John Choi
Product Designer
John Choi is a seasoned product designer with a proven track record of integrating visual design, business strategy, and user experience to deliver impactful solutions.
John has taken on the role of leading UX design at The Nature Conservancy (TNC), stepping up as the sole UX designer following his boss's decision to focus on motherhood just nine months after joining the team.
The website he's masterfully steering: nature.org
His notable contributions include:
- Design tokenization:
He designed and implemented a comprehensive system of design tokens for all colors, fonts, and spacings used across our website. He created these tokens using Figma and collaborated closely with the development team to integrate them into our codebase. This initiative streamlined the handoff process between myself and the developers, significantly reducing the time required to update UI components—ultimately cutting average development time by 12%. Most importantly, his work ensured the consistent and efficient implementation of their new branding guidelines throughout the site, enabling rapid updates, fostering cross-functional alignment, and enhancing scalability and consistency across all digital touchpoints.
- New IA implementation:
He led a comprehensive redesign of the site's information architecture, resulting in a 10% increase in user engagement, an 8% rise in email signups, and a 16% boost in donation CTA clicks. Since 2018, the site’s IA, taxonomy, navigation, and search functionality had remained unchanged, leaving it misaligned with TNC’s current campaign, The 2030 Goals. For several years, the site continued to reflect outdated goals and an internal organizational structure from our previous campaign. To address this, he collaborated with a contractor to conduct a comprehensive audit of nature.org’s user experience. This audit incorporated perspectives from internal audience owners, digital experts, and external audience lookalikes, providing critical insights into areas needing improvement. Using these findings, he guided the redesign of the site’s IA, ensuring it now supports their current campaign objectives and delivers an enhanced user experience.
- Launch of the Conservation Gateway Site in AEM:
He addressed the challenges of migrating 114 conservation websites, including the Conservation Gateway, to Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), a critical project hindered by past failures due to unclear ownership and priority. With each domain costing $30K annually, he advocated to leadership, securing roadmap placement and funding for a product manager, while also establishing a group of product owners for accountability. This laid a solid foundation to reduce costs and enhance user experience. He further launched multiple sites using AEM to centralize and unify digital properties, streamlining content management, delivering a cohesive user experience across platforms, and mitigating security risks.
- Email user flow optimization:
He initiated this optimization in response to unexpected findings from the user survey conducted during the information architecture implementation. He partnered with the email team to design strategic user flows for key email journeys, developing detailed interaction sequences that enhanced subscriber and donor engagement. He prioritized personalization, adopted a 70/30 informative-to-promotional content balance, and implemented automation to streamline team operations and reduce manual workload.
Beyond TNC, John freelanced with M13 Launchpad, a venture studio, where he designed MVPs for startups to validate concepts and attract funding. An avid explorer of emerging technologies, John experiments with AI tools like Lovable, Cursor, and Bolt, keeping him at the forefront of industry innovation.
When he's not working, John attempts to choke out opponents in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (guard specialist!), devours sci-fi epics like a black hole at a book buffet, and flips houses faster than you can say "open concept renovation."
John Choi
Product Designer
John Choi is a seasoned product designer with a proven track record of integrating visual design, business strategy, and user experience to deliver impactful solutions.
John has taken on the role of leading UX design at The Nature Conservancy (TNC), stepping up as the sole UX designer following his boss's decision to focus on motherhood just nine months after joining the team.
The website he's masterfully steering: nature.org
His notable contributions include:
- Design tokenization:
He designed and implemented a comprehensive system of design tokens for all colors, fonts, and spacings used across our website. He created these tokens using Figma and collaborated closely with the development team to integrate them into our codebase. This initiative streamlined the handoff process between myself and the developers, significantly reducing the time required to update UI components—ultimately cutting average development time by 12%. Most importantly, his work ensured the consistent and efficient implementation of their new branding guidelines throughout the site, enabling rapid updates, fostering cross-functional alignment, and enhancing scalability and consistency across all digital touchpoints.
- New IA implementation:
He led a comprehensive redesign of the site's information architecture, resulting in a 10% increase in user engagement, an 8% rise in email signups, and a 16% boost in donation CTA clicks. Since 2018, the site’s IA, taxonomy, navigation, and search functionality had remained unchanged, leaving it misaligned with TNC’s current campaign, The 2030 Goals. For several years, the site continued to reflect outdated goals and an internal organizational structure from our previous campaign. To address this, he collaborated with a contractor to conduct a comprehensive audit of nature.org’s user experience. This audit incorporated perspectives from internal audience owners, digital experts, and external audience lookalikes, providing critical insights into areas needing improvement. Using these findings, he guided the redesign of the site’s IA, ensuring it now supports their current campaign objectives and delivers an enhanced user experience.
- Launch of the Conservation Gateway Site in AEM:
He addressed the challenges of migrating 114 conservation websites, including the Conservation Gateway, to Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), a critical project hindered by past failures due to unclear ownership and priority. With each domain costing $30K annually, he advocated to leadership, securing roadmap placement and funding for a product manager, while also establishing a group of product owners for accountability. This laid a solid foundation to reduce costs and enhance user experience. He further launched multiple sites using AEM to centralize and unify digital properties, streamlining content management, delivering a cohesive user experience across platforms, and mitigating security risks.
- Email user flow optimization:
He initiated this optimization in response to unexpected findings from the user survey conducted during the information architecture implementation. He partnered with the email team to design strategic user flows for key email journeys, developing detailed interaction sequences that enhanced subscriber and donor engagement. He prioritized personalization, adopted a 70/30 informative-to-promotional content balance, and implemented automation to streamline team operations and reduce manual workload.
Beyond TNC, John freelanced with M13 Launchpad, a venture studio, where he designed MVPs for startups to validate concepts and attract funding. An avid explorer of emerging technologies, John experiments with AI tools like Lovable, Cursor, and Bolt, keeping him at the forefront of industry innovation.
When he's not working, John attempts to choke out opponents in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (guard specialist!), devours sci-fi epics like a black hole at a book buffet, and flips houses faster than you can say "open concept renovation."