I design for what a product could feel like to use — then back it with evidence.

Each one learned the hard way. Not design-blog maxims — each came from a specific project where something happened that made me believe it. The receipts are in the margin.

1. Research reshapes the problem, not just the solution.

   I’ve thrown away a month of design work because one user interview revealed I was solving the wrong thing. That experience is why research now comes before the contract, not after it. Research isn’t there to validate what you already think — it’s there to correct it.

2. If users notice the interface, the interface has failed.

   In usability testing, the moment a participant pauses before acting, that pause is a defect — not a quirk to note, a thing to fix. My first treatment of one affordance was minimal because I’d optimized for hierarchy; one in four people missed it. The version that tested clean was not the one I’d have shipped on taste alone.

3. Evidence outranks preference — including mine.

   I’ve iterated away designs I was genuinely proud of because the test results were clear. It never gets easier. It’s always the right call. Personal preference has no seat at the table when you have behavioral evidence pointing the other way.

4. Constraints, taken early, sharpen a design.

   The Hamilton engagement taught me this. The WPF rendering constraint I hit in sprint one produced a more disciplined visual system than I would have built without it. Constraints aren’t obstacles — they’re the edges that give the design its shape.

5. The handoff is part of the design, not cleanup.

   Running sprint ceremonies at GIA while designing showed me exactly what happens to vague annotations: engineering makes judgment calls. The handoff should leave no questions the designer would have answered differently than the person implementing it.

Six inflection points. Six trade-offs. A career isn’t a timeline — it’s a sequence of decisions about what to optimize for. Here’s the shape of mine, and what each one cost and paid.

1. 01

   Sole designer, founding team

   Los Angeles, CA

   Took on sole design responsibility with no senior designer to defer to.

   Cost / paid Less oversight; more decisions mine to own end-to-end.

   Taught How to ship when there’s no one else to blame the design on.

2. 02

   UX/UI designer, DPA One NDA

   Enterprise engagement via RKS

   Accepted a multi-year institutional B2B engagement concurrent with the agency period.

   Cost / paid No public case study possible; the depth of the work lives in private files.

   Taught How to design credibly inside legal, compliance, product, and engineering simultaneously.

3. 03

   UX/UI designer & developer

   Agency · Thousand Oaks, CA

   Joined a 45-year firm to get breadth across healthcare, enterprise, fintech, consumer.

   Cost / paid Owned fewer full-cycle projects; shipped more variety of first-draft work.

   Taught Why one tool doesn’t fit every problem — and how to spot which one fits.

4. 04

   Visual designer, design system

   Enterprise engagement via RKS

   Designed from WPF constraints backwards after first sprint revealed render cost.

   Cost / paid Dropped visual treatments I liked for ones engineering could ship.

   Taught Early-respected constraints produce better design than late-discovered ones.

5. 05

   Founder, independent practice

   Parallel engagements

   Ran an independent practice alongside a full-time role.

   Cost / paid Six-day weeks for stretches; every scope, contract, and pricing decision owned end-to-end.

   Taught Running a practice changed how I scope a full-time role.

6. 06

   In-house designer + interim PM

   San Diego, CA · 2.5+ years

   Took interim PM responsibilities while designing through a PM hire.

   Cost / paid Split focus for six months; full visibility into the decisions I was handing off.

   Taught How to write a handoff an engineer can ship without asking.

Not process — judgment. The calls I make when the inputs conflict, the deadline is real, and someone has to decide. The questions a hiring panel asks in the second conversation, answered here so the first one can go further.

When research and the deadline disagree

I ship the smallest version I can defend and write down what I’m still unsure of. The mistake is treating that as a loss — an honest “here’s what we don’t know yet’ is more useful to a team than a confident guess. The handoff names the risk; it doesn’t hide it.

When I’m the senior person and still unsure

I say so, and I make the smallest decision that lets the team keep moving while the uncertainty resolves. Seniority isn’t having the answer faster — it’s knowing which unknowns are cheap to defer and which ones will be expensive at handoff if they’re left open.

How I handle engineering disagreements

Disagree in the ticket, commit in the sprint. I take engineering constraints at face value and redesign around them; in return I expect the same clarity on what’s hard and why. Most “design vs. eng” conflicts resolve when someone writes down what we’re actually optimizing for.

What I do when the brief is wrong

Flag it early, in writing, with a specific alternative. A brief that’s wrong in the first week costs a sprint; a brief that’s wrong at handoff costs a quarter. I’d rather be the person who slowed the start by a day than the person who shipped the wrong thing on time.

How I decide what not to design

Most teams under-scope the unglamorous states and over-scope the showcase screen. I spend the budget where the product is most likely to quietly fail — and I’ll argue to cut a polished feature if its states aren’t funded. What you leave undesigned is a decision; I make it on purpose.

What I need from a team

Design influence on product direction, not just execution under it. Engineering partners who argue. A PM who’ll say “I don’t know yet.” Users I can actually talk to. Everything else is negotiable.

Where AI fits in how I work

As leverage on the unglamorous parts — synthesising research notes, scaffolding prototypes, drafting handoff annotations. I use Claude, v0, and Framer AI the same way I use Figma: a tool that earns its place when it saves hours I’d rather spend on the call that needs human judgment. The output gets reviewed; the judgment is still mine.

So we don’t have to find out at month three. Knowing what you don’t do is part of knowing what you do — a few things the work won’t be, said clearly.

You now know how I work, what I optimize for, and what I won’t be. If that’s a fit, the next move is a conversation — not a longer portfolio.