About

I design the way I used to code.

I started out writing code, four years of building websites and software for marketing agencies and small businesses. When I moved into design I brought the habits with me. I think in components, I name things like someone will have to maintain them, and I design things I'd know how to build.

That's how I became a bit of a design systems nerd. I've built three from zero, at Cirium, Zoomcare, and DoCurious. These days I'm a co-founder at DoCurious, a K-12 learning platform, where I design most of the product and build a good share of it with AI. Before that I spent two years on an urgent-care network's medical records system at Zoomcare.

How I work

Systems before screens

A design system is a stack of decisions you only have to make once. I build them early and keep them boring on purpose: tokens, documented components, copy rules, and a design for every state, including empty, error, and loading. At DoCurious the tokens compile straight from Figma into production code, so a change in the design file is a change in the product.

Get design upstream of the spec

Designers who take orders produce what they were handed. I push to be in spec writing and roadmapping, because the work changes when the person designing it is in the room where the problem gets defined. At Zoomcare that move took the practice from a 2.5 to a 3.5 on NN/g’s maturity scale in a year.

No claim without evidence

I don’t put a number on a slide I can’t source, I don’t design what engineering can’t build, and I’d rather cut a metric than show an invented one. On DoCurious that meant removing every fabricated figure from a partner dashboard and shipping only real paid-order revenue.

Trust is the hardest problem in the room

Medical records, children’s data, grant applications. I keep choosing products where a design mistake costs somebody something real, and I’ve learned to treat compliance as a design constraint rather than a legal afterthought. Fake a consent flow and you haven’t shipped a feature, you’ve shipped a liability.

The road here

2012–2016 Web & software developer for marketing agencies and small businesses.
2017–2022 UX Architect & Senior Designer at CMD Agency, Cirium, and Extensis. Built Cirium’s first design system.
2018–now Independent UX consulting alongside and between roles: Serenity Studios, M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, University of Oregon.
2022–2024 UX Design Manager at Zoomcare. Ran research and design for an EMR modernization, built its design system, and managed a team of six.
2025–now Co-Founder & Head of Product & UX at DoCurious. Designing and building a K-12 learning platform, from empty repo to live school pilots.

Off the clock

Originally East Coast, forever missing good bagels and lobsta rolls, though Portland's pizza has earned a grudging nod. Summers are for hiking and biking and every other "-ing"; winters you'll find me at Timberline chasing powder. Mostly, though, I'm outside with my dog, keeping his tail wagging so he doesn't eat my socks when we get home.