Welcome. I'm James.
I'm a digital product designer.

I specialize in user experience design, user research and creating design systems for user interfaces. 

Recent Work

User Experience Design Case Studies
Products

WayWiser Product Features

Early Stage Startup Document Storage & Financial Features 2022-23 Strategy, Product Management, User Research, UX Design, UI Design Figma, Google Workspace, userinterviews.com, Confluence & Jira,

Read More »

As a kid, skateboarding taught me to see the world a bit differently.

For as long as I can remember, when I looked around I saw things to slide, grind and jump off. Where other people saw benches or stairs, I saw angles – and learned to quickly calculate how high or how fast I’d have to go to get up on (or over) them.

Now I use the same mental muscles to identify and understand user needs, to rapidly iterate when the first approach isn’t successful, and turn monotonous or repetitive tasks into delightful experiences.

My product design career journey...

I began my career in 2001-02 as a graphic designer working in print media. This experience taught me about the need for flexibility, finding ways to creatively incorporate last minute changes to meet evolving needs. The web was just beginning to blow up – so I started learning HTML and CSS. This led me to transition from designing catalogs to e-commerce sites and broadcast emails.

Working in e-commerce was truly a crash course in user experience design. Collecting & analyzing usage and conversion data showed me just how critical a frictionless workflow was to success. I began to focus a bit less on polishing visuals, and more closely on removing unnecessary steps for users. I quickly learned the front end web skills I’d acquired, combined with my visual design background, made me very well suited to application design. 

I started out working for an agency, serving enterprise & startup clients. I came to understand I could have a lot more impact by going in-house at a software company. Once embedded with a product team, it became clear how crucial focused user research was to creating great experiences.