Product design
If your designers are only good for handoffs, you’re not going to invest in the headcount.
The people closest to the work often have the clearest read.
Design has less voice inside product and delivery orgs than ever; it gets treated like a feature shop.
How I approach product design
Product teams drift away from the people affected by their work. NPS and dashboards start to substitute for actually understanding pain points, the way analytics can stand in for the eye test. I want teams that value qualitative evidence alongside metrics, take edge cases seriously, and trace recurring pain across customers and frontline staff.
I build design teams the way a sports team builds a roster: invest in people, put them where they can succeed, and give them the air cover for good work to happen. Whoever is nearest the problem needs the authority to act on it, and the team has to be able to keep going without a hero.
Work
- Head of Design at 18FGrew the design practice from 21 to 40 designers.
- Portland Digital CorpsFounding director. Six nonprofit sites rebuilt in eight-week sprints.
- VlooraProduct direction for how people keep authority over AI agents acting on their behalf.
Talks and writing
- Defense Against Dark Patterns: Let’s Talk about Anti-UXTalk, Donut.js, 2019
- Skill Issue Is Not a Product StrategyEssay
- Some advice on managing your design career upwardsPiccalilli, 2026
- Improving the Product ToolboxTalk, Indy Design Week, 2018
- Content & Design: Ways to Ruin the Product ExperienceTalk, Pixel Up!, Cape Town, 2017
Blueprints, research, operations, and the policy behind a service.
Language, information architecture, and content systems.
The practice that carries the work into implementation.
Work with me
Sometimes you want advice from someone who has been there before. Have a quick question, an idea to bounce, or want to figure out ways we can work together based on what you’ve read here or a referral? Drop me a note.
Get in touch