Example 1
I worked with multiple members of the UX team for the Hunt & Fish app project and directed the evolution of the UX through not just design, but also business considerations when working with different state departments.

• The first designs lead with the user account page. Since the app was designed to be used by anyone and drive registrations to ACTIVE afterwards, we adjusted that approach to be location-specific to provide the most value instantly
• While I am a fan of white-space in design, the first concept had too much and didn't scale to any number of custom links, so I advised to adjust some of the white space on top while maintaining their artistic direction.
• The second iteration was in the right direction. However, we lost the state/province abbreviation in the tab navigation at the bottom. This app could switch between states/provinces which was especially useful for hunters and anglers in neighboring states. I advised to bring this back to ensure users' expectations remained anchored even when they left the home page.
• From a visual appeal standpoint, the second iteration still looked bland. I was upfront about my opinion and classified as such - MY opinion. But I did challenge the team for another round of design to bring a bit more depth to the home page. I was not disappointed.
• We were close with this third round of design. The only advice I gave was to remove the state/department seal from the imagery at the top. As we established more deals with more and more states, I didn't want the need for permission to use state/department seals to become a barrier to sales. Thus we finalized the last version with a "stamp seal" of sorts that maintained an "official" look and didn't not conflict with any government usage regulations.

Example 2
We had a project to design an app for Childcare to pitch to potential project sponsors. I lead the team from a Product Owner role and directed the UX resources assigned to the project. The second set of images above is the before and after images of the deliverable. The before image was after a few iterations, but I'm using this version to showcase coaching given and the next iteration that followed.

• The original prototype had a username and password built in. I advised the designer to leave the screen but remove the validation. We don't want to introduce another username and password for potential customers to remember, especially if it's not one of their choosing and assigned to a crucial piece of technology. This will cause many people to become frustrated at the very beginning of the prototype experience.
• The use of icons everywhere caused the screen to look cluttered. I suggested reducing the number of icons to allow them to indicate high-value information. I related it to email. If everything in your inbox is high-priority, then it almost becomes spam. At that point the non-high priority emails become the exception and attract your attention faster.
• I cautioned against the use of circles around the icons. The human brain processes free-form shapes faster. If a free-form shape is enclosed within another shape, the brain processes the outer shape first, then the inner shape. While we're only talking milliseconds, it IS faster for the brain to recognize and process a free-form shape faster.
• From an aesthetics perspective, the top of the app needed more whitespace to focus on the selected child. As it was suggested to remove the excess icons, we talked about a page nav type approach. I let him play with the idea and I like what he came back with.
• The selected state of the Upcoming tab was very subtle. I advised removing yet another tab-like navigation element and introduce a lazy-loading scroll pane that would show upcoming information at the top (ordered ascending by date) and past information below (ordered descending by date). This would allow presentation of both sections of information in an intuitive way and scroll in a manner expected for a vertical list.
• Animations throughout the app were inconsistent. Tabs would highlight differently from page to page and expanded content would animate-in from different sides of the page. I asked for this to be uniform to always function the same way after the initial transition experience was set.
• I suggested moving the date to the left column and the icon to the right since the date of events (especially upcoming events) was the most crucial piece of information for scheduling purposes. I also suggested to add the day of the week since often people can quickly process the timeline to "Friday" faster than "May 21".