Hi, I am Chris! Full Stack Product Designer with 20 years experience.
Former founder at Nexus, I am dedicated to bringing design thinking and user-centered focus to large enterprise projects. Currently, I design innovative HR e-learning and web solutions for some of the largest companies in North America, including Walmart, Accor Hotels, Allergan, Sobeys, and Scotiabank.
UX DESIGNER @ NEXUS COMMUNICATIONS
Led the career site redesign for Sobeys, Canada’s second-largest grocer — with over 125,000 employees.
Working closely with Sobeys HR and internal developers, a new candidate persona-driven structure was proposed with clearly labeled departments in four main career paths — retail, corporate, operations, and pharmacy — focusing on a two-stream user flow: reduction of friction points for job seekers eager to get to the ATS, and a stepped flow for management and qualified career candidates looking to learn more about Sobeys values and commitment to diversity. I played a key role in discovery, IA, wireframes, user flow, hierarchy, and visual design.
Information Architecture / Visual Design / Prototyping
UX DESIGNER @ NEXUS COMMUNICATIONS
Planned and developed Walmart Canada’s corporate site refresh and CMS migration.
As part of a site-wide refresh, I worked closely with Walmart’s Product Managers to spearhead a complete overhaul of the UX and transition to a new CMS. The new site boasts a reorganization of content to better articulate Walmart’s commitment to corporate social responsibility, sustainability, employer value proposition, and diversity & inclusion in the workplace.
Information Architecture / UI Design / Front-End Web Development
UX DESIGNER @ NEXUS COMMUNICATIONS
Led the information architecture to inform design decisions of Walmart Canada’s career site redesign — serving 100,000 monthly visitors.
To better align with its employer brand and appeal to the changing workforce, Walmart identified the need to reshape their career site. Working closely with strategists, writers, developers, and senior stakeholders in identifying candidate personas, I played a key role in developing applicant journey maps, user flows, site maps, and wireframes to inform the redesign of Walmart’s career site — all with a keen focus on workplace culture, inclusion, values, diversity, and pride.
Information Architecture / UI Design / Prototyping
UX DESIGNER @ NEXUS COMMUNICATIONS
Created a compelling e-learning experience for Canada’s third-largest bank, driving an increase in advisor self-enrollment and product knowledge.
Scotiabank was seeking to educate the 1200 financial advisors on the benefits of a new Personal Redeemable GIC — which was set to launch in a few short weeks. Ensuring a 12 minute seat time to minimize cognitive load the solution was to build emotional engagement through compelling customer stories showing a positive progression — from concern and uncertainty to comfort, clarity of action, and a trusting relationship with an advisor. Working alongside talented LX designers, writers, and visual designers we were able to rapidly deploy prototypes and gain early feedback. This resulting in a noted uptake in self-enrollment, increased preparedness and knowledge displayed by advisors, and a leadership level recommendation to add the course to the onboarding program for all new FA hires.
Visual Design / Accessibility / Development
CO-FOUNDER + DESIGNER + DEVELOPER
Nexus Graphics was a design studio I had co-founded right after college.
I co-founded Nexus Communications 1.0 (Nexus Graphics) in the late ’90s with three fellow designers. Early projects focused on branding, flash design, and website development for an audience who wasn’t sure what they needed a website for. Over 7 years I worked to integrate design, marketing, and communications on many projects for clients of all different sizes. I built and led teams, developed production processes, became ISO certified, and won a local business award.
Notable clients included McDonald’s, IBM, Microsoft, and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Branding / Visual Design / Interaction / Web Development
ABOUT ME
A UX designer by day, with a strong background in web development. I can prototype and I can speak engineering.
Equal parts experience and versatile when providing UX design solutions, I’m both a design mentor and a continuous learner.
For over 20 years, I‘ve helped to design and produce digital solutions across a wide range of sectors for some of North America’s largest corporations. I’ve worked in media, tourism, pharmaceutical, finance, government, mining, information technology, hospitality, finance, and food service to provide user-centric principles to innovative digital products.
Over the years, I’ve seen many technologies emerge and shift. From initial planning through to project launch, my focus is to maintain and understand broad and up-to-date industry standards and trends. Coming from an agency, there hasn’t always been the time, budget, or desire to embrace great UX but that doesn’t stop me from championing usability, feedback, and good research.
When I’m not creating user-focused design experiences you can find me engaged as a front-end designer, developer, or motion graphic artist, with a fair share of coding thrown into the mix.
And when I’m done with projects for the day, mentoring up and coming UX designers, or honing my craft, I’m busy reflecting on ways to make user-centered design even better.
EXPERIENCE
UX Design Mentor @ Designlab
2019 — present
Interactive Media Designer @ Nexus Communications
2006 — present
Front-end Designer and Developer @ Laurentian Media Group
2005 – 2006
Interactive Media Designer, Co-Founder @ Nexus Graphics
1998 – 2005
Contact me at chris@cgervais.ca