Struggling with a product that users find difficult to use? Investing a lot of capital on advertising and outreach only to watch it vanish into a leaky funnel as users drop off at every step? I may be able to help you turn that around.
I bring a rare combination of both deep product/usability expertise and serious software engineering chops. That makes me able to go beyond simply pointing out problems, and help you architect interfaces, workflows, and APIs that people love using, while using technical insight to prioritize improvements with the best Impact-to-Effort ratio.
My background spans many domains, but my strongest specializations are:
- Creative tools, especially for web design and development — from professional-grade systems to platform that democratize creation (e.g. low/no-code platforms).
- API Design, particularly for the Web
Engagements range from async design reviews and product audits, to mentorship sessions with your team, to hands-on research and architectural guidance.
Why me?
My software engineering expertise combined with my usability and product design background give me a unique ability to design solutions that balance user needs and implementation effort.
- I hold a PhD in Usability (Human-Computer Interaction) & Innovation from MIT, where I co-designed and taught a novel course on usability and web technologies with David Karger.
- I have published peer-reviewed research in top-tier HCI academic venues. Peer-reviewed HCI research moves the field forward and shapes the usability principles that guide how product teams design and evaluate experiences.
- I served on the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) performing or assisting in over 100 design reviews of new web platform features. I was elected to the TAG specifically for my usability and API-design expertise.
- I have designed numerous Web Platform features that have shipped in every major browser and are used by millions of developers.
- As Product Lead at Font Awesome, I helped guide the world’s most widely used icon system (used by a third of all websites), shaping both product strategy and UX/DX.
- I have launched dozens of software artifacts for developers, that often stood out from competitors primarily due to superior UX and developer experience.
You can read the following essays and case studies I have written to understand my philosophy around product design:
- In the economy of user effort, be a bargain, not a scam
- The Hovercar Framework for Deliberate Product Design
- Context Chips in Survey Design: “Okay, but how does it feel?”
- Eigensolutions: composability as the antidote to overfit
Design Reviews / Audits
A design review (sometimes called a usability audit) is a structured evaluation of a product or API by an expert who assesses it against usability principles and best practices. The outcome is a detailed report identifying issues, recommending solutions, and highlighting opportunities for improvement.
A strong design review can uncover numerous usability problems early, saving your team significant time on user testing and development. Because it doesn’t require participant recruitment, scheduling, or session analysis, it’s typically completed far faster than user studies — often within 1–3 weeks. While not a replacement for user testing, it amplifies its value by addressing preventable issues beforehand.
Design reviews can be performed at any stage where a sufficiently detailed prototype exists. Because they rely on expert inspection rather than real-world usage, they can evaluate artifacts that would be difficult or impossible to test with participants — specifications, partial workflows, focused UI segments (like a single dialog), or even microinteractions.
You can read more about design reviews in this excellent overview by Nielsen Norman Group. While there are many UX firms that do design reviews (NNGroup above being an excellent example), when it comes to domain-specific products (such as design or development tools), for a good design review you need both deep usability expertise and the domain expertise to understand the product and its users. That’s where I come in.
For a great overview, see this guide by the Nielsen Norman Group.
Many UX firms offer design reviews, but for domain-specific products — especially developer tools, design tools, or highly technical systems — effective evaluations require both deep usability expertise and deep domain understanding.
That’s where I come in.
API Design
API Design is UI Design, but studying these interfaces requires a distinct set of research and evaluation skills. Beyond design reviews, interviews, and surveys, I’m one of the few usability researchers who has run user studies where the “UI” was entirely textual — such as a programming interface or language construct.
If your product’s success depends on developers understanding and loving your API or syntax, I can help you design, evaluate, and refine it with the same rigor applied to traditional user interfaces.