Thomas Piggott
User Experience Lead

Top Stories

Get me away from search results!

The goal of any good search results page is to get you off the results and into the content you care about. See how we redesigned search to focus on getting off the page as fast as possible.

Must research be so boring?

Absolutely not! When designing products for K-5 students, it’s important to excite their curiosity. See how we made browse a much more engaging and learner focused experience.

Holy Contrast, Batman!

Take a look at how we created a color palette for our platform that could meet accessibility standards, stay on brand, and look attractive all at the same time.

Design Spotlight

Digital Scholar Lab Update

Bringing text and data mining to the humanities

Computer science and the humanities unite to help researchers find new insights. See how the Gale Digital Scholar Lab was designed to be a welcoming introduction to humanities students new to the field of Digital Humanities and powerful for those already deeply immersed in it.

A Peak Into Process

Start with Questions

The process always starts with questions – about project and business goals, what we know about our users, aspirations, and constraints, all in service of making the best use of everyone's time.

Iterate the Design

Iterating designs with rounds of feedback is the best way to ensure a design's success. Understanding user behavior is also key to being able to adapt the design when technical issues inevitably arise during development.

All Projects

In Context: Elementary

In Context: Elementary

Rebooting a product to help K-5 students research and learn.
Platform Redesign

Platform Redesign

Creating a consistent experience across 200+ products designed for today’s researchers.
Digital Scholar Lab

Digital Scholar Lab

Opening up new avenues of research for scholars in the humanities through text & data mining.
Gale.com Redesign

Gale.com Redesign

Giving the marketing team power and flexibility to better serve customers.
Vidatalk

Vidatalk

Enabling communication between caregiver and patient, for language barriers, the nonvocal, and critically ill.
eTechnician

eTechnician

Making the diagnosis of semi-truck issues easier, leading to faster repairs so trucks can get back on the road.
myDesk

myDesk

Embracing the power of mobile phones in the classroom with a suite of tools for students and teachers.
messageBoard

messageBoard

Giving students and teachers a way to discuss classes and assignments on their Windows Phone.
Foreign Lands

Foreign Lands

Android app, self-designed and developed, to aid travelers with unfamiliar measurements.
This Website

This website!

Flexing some rarely used HTML/CSS/JS muscles to make my portfolio.

Experience & Education

2015 – Present

Empowering the library and the learners they serve

As the lead UX designer at Gale, I guide our team in design thinking and work to improve our whole line of products.
2013 – 2015

What in the world is High-Tech Anthropology®?

My role at Menlo Innovations gave me experience in many industries and exposed me to design practices I still use today.
2012

A trip to Singapore

Over the summer of 2012, I worked in a 3rd grade classroom to deploy educational apps and study how they were used.
2009, 2012

Two U of M degrees. A bit much, no?

Take a quick peak at my education and see why I’ve got two degress from the same university.

Teaching UX

UX Workshop for Product Managers

With a small UX team, it was imperative to teach product managers what UX was, the value we can provide, and how they can conduct their own research when we’re not available.

High-Tech Anthropology® Workshop

Teaching the value of Agile and how Menlo integrates design into the process, given as a 3-day class with many different clients.

The Power of Promiscuous Pairing

An exercise in pairing with others and the value of switching pairs often at Agile & Beyond 2014.

Strength in Scenarios

Exploring the use of scenarios to produce impactful user testing results for a workshop at Agile 2013.

Get in Touch

About Me

Image of Me
I want to make life better for those that interact with my designs. When I'm not doing that, I'm busy working on my house (and making lots of mistakes), out playing tennis, reading a good sci-fi book, or maybe just out for a walk with my wife.