Portfolio

1. Vijayasarathy
Ranganathan (VJ)
U X R E S E A R C H & S T R A T E G Y
Hi there! I have over 15 years of experience as a
User Experience Architect, leveraging User
experience design and research to solve complex
business use cases and design products. I have
worked independently, as well as, led teams of
strategists, designers, and technologists. I have
partnered with industry-leading companies across
various domains to deliver UX solutions.
Masters Specialization (Human Factors &
Business Design)
OCAD, Toronto
2020-21
Interaction Design
UCSD, California
2015-2016
Electronics Engineering
AMC, Bangalore
1999-2004
T o r o n t o , C a n a d a
https://www.linkedin.com/in/vijayasarathyr/

2. In my Current Role
I help Enterprise’s with solution envisioning/solving complex use cases by
• Designing Business
Framework
• Developing Service
Blueprints
• Conducting user research
• Develop engagement
strategy and roadmap/plan
• Conduct Design thinking
workshops, co-creation
workshops and
requirements workshops to
extract
hypothesis/requirements
• Prioritize
Requirements
and/or
hypothesis
• Develop hi-fi
design
prototypes
leveraging rapid
prototyping tools
• Plan usability test
sessions and
help identify and
recruit users
• Develop usability
test material
• Validate the
designs and use
cases via usability
testing
• Capture
learnings and
Prioritize
Findings
• Make progress
• Work with
learning and
OCM teams to
give insights on
potential help
material
• Develop product
launch strategy
• Help with QA and
Prod related
UAT’s
• Engage with the
product analytics
team to
understand any
gaps/issues to
make
improvements

3. Other Key Research Engagements(During 2018-22)
Developed/Updated Enterprise Persona for the World Bank
Led co-creation labs to develop the Walmart’s Privacy Gateway
Developed journey maps for the World Bank’s Travel Security Team
Conducted user research to help one of the world’s largest Bank to help
understand the potential compromise of confidential data
Conducted design thinking workshops with multi-disciplinary teams at Walmart
to envision the CCPA workflows

4. Licenses & certifications
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5. My Product Designs/POC publications
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6. Professional Work Case Study – Snapshot
During the interview I can provide a detailed walkthrough of the any selected professional case study
(P.S. Since my work with these industry leaders involved signing an NDA I have disclosed limited information. I will not be able to include any
storyboards or further details than what is shared.)
Vijayasarathy Ranganathan

7. Development of the World Bank's Persona
Client Requirements
This assignment was to enrich the persona v1.0 of the staff classification. The
purpose of this engagement was to capture the persona distribution by
demographic, application, and tool usage patterns, data trends, travel patterns, and
impacted business capabilities for each group.
Solution
As a part of the EA UXM team, I partnered with my UX team colleague to design surveys,
analyze HR & IT data and conduct user interviews to develop the Enterprise persona of
the Bank.
• The survey was distributed to the entire staff directory of 16,000. We had over 6000
responses from across the globe.
• Additionally, the HR data was leveraged and analyzed to define the demographic
distribution and the data from the hardware and software provisioning team to map
the device use and application use per user group.
• The combined findings and analysis of the survey and user interviews helped us
discover the gaps each persona group had in getting their work done and the
workarounds they had in place. We were able to their greatest tensions and assets.
• The business capability mapping helped the institution understand the potential
licensing cost for their cloud deployments like O365 and hardware tokens.
Client Location: Washington DC
User Interviews Enterprise Survey Data Analysis
Line of Business Workshops Leadership Presentation

8. Defining the Universal Employee Profile - UEP
Client Requirements
The Bank had about ten system profiles per user that proved costly to maintain and hard to migrate/retire. With the objectives of unifying/rationalizing the
numerous profiles pages, attributes, and categories with their source of data, and reaching a consensus on a solution that would work for all stakeholders
across the 3 Institutions(IFC, WB, & MIGA) under the Bank’s umbrella.
Additionally, with the upcoming data privacy and data protection laws the Management wanted a Governance framework defined for the attributes.
As a part of the Enterprise Architecture (EA) UX team I ran a design studio:
• To define the employee profile for the Bank’s Staff referred to as “Universal Employee Profile (UEP)” that is agnostic of people, processes and systems.
• To recommend the best approach to implement the UEP within the Bank.
Design Studio Output:
• Defined the Universal Employee Profile (UEP) along with the attributes grouped under distinct categories
• Determined the access levels at the attribute level (Public, Private, Limited)
• Identification & Validation of the consumers of the unified profile
• Determination & Rationalization of the data sources for the attributes in UEP
Client Location: Multiple Geographies, Base location: USA
Solution
User Interviews
Card Sorting
Design Studio
Data Analytics
Taxonomy Development &
Governance
Data Privacy Framework
Usability Testing

9. Global service desk
Client Requirements
The business stakeholders' need was to redesign the service platform(eServices) to streamline, integrate, and
create a high-quality service platform/hub. At that point, the Bank's services were offered through multiple
websites and platforms including the existing eServices platform. Additionally, the services once requested
were not traceable to the requestor.
Solution
I worked as a member of the UXM team and led the strategic and research aspects of the design. I started this
roadmap engagement by defining the goals:
• Make general services available and traceable in one place
• Ensure seamless user experience between multiple platforms
• Rationalize systems that fulfill services
We conducted workshops with the impacted user groups: Staff, service providers, vendors and the support team.
Once the gaps and future state requirements were defined we took up card sorting activities to group the
services in the most logical groups using OptimalSort. The Card sorting was conducted with actual users ranging
from novice to expert level to arrive at the grouping.
We defined the user experience strategy for the future state for the two key user groups(user, service provider).
On the high-level, the key strategic set for users included: one-stop shop, self-service, Contextual help, bundled
services, order tracking, and omnichannel.
For service providers: building knowledge repository, promotion of service, service syndication, transparency in
servicing, integration of analytics.
The Service bot concept was proposed as a virtual assistant option.
Client Location: Washington DC
User Interviews Card Sorting
Detail Design
Stakeholder Analysis
Taxonomy Development & Governance
Design Thinking Workshops Usability Testing

10. Travel Security Journey Map
Engagement scope
To understand and document the current security process the traveler will need to go through before and during their travel to sensitive
client areas across the world via journey map. The final outcome was for the leadership to identify potential areas of process
automation/optimization.
Client Location: Multiple Geographies, Base location: USA
User Interviews
Pain-point Decomposition
Journey Map
Process Analysis

11. Walmart CCPA and Privacy Gateway
As a UX Architect(Consulting) with Walmart Labs, my primary role was to conduct
user research and help define the future state strategy for privacy products and
applications. Following are some of the key strategic projects that I engaged in:
• Designed the POC for Walmart consumer to exercise their privacy rights. In 2020 I
conducted over five design thinking (remote) workshops with close to 40
representative end-users and stakeholders to explore and define the
requirements for the privacy application.
• As a UX consultant for the “WM Privacy Team”, my primary role was to understand
and pro-actively engage with various product teams on providing the required
guidance on what “Privacy by Design” meant for their digital as well as in-store
platforms. I engaged closely with the WM Legal and Privacy leadership during the
2 FYs of 2019 and 2020.
• I have conducted over 20 hrs. of user interviews since Jan 2021 to discover and
document the current state journey of the privacy business
In 2019, I designed the Walmart CCPA workflows that allow California consumers to
exercise their privacy rights. I conducted two requirements gathering and design
workshops in NYC and Bentonville locations to help define the business
requirements and user flows based on the consumer request type. This included
interface designs for contact center associates who help consumers create privacy
requests via a customer support helpline.
In addition to the 3 initiatives listed above, I co-authored a paper on "Privacy
products and applications of the future" in the retail space.
Client Location: Bentonville, AK
Develop Business Framework Market Research
Service Blueprint Design Strategy
Design Thinking Workshops
Detail Design
Value Maps
Pain Relivers
Gains
Products
&
Services
NLP BOT Data Catalogue
Privacy Events, tips &
Training
Privacy Gateway Value maps
Upfront Controls
Better
Awareness
Simplified
Language
Brand’s commitment to
protect data
NLP BOT
Privacy Gateway
Design Studio Output
Detail Designs
GAIN
PAIN
NEED
• Provide granular level data
control
• Help when stuck
• Make privacy decision with
confidence
• Homerun value prop
• Pro-active and concrete tips to
better data privacy
• No clear path to track
data usage
• Lack of Privacy controls
• Current Privacy language too
complex to understand
• “why do you sell my data?”
• Learn abt privacy &
data rights
• Being able to access
my data
• Make privacy
decision with
confidence
• Control to view &
edit privacy settings
Service Blue Print

12. Agronomic Advisory Application
Client Requirements
This assignment was to conduct user researchand define requirements and design architecture for an agronomic advisory application.
Solution
• I conducted field studies and met with growers and agronomic advisors across Nebraska to understand their pain points and requirements.
• Created a holistic agronomic advisory tool integrated into the maps which gave satellite imagery of the fields that belonged to the grower and the current
status of each of his fields.
• The time and user management that was proposed as a part of the solutionwas the highlight of the value-add in this solution proposed.
Client Location: Nebraska, Kansas
Field Study Rapid Prototyping
Stakeholder Analysis Requirements Workshop

13. Enterprise Search
Client Requirements
The World Bank's leadership's goal was to modernize the existing search platform and
improve the user experience. They requested the UXM team to help with the design
strategy and requirements for the future state of search.
Solution
• Defined the Enterprise Search strategy by validating the existing solution and the
market trends to arrive at the future state principles. Integrated, Instant results,
Dynamic Navigation, App search, Personalization, Actionable results, Knowledge
Graph, Tools, Mobile Enablement, Error Prevention, Scope of Search, UX Metrics.
• Each of the future state principles was accompanied by a detailed design concept of
what it will translate to on the surface based on the user search.
• Once the principles were defined and the designs were created, the EA UX team
conducted multiple workshops with various LOB’s and conducted surveys to make a
decision on the priority listing of the features for quarterly FY roll-out.
• Once the design was deployed the beta version of the new enterprise search was
tested across the geographies in both high-bandwidth and low bandwidth countries
before it was rolled out across the enterprise.
• MarkLogic was used as the backend and the front end was designed on the bootstrap
framework.
Client Location: Washington DC
Market Research Detail Design JAD Workshops
Design Strategy Taxonomy Development & Governance
Usability Testing

14. Automobile Parts Procurement and Supply application
Client Requirements
This assignment was to design a parts procurementand Supply application for an automobile
giant.
Solution
• Conducted contextual Inquiries with the end-users and current state analysis of the
existing application to understand the gaps and pain points.
• I shadowed 5 of the users in real-time when they worked on the application fulfilling
tickets and orders in real-time. This helped me identify areas for process optimization.
• Designed an application to incorporate workflows and automatons in the UI
which improved the efficiency of end-users bymore than 70%
• The dashboard feature gave the teammanagers better visibility into the
work in progress and quality of ticketclosure
• Designed a ticketing system to automate therequest data feed directly into the application
with a click of a single approval button.
• Avoided 50+ error scenarios by avoiding data entryof incorrect values.
Client Location: Los Angles
User Interviews
Process Optimization Detail Design
Stakeholder Analysis Experience Maps

15. Live Classrooms on STB
Client Requirements
Create a UX for a program which brings live classrooms to the set top box
in order to enable quality education free of cost to all remote locations
across India.
Solution
• Analyzed the UI for the STB and the demographics of where the service will be offered.
• Created POC’s with multiple language options that will empower students with the highest quality
of education from across the country
Client Location: Across India
Proof of Concept Co-creation Labs

16. Developing the Short Term Consultant(STC’s) Persona
Client Requirements
The Bank client typically contracts about 25,000 STCs in a given fiscal year with about 16,000 active at any time. All Short-Term Consultants (STCs) are not
provisioned access to a Bank email or laptop/desktop. This results in potential for confidential documents being handled by non-Bank provisioned email/
devices.
Conducted surveys, user interviews and ethnographic study to document the Enterprise STC persona to understand the Consultant’s expertise of tools,
people, and information. Documented the STC’s usage pattern and behavior.
• Tools: understanding the tool availability, tool fit, and usage pattern
• People: how do they establish and mature both formal and informal relationships to get the work done
• Information: how is information identified, manipulated, and disseminated
• This engagement also helped the enterprise discover the security loop-holes due to the lack of proper hardware and software provisioning. Discovered
that nearly 42% of the data shared via personal email/BYOD was Confidential+.
Client Location: Multiple Geographies, Base location: USA
Solution
User Interviews
Access Requirement
Framework
Data Analytics
Enterprise Survey