Laura OConnell

Laura is the Head of Product Design and Consumer Insights at ASICS Digital.  

She is on a journey to help transform the culture from transaction to customer-centric, building products for customers that deliver measurably impactful user experiences. She is currently accelerating the mission to make it easier for people to achieve a sound mind and sound body through human-centered design and ASICS products. She has established a number of programs and initiatives across the business to drive more mature product design and development practices, enable teams to innovate faster and provide easy to use and inclusive products. She directly oversees the UX Design and Consumer Insights teams across ASICS.com, ASICS B2B, Omnichannel, OneASICS membership and the Runkeeper & Studio Apps. 

Her background includes travel, hospitality, music, entertainment, brand design, startups and enterprise. Prior to ASICS, she led global design for KAYAK along with numerous other B2C and B2B KAYAK products.

 

ASICS Digital

Director of Product Design

Aug 2019 - Present

 

Head of the Digital Product Design and Consumer Insights teams across ASICS Digital and ASICS Running Apps. Our goal is to help individuals throughout their fitness journey with industry leading guidance, motivation, races, community and gear. 

  • Leads the B2C, omnichannel and membership experiences across ASICS’s key global regions: The Americas, Europe, Japan and Australia. This also extends to the global B2B and supply chain portals. 

  • Leads the membership, training and race experiences across Runkeeper and Studio Apps (50million users). 

  • Collaborates closely with a world-class team of product managers, engineers, analysts, operations leaders and field specialists to deliver an industry-challenging roadmap and experiences for customers in the ASICS physical and digital ecosystems. 

  • Advocates for human-centered and data-driven design by communicating strategy, plans and updates across the organization and additionally leading educational opportunities for members across the company to participate in to deepen their understanding of our mission and the why behind our products and work. 

  • Developes design talent and builds a thriving distributed culture where designers grow in their careers and feel a strong sense of inclusion and belonging. 

  • Well-versed in design thinking, design systems and modern design software. Advocates for design operations and ways to quickly scale and streamline user feedback, development and testing.  On the Runkeeper side we are building the future of run coaching with audio guided experiences, training plans that adapt with user’s needs through machine learning, virtual race participation and discovery through the Runkeeper and ASICS Studio apps.

 
 

KAYAK

Sr. Director of Product Design

May 2019 - August 219

Director of Product Design

October 2016 - May 2019

Design Team Lead

February 2016 - September 2016

Mobile Product Manager & UX

July 2014 - Febuary 2016

 

Lead the Global Product Design, UX Research and Copywriting teams at KAYAK across the KAYAK travel portfolio: KAYAK, Momondo, SWOODOO, Checkfelix, Cheapflights, Mundi and HotelsCombined.

  • Responsible for the end-to-end user experience strategy, brand and visual design as well as resource allocation across the brands. 

  • Leads the B2C and app experiences across each of the brands. This also extends to the global B2B experience and portal for accommodations, flights, and cars as well as the KAYAK.com ad network.

  • Developed a robust design system across the 7 travel brands enabling a lean team to be able to scale across brands while ensuring that design standards were met. Created a Design operations team to work across departments to evangelize UX and scalable coded component libraries. 

  • Responsible for the recruitment and retention of a highly collaborative, creative and driven product team of 30 designers and managers.

 
 

Gupta Media

Creative Director

March 2006 - July 2014

 

Digital Advertising and epierence leader for the largest labels in the music industry including: Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group and Disney Music Group. Awarded the Billboard 30 Under 30 Award for being an innovative and influential young executive in the Music Industry. Partner in the early stages of the start-up and went from 4 to 50 employees during my tenure. 

  • Developed innovative digital solutions for new and established artists/labels through artist and product lifestyles. 

  • Responsible for pitching and storytelling around innovative ideas and risky new areas of technology and media exposure. 

  • Collaborated with artists to understand and enhance their vision and create exciting moments for their fans.  

  • Responsible for the recruitment and retention of a highly creative team of 20 visual, video, sound, motion, and UX designers. 

  • Project Highlights:

    • Taylor Swift’s first interactive viewing of the album Red on YouTube.

    • Getting a then unknown artist called Lunna Del Ray in the top 10 on MTV through social and experimental campaigns. 

    • Bonnaroo’s first interactive scheduling experience to sample and maximize time at the festival

    • MoMa (Museum of Modern Art NY) Summer Engagement experience that was featured in Creativity Magazine. 

    • Coding the first google Flash Ad with music.

 

Leo Burnett

Creative Intern

June 2006 - August 2006

 

Supported the Art Directors and Creative leads for Allstate, Always, Nintendo, and Bridgestone.