About me
I go and look before I design
I started out as a print designer, setting annual reports and restaurant menus, and I still think that was the best possible training for interface work. Print gives you no interaction to hide behind. If the hierarchy is wrong, the page simply does not work, and you find out at the proof stage in front of a client.
I moved into product design in 2016 at a healthcare software company, where I spent three years watching nurses use software designed by people who had never watched a nurse use software. That job set the habit I have kept ever since, which is that I go and look before I design. Ride-alongs, branch lobbies, reception desks, car parks in February. It is not glamorous research and it is the single highest-return thing I do.
Since 2019 I have worked independently, mostly on twelve to sixteen week engagements with teams of five to forty. I like problems that are already somebody's sore spot: the flow with the terrible drop-off number, the four products that all look different, the accessibility deadline nobody planned for. Those briefs come with a clear measure of success attached, which suits how I work.
I write a fortnightly newsletter called Interface Almanac, run four free portfolio reviews a month for designers moving into their first product role, and I am based in Minneapolis, where the weather has personally taught me a great deal about designing for gloved hands.
How the work actually goes
Approach
Six habits that show up in every engagement, whether it is a mortgage application or a restaurant menu.
Go and look first
Before I open Figma I spend time where the work happens. Three days riding with utility technicians reset an entire mobile brief. Two days at veterinary reception desks explained six years of workarounds. The office version of a problem is almost always a tidier and less accurate version.
Find the constraint that is real
Most projects have one constraint that genuinely cannot move and several that everybody assumes cannot. I spend early time separating them, because the actual design space is usually much larger than the brief suggests, and occasionally much smaller.
Design the broken states first
Empty, loading, partial, denied, offline, failed. Working through the failures before the happy path interrogates the happy path properly, and it means the difficult states get real design attention rather than whatever is left in the final week.
Write the words as part of the design
Interface copy is not a later pass. I write labels, errors and empty states as I design, and I take them through legal or compliance review myself when that is what the work needs. A sentence is often the cheapest fix available.
Leave something the team can run
Every engagement ends with something operable without me: a specification, a token architecture, a checklist, a one-page guide by the printer. A handover that depends on my continued involvement is not a handover.
Report the number honestly
I instrument what I design where I can, and I stay long enough to see what happened. When a result is modest I say so. A designer who only reports the good quarters is not giving you information.
The briefs I take
Specialties
I am not a generalist pretending otherwise. These are the problems where I am genuinely worth hiring, and the rest I will happily refer on.
Complex flows that leak
Applications, checkouts, onboarding and anything long enough that people abandon it partway. Usually the fix is sequence and language rather than visual design.
Data-dense interfaces
Dashboards, reporting portals and tables that have to stay legible when the data is partial, delayed or restricted. Charts that state a point rather than decorate one.
Design systems and governance
Token architecture, component libraries and, more importantly, the contribution and deprecation model that decides whether anyone still uses it in a year.
Accessibility remediation
WCAG 2.2 AA on products that already exist, worked by root cause rather than screen by screen, and tested with paid assistive technology users rather than only with tooling.
Staff-facing and field software
The internal tools nobody demos. Scheduling, inspection, dispatch, admin. Hostile conditions, expert users, and enormous returns on small improvements.
Identity and print systems
Where a brand has to survive fourteen sign types and a weekly menu reset. Specified for the substrate, documented for whoever is closest to the job.
What I actually do all day
Selected Skills
Grouped by the part of the work they belong to, rather than presented as a wall of logos with progress bars nobody believes.
Research and discovery
- Contextual enquiry and site observation
- Moderated usability testing, remote and in situ
- Support ticket and session recording analysis
- Journey mapping and service blueprinting
- Interface and content inventories
- Activation and funnel instrumentation
Product and interface design
- End-to-end flow design and information architecture
- Interaction design and prototyping
- Data visualisation and dense table design
- Full state coverage: empty, loading, partial, error, offline
- Mobile and touch design for constrained conditions
- Interface copywriting and compliance review
Systems and accessibility
- Three-tier design token architecture
- Component libraries and state matrices
- Contribution, review and deprecation models
- WCAG 2.2 AA audit and remediation
- Screen reader and keyboard-only testing
- Documentation written for non-designers
Craft and production
- Typography and type system design
- Identity design and small-size mark drawing
- Editorial and print layout
- Packaging structure and dieline work
- Wayfinding specification
- Print production and press proofing
Tools I work in
- Figma
- FigJam
- ProtoPie
- Storybook
- Style Dictionary
- Zeroheight
- Dovetail
- Maze
- Amplitude
- Hotjar
- Axe DevTools
- Stark
- NVDA
- VoiceOver
- InDesign
- Illustrator
- Datawrapper
- Linear
- Notion
- GitHub
Before the first call
Working style
Everything I would otherwise spend the first twenty minutes of a call explaining. Read it, and we can spend that time on your actual problem instead.
Engagement shape
Twelve to sixteen weeks is my usual. Long enough to research properly and stay through build, short enough that the work stays urgent. I take two engagements at a time, never three.
How I work with your team
In your tools, in your standups, in your critique. I would rather be a temporary member of the team than a supplier sending files. Async by default, with one standing weekly call.
What I need from you
Access to real users or the staff who serve them, one decision-maker who can settle a disagreement, and permission to look at the analytics and the support queue in week one.
What you get at the end
Production-ready design files, a written specification covering states and behaviour, the research artefacts, and a handover session recorded so the people who miss it can still watch it.
Twelve years, briefly
Experience
A short version. The longer version is in the case studies, which is where the useful detail lives anyway.
2019 — present
Independent UX/UI designer
Freelance, Minneapolis
Twelve to sixteen week engagements with product teams in financial services, healthcare, logistics and civic organisations. Thirty-one engagements to date, including Northwind Credit Union, Verity Insurance, Parcel Logistics and Helix Software.
2017 — 2019
Senior product designer
Meridian Health Systems
Clinical scheduling and patient intake for a hospital network of nine sites. Led the accessibility programme that took the patient portal to AA, and built the first shared component library across three product teams.
2016 — 2017
Product designer
Meridian Health Systems
First designer on the nurse-facing charting tool. Spent the first three months on hospital floors rather than in the design file, which is where the habit of observing before designing came from.
2014 — 2016
Designer
Fielding & Cole, design studio
Identity, editorial and print work for cultural and civic clients. Annual reports, exhibition graphics, wayfinding and a great deal of typesetting under deadline.
2013 — 2014
Junior designer
Riverbend Press
Production design and press work. Learned to specify for a substrate, read a proof properly, and take a printer's opinion seriously, which has been useful ever since.
Available for new work
If the fit looks right, the next step is a short call
Send me the problem, the constraint and the deadline. I will come back within a day with an honest read on whether I can help.
- Response time
- Replies land within one business day, usually the same afternoon.
- Minneapolis, Minnesota
- Remote across US and European time zones, on site in the Twin Cities when it helps.