
Steve Coppola
Verified Expert in Design
Designer
Ottawa, ON, Canada
Toptal member since July 16, 2018
Steve is an enthusiastic, seasoned UX professional with nearly 30 years of digital agency, UX, and product design experience at an enterprise level. He has worked with some of the world's most respected brands, including Microsoft, SurveyMonkey, Philips, FedEx, Eli Lily, 3M, General Motors, Virgin Mobile, Magna International, Anheuser-Busch InBev, ADP, Hallmark, Novartis, GSK, RBC Royal Bank, Sun Life Financial, Hudson's Bay Company, and Toronto Dominion Bank.
Portfolio
Work Experience
Founder | UX Designer
Input UX
- Served as the president and founder of Input UX, a specialized digital marketing and customer experience consultancy specializing in digital transformation, product design, and high-fidelity prototyping.
- Provided services primarily to tech startups and enterprise organizations to imagine, build, and optimize digital platforms, delivering exceptional experiences that are purposeful, powerful, and delightful.
- Collaborated with organizations to adopt a human-centered approach to digital innovation, combining strategy, design, and technology to help forward-thinking companies connect with their customers.
- Designed, planned, validated, and built SaaS products, web apps, websites, eCommerce platforms, mobile apps, intranets, extranets, and virtually every digital platform. These products are used by thousands of people every day across various sectors.
- Learned and used advanced Axure prototyping for web apps and eCommerce properties.
- Experienced and accustomed to having direct reports in UI/UX design, UX research, motion design, and front-end development.
- Executed in a fraction of the typical time compared with traditional digital agencies without compromising quality.
Senior Product Designer
Split Software
- Acted as the primary designer for a complete platform redesign and overhaul by introducing various new features.
- Led the organization's transition from Sketch to Figma, including one-on-one training, presentations to stakeholders, and other change management activities.
- Developed a robust Figma design system and component library in close consultation with PMs and front-end engineering team leads.
- Performed extensive low and high-fidelity prototyping exercises to socialize, test, and validate new product features and enhancements.
- Served as an embedded designer for the enterprise administration pod, working alongside PMs, engineering leads, and product area owners.
- Assisted leadership and head of product in exploring longer-term product roadmap features to assist in internal discussions and planning.
Senior Product Designer
Gondola.ai
- Acted as the lead designer on a complete platform redesign from the ground up. Reimagined the overall user experience for the product while integrating various new features being developed as part of the launch.
- Created mood boards and new visual design exploration to serve as a foundation for the new UI look and feel.
- Built a comprehensive and detailed Figma design system and extension to support front-end engineers and future product designers added to the team.
- Led the introduction of a new product dashboard that gave users an overview of their day, pending tasks, team activity feed, and other top-level project information.
- Helped in the definition and execution of a major new product feature, "Workspaces," from initial low-fi explorations and prototyping through to the final UI.
- Led the design and flow for a new onboarding experience for new users, including setting up and configuring third-party storage and calendar integrations like Google Drive/Calendar and Microsoft Outlook/OneDrive.
Head of Product Design
SurveyMonkey
- Served as the lead designer for a leading CX SaaS platform, working alongside engineering, leadership, and PM stakeholders.
- Led the full redesign of the platform, incorporating new brand requirements and modernizing the product with new UI/UX patterns.
- Performed extensive information architecture and low-fidelity prototyping to explore, test, and validate new navigation models.
- Built a comprehensive, detailed design system in Figma to support the new platform design while leading the organization's transition from Sketch to Figma.
- Worked closely with engineering to implement the new design using Material UI, adjusting as required to conform to the framework.
Senior Product Designer
Carta
- Developed a more intuitive, simplified fund administrator onboarding experience, a key part of the new customer set up and configuration process.
- Contributed extensively to the organization's design system and component library working closely with design technologists, including front-end engineers and other product designers.
- Led the redesign and modernization of custom reporting features involving complex query and data configuration and beautiful report outputs.
- Reimagined and led the UI/UX design efforts for a new data health checks tool used by internal Carta resources.
- Served as a primary design resource in the larger product design team for form design fundamentals, usability, and best practices.
Senior Vice President, User Experience
Fleishman Hillard HighRoad
- Held an executive role with FleishmanHillard for 20 years—one of the world’s largest public relations and marketing agencies with 111 offices across 29 countries.
- Served as a senior vice president of user experience—built the agency’s UX practice group from the ground up, working with some of the world’s largest, most respected brands.
- Fulfilled my daily responsibilities, including hands-on information architecture, rapid prototyping, UX and product design, and mentoring other design team members.
- Spent the first half of my career with Fleishman Hillard in a creative director role—managing designers, art directors, front-end developers, and motion designers within the agency.
- Created award-winning digital properties and experiences for organizations across various verticals, with notably deep experience in financial services, fintech, pharma, and healthcare.
- Recognized for work and contribution by nearly 20 industry associations, including the prestigious Webby, Media Innovation, and Canadian Marketing Association awards.
Art Director, Digital
Acart
- Prepared visual design concepts for websites, intranets, extranets, and other digital properties.
- Developed conceptual wireframe and sketches based on project briefs.
- Led the creative briefing with client teams and ensured the quality across digital design deliverables.
- Advocated within the agency for emerging technologies that related to digital design and user experience.
- Mentored junior designers that were new to the agency.
Digital Production Artist
Animatics | Filament
- Supported art directors and creative directors through design extensions and graphics production for CD-ROM and web projects.
- Gained extensive experience in editing video clips to be used in CD-ROM titles.
- Provided copywriting support to the product team for the episodic web series "Mode."
Education
Diploma in Advertising
Algonquin College - Ottawa, ON, Canada
Skills
Tools
Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Loop11, Treejack, Axure RP Pro, Sketch, Adobe Experience Design (XD), OptimalSort, Adobe Premiere Pro, Manufacturing, InDesign CC, Principle, Zeplin, InVision, Premiere Pro CC, Adobe After Effects
Industry Expertise
Banking & Finance, Healthcare, Insurance, Pharmaceuticals, Automotive, Government, Advertising
Platforms
Axure, Figma, Webflow CMS, Mobile, Web, Webflow, WordPress
Languages
HTML, CSS
Other
Mobile UI Design, Mobile UX Design, Progressive Web Applications (PWAs), Annotated Wireframes, Client Management, Low-fidelity Mockups, Mobile Design, User Journey Maps, User Journeys, Web App Design, Web App UI, Web App UX, Web Applications, Web UX Design, Proof of Concept (POC), Mobile UX, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), eCommerce, Medical Devices, eCommerce UX, Financial UX, Form Design, Enterprise SaaS, UX Review, User Workflows, Information Design, Interactive Prototypes, Remote User Testing, Website Audits, UI Audits, User Paths, User Needs, UX Audits, Tree Testing, Responsive UI, Web UX, B2B, Estimations, UI Design, Interface Design, Web Design, UX Prototyping, Wireframing, Usability Testing, Information Architecture (IA), Fintech, Responsive Web Design (RWD), User Experience (UX), UX Design, Product Design, Digital Product Design, Landing Page Design, Design Systems, Software as a Service (SaaS), High-fidelity Prototypes, High-fidelity Mockups, Prototyping, Rapid Interactive Prototyping, User-centered Design (UCD), User Interface (UI), Low-fidelity Prototypes, UI Style Guides, Style Guides, Rapid Prototyping, UI Prototyping, Mobile Prototypes, Iterative Design, Visual Design, Email Template Design, Responsive UX Design, Responsive Web Apps, Responsive Design, SaaS, SaaS Design, Business to Business (B2B), Consulting, Audits, Expert Reviews, Web Usability, Remote Usability Testing, UX Analysis, Component Libraries, Mockups, UX Wireframes, Creative Direction, Human-centered Design (HCD), Finance, Lean UX, User Interviews, Dashboards, User Onboarding, Account Management, MVP Design, App Design, Mobile App Design, Optimal Workshop, Interaction Design (IxD), Customer Portals, Mortgages, Dashboard Design, Branding, Mobile UI, Mobile App UI, User Personas, UX Wireflows, Navigation Models, B2C, Front-end Development, Personas, User Flows, Task Flows, Landing Pages, Landing Page Optimization, Data Visualization, Consumer-facing Product Design, Agile, Agile UX, Agile Sprints, Customer Journeys, Iterative Testing, Data-informed Visual Design, Conversion Rate, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), Complex Application User Interfaces (UI), B2C Marketing, Resource Management, Content, Web Content, Persona Design, Health Insurance, Usability Heuristics, Journey Mapping, Material UI, Product Journeys, User Testing, User Research, Surveys, Survey Design, Animated Interactions, Mining, Aerospace & Defense, Data Analytics, iOS App Design, Web UI, UX Flows, Enterprise, Fortune Global 500, Web Portals, Usability, Usability Analysis, Design Sprints, Customer Experience, Leadership, API Integration, Onboarding, Login & Registration, Login Screens, Feature Flags
Experience
- User Interface (UI) - 20 years
- Fintech - 20 years
- UI Design - 20 years
- UX Prototyping - 20 years
- Product Design - 20 years
- B2B - 20 years
- User Experience (UX) - 18 years
- Figma - 3 years
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