About
All these years later I find peace in the brain that went to law school and loved digging deeper and deeper, and the brain that went to art camp during the summer. Solving product riddles for work and petting my dogs and throwing friends around bring me joy.
What I actually do
Most of my impact happens early. In discovery and strategy. Before anyone opens Figma.
I help product teams build the systems and practices that make great design repeatable, not heroic.
Most teams are stuck in reactive mode. Firefighting. Shipping fast but not learning. Building one-off solutions instead of reusable patterns. Everyone's working hard, but the work doesn't compound. There's no leverage.
My job is to change that. Solid design systems. Clear research practices. Processes that don't require a hero to execute. The boring infrastructure that makes innovation possible.
Capabilities
Stakeholder interviews, workshop facilitation, competitive research, user research and testing, product roadmaps, go-to-market strategy
Information architecture, design systems, interaction design, UX copywriting, visual design, illustration
What people say
"Charlie HumphriesIt's rare to have someone who can simultaneously see the complexity and requirements of a single component while being able to zoom out to a full system. This provides speed and accuracy for everyone he works with.
"Lauren JordanHe does not quickly prescribe solutions, but investigates through thoughtful questioning, eager to learn from stakeholders and industry experts before presenting possible solutions.
"William JanssenHis UX and design processes come from science and mathematical foundations (a godsend as a developer), yet he makes them into art in the form of the final product.
How I got here
I spent 10+ years in agencies leading strategy, design, and delivery for clients ranging from scrappy startups to Fortune 500s. Sometimes I led teams. Sometimes I worked as an IC. Always, I moved between discovery, design, and deployment.
That world taught me how to deliver under constraints:
Tight timelines
Learning to prioritize ruthlessly. Ship iteratively. Focus on what actually moves the needle. (Agencies don't have the luxury of perfect. You learn to ship good-enough-to-validate and iterate from there.)
Varied clients
Getting comfortable with ambiguity. New industries every few months. Learning domains from scratch. Adapting to wildly different team cultures and stakeholder dynamics. You get good at pattern recognition when you see the same problems wearing different logos.
Stakeholder chaos
Building alignment without relying on authority. Leading through clarity, not politics. Showing the path forward, not demanding people follow it. (When you have no positional power, you learn to make the work speak for itself.)
What I want now: product work. The kind where you get to see systems evolve over years, not months. Where you're building team capability, not just delivering projects. Where the goal is sustained impact, not the next case study.
I believe that design is a team sport. That anyone can learn the rules with enough practice and patience. That the best work happens when teams feel safe enough to experiment and clear enough on priorities to execute.
Build systems that outlast me. Teach teams to fish. Make work that compounds. That's the thread through everything I've done, from agency to product to fractional CTO.
Recent wins I'm proud of
- A scholastic chess platform growing from 20 schools to 200+ in a single season. Not by adding features, but by making the product feel like a real league. Identity, spectating, progression, school pride. Rookly is ongoing and still building.
- A clinical research app rewritten in 3 months instead of 18 via AI-accelerated workflows. That's what happens when the CTO call is to push boundaries on tooling instead of just throwing more time at the problem. BumptUp is still growing.
- A small Texas water filter company growing online revenue by 100%. We didn't just redesign their site. We built them a conversion system they could actually operate. They're still using it.
- A wine club exploding gift voucher revenue by 32x. Not because we made it look cooler. Because we figured out what their customers actually valued and structured the experience around it.
- A scrappy sports startup finding a new home with an iconic sports franchise. That one came down to building trust and showing a path forward when no one else could see it.
My favorite wins are always collaborative. Working with dedicated clients and team members who care as much about the outcome as I do.
We're probably a good fit if:
You're a startup (Seed to Series C) building your design foundation. You need someone who can think strategically and ship fast. You value judgment and craft equally. You want to build systems, not just ship features. You're comfortable with ambiguity and iteration.
We're probably not a good fit if:
You need a full-time people manager. (I lead through systems and craft, not headcount.) You want a specialist who only does research or only designs. You're looking for someone to maintain existing systems without building new ones. You need enterprise process and governance expertise.
Let's work together
If you've made it this far, you probably have a sense of whether we'd be a good fit.
I'm looking for product work. Ideally full-time, on a team where I can dig in and stay awhile. I'm open to different roles depending on what you need:
- Join as Senior or Staff Designer and grow into leadership as I prove value.
- Lead your design or product team while staying hands-on enough to maintain craft quality.
- Or embed as fractional design leader to build systems before you hire someone full-time.
What matters most: solve real problems, build durable systems, make teams better at their work.
If that sounds like what you need, let's talk. Worst case, we grab coffee and you get a second opinion on whatever you're building.
Schedule a Chat