Most design problems aren't visual problems.

What pulled me into design

For a long time I thought building meant writing the code. The design part was something you did after, to make it presentable.

The shift didn't happen from one moment. It happened from watching people use the things I built and seeing the gap between what I meant and what they saw. The link they couldn't find. The button they didn't know was a button. The form they abandoned halfway through, not because the data was hard but because the next step wasn't clear.

That gap is what pulled me into design. Not the visual part. The decisions underneath.

I tried a few directions before this one. Front-end engineering, which is where most career-path code people end up. Visual design, which I love but wasn't enough on its own. Eventually I landed where the work I actually wanted to do lives. Somewhere between research, decision-making, and the screens you ship.

UX/UI isn't really the right name for it. The real work is upstream of both.

How I work

I started in Albuquerque in 2010, as the founder of a small consultancy. Then seven years at CliffDweller Digital. Agency work, hands-on, in-person every day. In 2018 I moved to Boomtime as VP of Operations, same city, same desk, same shared room. That's where I learned what most designers learn: the desk next to you is half the work.

I went remote in 2019, about a year and a half into Boomtime. At first the change was mine, not the company's. Then the rest of the industry caught up. We shipped UX/UI work for a hundred-plus client websites without an office. I held the design quality bar the same way I'd held it in person: tight feedback loops, written critique, fewer meetings, more artifacts. The work didn't suffer. Some of it got cleaner.

Two-plus years followed at VARA Winery & Distillery as Director of Marketing & DTC. Back in-person in Albuquerque, running the site redesign and the brand identity for a new spirits line. Then in late 2024 I left the director seat to go all-in on UX/UI. The remote chapter resumed in Portland: independent practice, DesignLab UX Academy, three case studies. None of them built from a shared room.

Remote isn't a constraint; it's a discipline. The three case studies on this site are evidence the model works at the artifact level. Built solo, remote, end to end.

Where I add value

The shorter version of how the work pays back.

I frame the problem before Figma opens.

Most design hours go to the wrong question. I push for a sharp problem statement at the start so the team doesn't spend three weeks building a beautiful answer to the wrong brief. The case studies show the artifact; the savings happen earlier.

I tie design decisions to business outcomes.

Revenue, retention, ship dates, ML-signal integrity. Every callout you see in the case studies names a trade-off in those terms. Stakeholders stop arguing about taste when the cost is named in the language they already track.

I talk fluently with PMs, engineers, and stakeholders.

Eighteen years across marketing, operations, and product mean I can hold a technical review, a stakeholder briefing, and a research synthesis without translation cost. Less translation, fewer meetings, fewer surprises.

I run AI-augmented research and synthesis.

Claude for clustering 200-plus community posts. AI-assisted competitive audits. AI-augmented production workflows that cut a creative team's timelines twenty percent at VARA without dropping quality. The model is the second pair of hands, not the designer.

How I think about the work

A few things I've come to believe.

Design is decision-making.

Everything visible on a screen is a record of choices someone made, and could have made differently. If you can't explain what you didn't build and why, you didn't really design it. You just shipped it.

Problem framing comes before pixels.

Most designs fail at the question, not the execution. What problem, for whom, under what constraints, and what would success actually mean. If those four answers aren't clear, the prettiest interface in the world won't save the work.

Prototypes are probes, not proof.

You build them to find out, not to convince. If you can't name in one sentence what the prototype is trying to teach you, you're producing, not prototyping.

The best design decisions are also the cleanest business calls.

Revenue, retention, ship dates, ML-signal integrity. When a trade-off is named in the language the org already tracks, stakeholder debates resolve fast. Most arguments about taste are really arguments about cost that nobody named.

Translation cost between disciplines is real.

Designers, PMs, and engineers each carry a dialect. The team that doesn't need a translator between them moves faster, ships cleaner, and survives the messy projects. Eighteen years across marketing, operations, and product mean I can hold all three conversations without the relay.

Alpha Beta Design

On the side, I run a small studio called Alpha Beta Design. It's a portable design system and a set of microsite templates I use for client work. The portfolio site you're on is built on it. Wayfarer and Men's Sole Revival are too.

On the shelf

Two books on the desk right now: Designing with Intention and Refactoring UI. The first is about how to think about design. The second is about how to make a screen actually look right. I'm trying to read them as one lens, not two separate books.

I also keep a vault of notes bigger than I'll ever finish. That's fine. I'd rather have too much material than too little.

Off-screen

I still learn like I'm running out of time. I'm teaching myself Hiragana. I walk five miles a day, building back toward a marathon. I meditate. I watch birds. I read everything. If that sounds like someone with too many interests, you're probably right. But the curiosity is the same muscle I use in research. I just don't turn it off.

Find me in Portland

If any of this resonates, or if you have a problem you want a second pair of eyes on, the easiest way to reach me is over coffee. I keep a calendar open.