Elkay Manufacturing

Elkay set out to modernize its legacy digital platforms and introduce a user-centered design practice across a growing ecosystem of customer-facing portals, internal tools, and connected products as part of a multi-year digital transformation. Despite a strong brand and product portfolio, users experienced fragmented journeys, inconsistent interfaces, and low adoption across platforms—revealing the need for deeper alignment beyond surface-level UX/UI improvements.

As Lead UX Designer, I led this shift by embedding user-centered design practices across the product ecosystem, spanning myELKAY (order management and customer service) and myezH2O (IoT-based hydration and facilities management). I planned and conducted usability testing, facilitated journey mapping, ecosystem mapping, empathy mapping, and persona workshops, and translated research insights into scalable design direction applicable across multiple products. In parallel, I established shared design systems and prototyping workflows to improve consistency, strengthen cross-functional collaboration, reduce risk, and create a unified UX foundation supporting Elkay’s long-term digital strategy.

Tools Used:

Sketching, Photoshop, Figma, FigJam, Canva, Maze, Cursor

Team Size - 10+

2014 - 2019

Enterprise and Ecommerce

Role - UX Lead

Implementation of User Centered Process



The UX process required a refresh to better incorporate direct engagement with end users, allowing the team to gather meaningful insights into their behaviors and the challenges they faced when interacting with Elkay’s web properties.

Implementing the new approach involved considerable experimentation to align the team with updated methodologies, including both qualitative and quantitative research, collaborative design workshops, the adoption of design systems, and a full prototyping workflow from low to high fidelity.

Ultimately, the revamped process was well received, strengthening both cross-functional collaboration and user involvement.





Workshops and UX Meetups

To strengthen collaboration across Elkay’s organization, I designed and facilitated structured UX workshops that intentionally brought together marketing, product, engineering, customer service, and design into a shared, user-centered process.

Impact on delivery and outcomes:

  • Broke down functional silos and increased shared ownership of the user experience
  • Reduced handoff friction between teams by aligning early on goals and constraints
  • Accelerated delivery of cohesive, user-centered solutions across multiple platforms
  • Enabled more consistent UX decisions across marketing sites, portals, and tools



Design System

The Elkay Design System is a structured front-end framework built with Bootstrap, HTML, and custom CSS that ensures consistent, scalable visual and interactive patterns across Elkay’s web properties. At its core, this system defines reusable UI elements — from typographic scales and color palettes to buttons, forms, tables, and layout styles — all grounded in Bootstrap’s responsive grid and utility classes while extended with custom classes to reflect Elkay’s brand identity. The accompanying style guide (e.g., styleguide_elkay.html) documents key brand assets like logos, fonts, color values, link styles, and component usage, serving as a single source of truth that guides developers and designers in building interfaces that look and behave consistently. By pairing Bootstrap’s robust, mobile-first foundation with tailored CSS rules and clear documentation, the Elkay design system streamlines development, reduces duplication, and maintains a cohesive user experience throughout Elkay’s digital presence.



Sneak Peaks and Individual Case Studies

MyezH2O

A portal to track status of bottle filling stations.

Elkay filtered ezH2O bottle filling stations reduce lead and other harmful contaminants, delivering clean water and sustainable design. It provides a rapid fill of drinking water to quench thirst and minimize plastic bottle waste in the environment.

MyezH2O is an online portal that allows users to track their bottle filling stations, view unit diagnostics and filter status, manage media and graphics content, and manage their accounts. The app is ideal for businesses that use bottle filling stations across large establishments such as gyms, schools, and airports to track the number of bottles saved as well as receive reminders when a filter needs to be changed to keep the water clean and filtered.

This is meant to be a solution to make environmentally friendly ways to stay hydrated easy to come by, saving environmental resources and money!

Tools Used:

Sketching Board, Photoshop, Figma

MyElkay

An order inquiry online tool for Elkay's reps.

MyElkay is an online portal for order inquiries for any of Elkay's reps. It is one of the first projects at Elkay with which I have introduced the UXPin collaboration and prototyping tool to the team. It allowed me to easily share and get incremental feedback on multiple layout iterations. It was a fun project as I got to collaborate with development teams more than with regular projects at Elkay.

The challenge was to design a step-by-step process to search orders and view them with the help of more robust search functionality and display of search results. Some of the main activities for the app's users to complete while using MyElkay were:

  • Look up the latest information on orders and download sales order acknowledgments.
  • Find and download invoices, past and present.
  • Manage users for individual and group accounts.

After the launch of the product, we handed out a survey in which 91% of users were pleased with the redesign and considered the tool extremely user-friendly.

Tools Used:

Sketching Board, Photoshop, UXPin

Additional Landing Pages, Portals and Websites

Collaboration With Internal Stakeholders at Elkay Manufacturing









Responsibilities:

  • Management of UX/UI and visual design for Elkay's large-scale, data-driven plumbing and cabinetry web properties and employee portal IT homepage.

  • Management of sketching/ideation workshops.

  • Rapid prototyping and user testing of unstructured and structured content pieces.

  • Development of CSS3/HTML5 style guide for Elkay's web properties.

  • Front-end web development and responsive design best practices for unstructured content.

  • Collaboration with product managers, marketing, business analysts, and web development teams from communication efforts of business and functional requirements to design and execution of the final product.

  • Development and incorporation of more user-facing design process, meeting end users to conduct interviews and usability testing.

  • Planning and execution of design workshops including ecosystem mapping, persona creation, journey mapping, and empathy mapping.

  • Design system creation within UXPin collaboration and prototyping tool.

  • Quality assurance and keeping track of the success of core KPIs through Google Analytics.

  • A/B testing, regression testing, five-second testing, and card sorting.

Tools Used:

Sketching Board, Photoshop, Ilustrator, UXPin, Dreamweaver, CSS3/HTML5, IBM Websphere, Sharepoint, Whiteboard

Key Takeaways

“Klara was on my team for about five years, helping me lead digital initiatives at a 100 year old manufacturing company. As our first UI/UX designer, she shared her vision and shaped our UX process: from discovery and research; prototypes and style guides; to user testing and development. She's collaborative, creative, strategic and thoughtful with her approach, a wonderful colleague!” ~ Khristine Anderson

The redesign delivered clear gains in both user experience and team alignment. Bounce rates dropped 20% across 20+ sites, and usability testing showed 91% task success, reflecting clearer navigation, lower cognitive load, and faster decision-making for complex product journeys. Engagement with product detail and comparison content increased, while product-related support questions declined—indicating stronger self-service and user confidence.

In parallel, the work established a shared, collaborative UX decision framework across product, engineering, and business teams. Design decisions were grounded in research, journey mapping, and usability data, shifting alignment from opinion to evidence. This reduced rework, accelerated cross-functional decisions, and created a repeatable user-centered process that scaled beyond the initial redesign.





  • 91% of user found order management portal very user friendly.

  • Reduction of landing page bounce rate by 20%.

  • Led expansion of UX process, mentoring digital teams of 10-20 on design thinking, new collaboration systems, and consistent component libraries.

  • Ethnographic research and usability testing directly informed design decisions, leading to increased user engagement and stronger adoption of the platform.