At YA Engage (formerly Young America), I worked as a UX Designer facilitating brand loyalty programs for some of the biggest names in consumer goods — PepsiCo, T-Mobile, Dish Network, Anheuser-Busch, and Frito-Lay among them. The model was simple in concept and complex in execution: a brand comes to us with a promotion, and we design, build, and deploy a microsite to run it.
My role covered the full front-end lifecycle. I’d take the client’s brand assets, build high-fidelity mockups, develop the front-end, and hand off completed code to the backend team for database integration and deployment. Sweepstakes, instant wins, rebates, redemption programs — I touched all of them.
The project I’m most proud of from this era wasn’t a microsite at all. Within my first several months at the company, I was tasked with building YA Engage’s Refer-A-Friend program from the ground up. I gathered requirements, built wireframes, created high-fidelity mockups, and developed a working prototype. Then I presented it — first internally to the entire company, then in pitch meetings with clients. When I presented the program to Dish Network, it resulted in a sale exceeding $50,000.
After that meeting, my boss handed me a small tin. On it: “Unicorn Parts,” with little plushie unicorn pieces inside. He told me I was the kind of person who could design, develop, do UX, and sell — and that they don’t make many people like that.
I’m proud to be a unicorn, and I’m still proud of that tin.