EXPERIENCE CASE STUDIES
CASA BONITA
Turning waitlist frustration into global fan engagement.
Brand Strategy
Experience Vision
Product Strategy
Casa Bonita is the iconic 1970's entertainment restaurant in Lakewood, Colorado, featuring waterfalls, cliff divers, puppet shows, and Mexican cuisine. After closing during the pandemic, South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker purchased the venue in 2021 for $3.1 million and invested over $40 million in renovations.
The Challenge
When Casa Bonita reopened in May 2023, demand exploded beyond projections. Over 900,000 people joined the waitlist, while the restaurant could accommodate only 1,100 guests at capacity. Frustrated fans who remembered the venue from its famous 2003 South Park episode couldn't secure reservations, creating a PR crisis that threatened the goodwill Parker and Stone had built. Their initial solution was to apologize to Denver locals with a physical VIP reservation card, but this made it difficult to engage the growing global fanbase that had made Casa Bonita culturally relevant beyond Colorado.
Strategic Approach
I helped the Casa Bonita team reframe their thinking from an apology to Denver locals into a bigger digital opportunity. We transformed the waitlist from a liability into a ready-made community by creating "The Founders Club", a tiered membership program that positioned waitlist members as founding supporters of the restaurant's renaissance. This club served as both a way to engage fans and to open new merchandising, loyalty, and ticketing opportunities, while connecting all the different elements of the Casa Bonita experience: the restaurant, events, content, and fan activities.
Beyond providing immediate access to reservations, the membership created a CRM framework for personalized marketing and ongoing engagement. Members received VIP reservation access, exclusive discounts, a physical membership card, and preferred access to special content and events.
Results
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Transformed 900,000+ frustrated waitlist members into a highly engaged fan-club community
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Created a scalable reservation system with tiered access, rewarding early supporters
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Established an ongoing CRM infrastructure connecting restaurant visits, events, content, and fan activities
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Generated immediate merchandise revenue through member-exclusive discounts and opened new loyalty opportunities
This work was developed with talented creative and technology folk @RawMaterials
PEDDLE
From confusion to conversion, driving double-digit results.
UX Research
Product Strategy
Peddle is an online used car buying platform that simplifies selling vehicles in any condition. Founded in 2013, the company connects sellers with a nationwide network of buyers through technology-enabled marketplace solutions.
The Challenge
Peddle faced plateauing conversion rates driven by confusion about their value proposition. Users couldn't tell whether the platform best served junk vehicles or newer cars, a critical distinction since Peddle purchased both but with significantly different profit margins and volume. This confusion directly affected offer perception and conversion rates.
Strategic Approach
I developed and managed a systematic testing strategy for homepage optimization. Rather than defaulting to specific photography and narrow messaging as per the previous home page, we hypothesized that a broader, illustration-based approach would better serve unqualified traffic landing on the homepage.
Through rigorous experimentation, we validated that a less-specific value proposition with illustration-based design significantly outperformed photography-driven alternatives for cold traffic (which created overly specific perceptions). We then evolved this insight into a personalization strategy, creating dedicated homepage variants for different traffic sources: one for repeat visitors and targeted versions for paid and campaign traffic, each with a focused value proposition for either junk cars or newer vehicles.
Results
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Drove conversion rates into double digits
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Revenue increased by over 100% (over a 2-year period, in conjunction with marketing enhancements)
This work was developed with talented creative and technology folk @RawMaterials
CAPITAL ONE
Building financial literacy one coffee at a time.
UX Research
Experience Vision
Content Strategy
Capital One reimagined bank branches as lifestyle destinations combining coffee shop hospitality with financial services. The cafe model created welcoming environments with free Wi-Fi, communal workspaces, and "Ambassadors" who provided financial guidance, positioning banking as an accessible part of everyday life.
The Challenge
Capital One Cafe's initial digital implementation undermined the relaxed atmosphere they were trying to create. Digital screens were filled with advertising, creating bizarre scenarios where people trying to enjoy their coffee sat next to giant ads for credit cards. Staff primarily focused on hard-selling Capital One products rather than building community. The challenge was transforming these sales-driven environments into genuine community focal points for financial well-being.
Strategic Approach
I led the experience strategy for Capital One's cafe network, working with the Capital One Cafe team to transform sales-driven environments into empowering community hubs focused on financial well-being. I shaped the strategic framework that replaced advertising with entertaining and educational financial content, creating a flexible digital ecosystem across 30+ cafes nationwide. Each location featured three 60-inch vertical touchscreens, a 12-foot-by-8-foot multitouch video wall, and various tablets delivering money wisdom tailored to specific locations, customer day parts, and proximity to the screens.
Results
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Transformed sales-driven cafe environments into community focal points for financial well-being across 30+ locations
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Delivered an adaptive digital ecosystem responding to location layouts, day-parts, and customer proximity scenarios
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Eliminated jarring advertising scenarios, enabling customers to relax while accessing personalized money wisdom
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Enabled Capital One staff to shift from hard-selling products to providing genuine financial guidance
This work was developed with talented creative and technology folk @Huge
UNDER ARMOUR
The shopping app that trains with you.
UX Research
Experience Vision
Product Strategy
Under Armour is a performance apparel, footwear, and equipment brand built on a simple promise: "Under Armour makes you better." Every product carries a Universal Guarantee of Performance, underscoring the brand's commitment that gear with the UA logo actually improves athletic performance.
The Challenge
Under Armour acquired the MapMyRun app ecosystem, bringing 20 million highly engaged fitness enthusiasts and extensive workout data into its Connected Fitness ecosystem. The challenge: monetize this asset without alienating the community through heavy-handed tactics. The brand needed a strategy that would turn fitness intelligence into revenue while maintaining the authentic, performance-focused relationship athletes valued.
Strategic Approach
I led the experience strategy that positioned UA Shop as an extension of an athlete's training regimen, not just another shopping app. The core insight: training data can actually improve gear decisions and ultimately your performance. By integrating workout history, purchase behavior, and local climate data, we created a personalized e-commerce experience that recommended the right performance apparel, footwear, and equipment for each athlete's specific training patterns, goals, and environmental conditions.
Results
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Positioned Under Armour as what their SVP of Revenue called "a true Math House," using data to complement in-store experiences
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Created a commerce platform that recommends gear based on actual training needs rather than browsing behavior
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Drove 119% revenue growth from Connected Fitness users as the platform proved fitness data could directly drive commerce
This work was developed with talented creative and technology folk @Huge
HUGE
Testing the future of retail in real time.
User Research
Innovation
Huge is a global experience agency known for creating digital-first user experiences. The agency partnered with BRASH Coffee Roasters to open Huge Cafe in Midtown Atlanta as a public coffee shop and an interactive R&D innovation lab where emerging retail technologies could be tested with real customers.
The Challenge
As agencies increasingly pushed into retail and e-commerce strategy, they lacked ways to validate their thinking with actual consumers in real-world environments. Digital retail concepts needed to be tested in physical spaces before being deployed at scale for clients. The industry needed a model for how agencies could bridge the gap between strategic recommendations and proven, customer-validated solutions.
Strategic Approach
I created the strategic framework for how the 1,500-square-foot space would operate as an innovation platform, working across disciplines to identify which technologies and experiences to test and how to measure their impact. Leveraging strategic work I had delivered for Capital One Cafe, we established the cafe as both a working coffee shop and a real-world laboratory where we could observe customer behavior and test retail concepts with actual consumers.
Results
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Launched three innovative technologies: full mobile ordering flow with in-ear audio notifications for baristas, projection mapping showing visual placeholders for completed drinks, and AR-enabled coasters that revealed coffee's journey from farm to cup
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Significantly enhanced the agency's pitch pipeline through PR and engagement with brands across the US
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Demonstrated how predictive ordering experiences could improve operational efficiency and reduce wait times