

Award-winning product designer & team leader driven to make great user experiences.

Bridges the communication gaps between designers, engineers, managers, vendors, and customers.

Seeking to bring a broad set of skills and experience to help creative teams and the customers they serve.

Featured Work

A Systematic Approach to Design

18 years of leading teams, refining designs, improving UX, and adding value.

Strategically Realigned

Each new iteration addresses the changing needs of the College, new target markets, changing business priorities, and new paths for customer engagement.

Multi-site Cohesion

A library of reusable style objects to re-purpose, customize, and deploy in myriad ways to create a more dynamic and engaging visual experience across a network of websites.

Built for Change

Flexible templates let us pivot at a moment’s notice, no matter what comes up.

Responsive

One codebase for all screen sizes to reduce effort, ensure consistency, and maximize ROI.

Cost vs. Control

A coding architecture that reduces development cost while bringing creative control back into the creator’s hands.

Tested Again and Again

Usability tests and focus groups in all phases: R&P, pre-launch, and post-launch.

Streamlining the Customer's Journey

For decades, Higher Education has had the luxury to operate with an “If you build it they will come” mindset, passively waiting on a steady stream of students to enroll each semester.

Buckling under the weight of record enrollment, unable to turn applicants away, and without enough staff to provide adequate support, OCC began erecting barriers to slow the movement of students through a complicated onboarding process.

Yet my goals with OCC’s websites are to make the user experience as intuitive as possible.

To better understand the customer’s pain points, I began mapping their entire journey from first inquiry to graduation and beyond.

I quickly realized that my work on the websites would fail without affecting real change in back office processes or encouraging a culture of proactive customer service. I started looking for ways to optimize the system.

My work came to the attention of OCC’s Executive Council and they asked me to present my findings.

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen an entire college laid out visually like this. Seeing it all at once really shows the complexity and where improvements can be made.

I appreciate that you drew it from the student’s perspective rather than our own."

— College President

“I’d like to see what you can come up with if you have zero restrictions. Imagine if you didn’t have to worry about the realities of getting us from here to there.

Just show us the There!”

— Senior Vice President

“The ripple effects of this map can be seen in over a dozen projects and organizational changes. We’re in a much better place because of Steve's ideas and I want to thank him for showing us the way.”

— College President

Evolving the Brand.

2005

Enrollment was at an all-time high and the College wanted to cater to a seemingly endless supply of high school graduates on their way to college.

An outside designer was hired to create a new brand that is very formal in stature, highly symbolic, and on a similar footing with 4-year institutions. They hoped that it would elevate the College in the minds of students pursuing Bachelor's degrees.

Unfortunately, this logo was very difficult to use in the digital realm. Our frustrations resulted in a near immediate modification into the horizontal form shown here.

Problems persisted for the next several years until enough time had passed that an opportunity presented itself.

2021

The Higher Education landscape has changed. Declining enrollment and a shifting demographic toward adult learners seeking career growth and skill development have forced the College to begin refactoring its offerings and its approach.

Digital media and marketing strategies have evolved. It’s past time for a refresh.

I aimed for a clean and simple shape that can be applied in a variety of ways across the media spectrum.

A concise form that is equal parts legible, flexible, and approachable — exactly what the College needs to be for this new wave of prospective students focused more on career outcomes than degrees.

This is now the Official College Logo.

The previous logo has been relegated to formal documents as the Official College Seal.

Thank you for taking the time to consider me for your position.
I look forward to speaking with you.

Steve Erwin