Charles Trostle

E! Online needed a leader to manage the day-to-day operations for rebranding and rearchitecting the E! Online publishing website. I partnered with the executive team, editorial, technology, and creative teams to run the overall project while bridging the gap between business requirements and tactical implementation. Day Communique was the selected CMS which was later purchased by Adobe and is now the foundation for Adobe Experience Manager.

As the vice president of digital experience and technology, I directed the implementing agile/scrum in concert with the digital development team, authored their SDLC documentation while leading the transformation of the eCommerce platform from Umbraco to Hybris Commerce Cloud. I was part of the executive governance committee defining overall strategy and was accountable for the approval of user experience, commerce flow and integration and management of 30+ 3rd party vendors supporting implementation, optimization, and ongoing maintenance activities.

Complete site strategy including CRM, redesign, and re-platform on Disney’s go network. The site included visual walk-through of main ship attractions, all-new photography, personalized content and a robust booking engine that enabled customers to complete all pre-board documentation, on-shore, and off-shore excursion booking, babysitting, dinner reservations, land and sea packages, car rentals, transportation to-from airport and more; all custom developed on a Java-based platform.

While at SapientNitro, I led engagement responsible for site strategy, content strategy, user experience, visual design, and technology integration for the eyeconic.com eCommerce site on a Demandware platform.

The last delivery I completed with the company was for the complete G line of automobiles. After revamping the process and adding extended lead times for critical 3D visuals, the project was a complete success. The client said, “it was the most successful online product launch in history.” It also made JD Powers Top 5 in the category.

The digital business was transferred to Critical Mass in Calgary during my last few months with the company. I was on the transition team and authored a product delivery manual that outlined every minutia of detail necessary to launch a new or update a vehicle online.

APPY award-winning Game Center Live mobile application. The mobile experience supported native iPhone, Android, and Blackberry devices. The client was amazing and partnered with us at the hip from the very beginning. Initially, there was resistance with my team. However, the project turned out to be one of the most successful and visible projects in my career. It made me truly believe that joint-design with the right client; who advocates design decisions that were made within their organization, leads to a superb experience that is well received by customers.

The biggest challenge of this project was the lack of documentation. The red flag I discovered early on was in the SOW. “Supports existing functionality” was scattered everywhere. As it turned out, very little of the complex ticketing options were documented. This forced the project budget to more than triple before TDDs or one ounce of code was written. I discovered this within the two weeks of taking on the project and was quickly able to get additional funding (and time) to complete the project.

As the senior interactive producer, I led the creative team in developing interactive ads for Toyota's Ideas for Good branding campaign. Interactive ads exceeded 200% of the target conversion.

As a senior program manager for Schematic (now Possible Worldwide), I led a team of project managers responsible for the maintenance and operations for product launches supported Dell’s small and medium business. The team also supported thousands of monthly requests from global business partners supporting ad campaigns and vanity sites through a system I designed and enabled a single project manager to support all requests with a 100% followthrough.