Ten years designing for experts in complex domains.
Senior product designer with ten years of experience designing for experts in complex domains. At Shure, I led UX for conferencing systems used at the European Union and won Best of Show at Integrated Systems Europe 2018. At Meta, I designed the canonical AI capacity planning surface, which scaled to 3.2K monthly users and drove $95M+ in compute cost savings.
What I enjoy most about this work is the analytical depth it demands. Designing for an interpreter, an ML engineer, or an AV technician means learning their domain well enough to recognize what they already know and respecting that knowledge in the design. Experts often have preferences that run counter to standard design heuristics: higher information density, fewer guardrails, faster paths to power-user workflows. Designing for them well means building from what they actually do, not what design conventions assume.
My background is in archaeology, which translates more directly to product design than it sounds like it should. The core skill in archaeology is observation and inference about things that don't speak, reconstructing how people lived from what they left behind. The same skill applies when users tell you one thing and behave another way, which is most of user research.
Working across functions
Beyond design execution, I lead cross-functional planning with engineering and product leadership, run customer-validation sessions with end users, and partner with infrastructure leadership on roadmap decisions. The work I'm proudest of in this dimension at Meta was securing first-half 2024 funding for a new product line through user research and concept validation with key infrastructure customers, which then unlocked three engineering hires. At Shure, the weekly design-engineering-PM triad I established for Microflex Complete Wireless was adopted by other Shure Systems product teams.
Beyond work
Outside of work, I enjoy taking long walks through woods and cities, experimental cooking, reorganizing my closet for the umpteenth time, caring for my crested gecko (setting up new terrariums provide hours-long creative fun!), and discovering afternoon tea venues.
Kudos if you can find the Silas the gecko!
CURRENTLY
I'm looking for senior product design roles at small-to-mid technical companies where I can go deep on a domain. Based in Chicago, available immediately, open to remote, hybrid, or relocation. The companies I'm most excited about work on infrastructure, climate, geospatial data, scientific instruments, or healthcare, anywhere expert users need tools that respect their expertise.
📍 Based in Chicago; open to remote or hybrid