Brass Tacks

Over 10 years designing where complex systems and real user need overlap on the Venn diagram. Marketo, Upwork, Meroxa, Teamshares, T-Mobile.

AI products need designers who can hold the product together when the rules don't exist yet. That's been my whole career.

Selected work

Case Study

Teamshares

Payroll reporting

Saving Teamshares ~$3.1M annually without adding or subtracting headcount.

Case Study

Teamshares

A hiring engine for a company of companies

Reframing a recruiting tool into talent pipeline infrastructure for 90+ acquired businesses.

Case Study

Marketo / Adobe

The design system that survived an acquisition

Built Sky's design system from the ground up. Patterns contributed upstream to Adobe Spectrum.

Case Study

Marketo / Adobe

733% adoption increase through trust-first migration

Users were resistant to disruption. That was a design problem.

Case Study

Meroxa

Pivoting from a builder to a data observability platform

How a discovery in research forced a pivot that opened doors for Meroxa.

Thoughts

Charlie Murphy's Law

Surprises in product design come in a few flavors. There are the ones you bring on yourself by not staying close enough to your PM or Engineering. There are the last minute asks that appear from nowhere.

Thoughts

Culture lives in what power permits

I used to think culture was set by the people in the room. The tone of a standup. The way a lead gave feedback. But the more places I've worked, the more I believe culture is shaped by what leadership lets people get away with.

Thoughts

Squidward would never. SpongeBob would.

Squidward is the designer who's seen it all. Too experienced to be surprised. Too "sensible" to chase anything that might not scale. SpongeBob, though? He's the one sketching fish with arms just to see what happens.