Pete Wendel

I lead and manage UX strategy and design for Walgreen's omnichannel personalization program. Create and evolve connected platforms to help Walgreens customers make better choices for saving money, feeling better, and caring for others. Examples include:
Launched digital components of Walgreens Balance Rewards, the nation’s largest loyalty program. Defined, designed, and deployed Steps with Balance Rewards program (now Balance Rewards for Healthy Choices) which gained ~2M+ members in 1 year, with 40% engagement and 15% of members tracking health related activities; initiative is now an enterprise wide and cross-touchpoint program that impacts customers, employees and partners. Engagement model expanded across all Walgreens digital health services, connecting Walgreens, business partners and partner communities together for a common purpose.

I led and managed program-level user experience initiatives for the online business group. These initiatives were enterprise wide and multi-platform programs that impacted the customer across different touch points (Web, Mobile, point of sale, etc.), across enterprise systems (ERP, CRM, etc.) and across multiple branded experiences (Sears, Kmart, Kenmore, Craftsman, Great Indoors, etc.). Led definition of user experience vision and strategy for reframing relationships with customers over time using technology as a conduit for creating meaningful experiences in the places and spaces relevant to the lives of customers. Example: Led service design and customer co-design collaboration to define and align opportunities for Kenmore Smart Home initiatives across lines of business and technology partners. Results drove business roadmaps; shared at the Service Design Network 2011 international conference in San Francisco.

I connected the business of healthcare software / software as a service to the real needs of internal and external user audiences in my role as the discipline leader for user experience research. Example: evolved patient portal design with service design to drive features proven to increase scheduling efficiency, patient engagement, and HCAPS scores, such as scheduling tools that provided both calendaring and special needs communications to hospital staff.

I partnered with organizations to discover, define, and design meaningful experiences to drive strategy and tactics for experience design, brand, and innovation. Examples: Led research and collaboration to help Stone Mantle and Wachovia Financial to create a new marketing strategy for small business banking via a shift in focus from rates to cash flow based on ethnographic research findings; results shared at BAI conference by Dave Norton, founder of Stone Mantle; led to an industry-wide shift after sharing results and implications. For Royal Caribbean Cruise lines, I designed and led ethnographic research, which drove new approaches to multi-cultural guest engagement, and cross-touchpoint communications on Royal Caribbean cruise ships.

As a research manager, I managed a team of three and a budget of over $900K to lead all user research for driving design requirements. This included a combination of human factors research for hand gestures and visual tracking systems of the 30” tabletop surface unit; field research to understand and create a fit between people's context of use (e.g. social, cognitive, emotional, and physical needs) at business partner venues in which surface would initially be used (hotels, restaurants, book stores, casinos). My team’s research findings, implications, and experience guidelines informed design strategy, software development kits, and service/support/operational planning for product launch. Collaborated on software applications as well as shell/OS level design standards.

As the lead usability specialist for cooking products, I led the user centered design process for product design and development with a particular focus on user research, human factors, user interface design, and perceived quality. My responsibilities ranged from strategic (identifying and co-creating the mission and vision, balancing the needs of the target user with the needs of the brand) to tactical (managing internal and external resources required for key projects; conducting primary user research, usability studies, information and interaction design). Examples include: User research and user interface design that drove requirements for Kitchen Aid’s first 30” steam injected oven and its LCD touch control system. Product received both critical and commercial success in marketplace. Also led efforts to design Whirlpool’s first vertically scrollable text display on freestanding ranges, along with new visual brand language with industrial design partners, which moved this Whirlpool branded product category from a negative $10M to a positive $10M in sales.

As the senior information architect on interactive projects, I defined and created the organization, structure and flow of information, as well as the functional components, for Web projects. Responsibilities include identifying and creating the mission and vision for interactive projects; balancing the needs of the client with the needs of their customers. Planned and facilitated knowledge transfer within and between groups at Resource. Examples include an extranet for Ford Motor Company’s Th!nk Mobility electric vehicle group; Mac Tools first e-commerce site to support both public and government sales; and Hewlett Packard Business Center Services Web site.

Responsibilities included field studies, contextual inquiry research, usability studies, diagramming, information and interaction architecture, client workshop facilitation, team collaboration; effectively integrating new projects with existing media collateral; ensuring every product, design or service that Yamamoto Moss created was useful, usable, and desirable to the appropriate target audience. Example work includes 3M’s corporate identity design center (CIDC)—conducted evidence based design of people, workflow, and decision-making models to drive physical and digital tool system creation for communication and collaboration across all of 3M’s national and global brands and business units for CIDC.