Design and product thinking

Because better design leads to better results.

I love high quality design applied to products

Of course, delivering on high quality design isn’t something that just naturally comes. It takes practice. It requires understanding a varied number of principles and human factors. And as with anything, it’s ultimately people and markets who decide if a product is desirable, usable, and sticky.

I never had any formal training in user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design, I just sort of stumbled into it. But I did see design everywhere. I loved trying to strip my work down until it was uncluttered and beautiful. I originally started doing that in various marketing jobs, but when blippr came along, I finally had a much bigger opportunity to do it in the software realm.

After blippr, GoDaddy is where I really started to learn about UX and UI design, applying rigorous data and usability studies to the products my teams and I were building. In fact, this was when GoDaddy’s products were the furthest thing from usable and, based on my product’s usability scores, I was promoted to take over their entire UX team, growing it from 5 to 25 people over the course of my tenure in that role.

After that, UX design sort of became my thing. I started a small user experience design agency, where I had the opportunity to apply all I had learned (and kept learning) to well over a hundred companies and software products. Over the course of my career, I’ve enjoyed working on some of the largest and most notable companies in the world in some design capacity or another, including brands like American Express, Bank of America, Coca-a-Cola, Southwest Airlines, Tesla, and many others.

I don’t see myself stopping anytime soon, either. Applying proven UX principles to the products I work on is the only way I expect to start and scale ventures and projects that stand the test of time.

In service of others

Knowing that my life is not about me, I aim for this theme of my work to help the people I serve:

Appreciate and use the products and projects I contribute to building
Apply minimally viable product (MVP) thinking to whatever it is they’re working on, helping them build what’s most important first
Develop the ability in others to recognize and craft highly usable products
Launch their own ideas and products into the world
And more