I help teams build
great products.
I've been in the trenches as a product manager, strategist, researcher, technologist, and designer. I know how to balance tradeoffs, drive a vision, and do whatever it takes to bring the team together to ship.
Products
Office for Windows Phone
Perhaps the most complex project I've ever been involved with. I was tasked with leading the team to bring Word, Excel, and Powerpoint to Windows and Windows Phone as a universal app. This meant a single codebase and design language from four inch screens through to traditional PCs. How we designed it
Twitter's Card App Store
Twitter hired me to envision and build a new 'Card App Store' for Twitter in 2014. After a research and exploration phase, we had enough data to understand the downsides of the plan, and decided not to proceed.
Trust & Safety at Twitter
I wore many hats during my time at Twitter, but the most impactful work of my career came from leading the design team dealing with Trust & Safety during the contentious 2016 US Presidential election. This is my favourite kind of product work – complex, full of tradeoffs, and powered by research. What our team shipped
Replay's Time Travel Debugger
Replay.io set out to change the way people build and debug software with a truly magical 'time travel' feature. I joined as their founding designer and lead the design and research.Our First Year of Design Decisions
Windows Phone's App Team
Windows Phone was a breath of fresh air when it hit the market. I led the apps team for Windows Phone, where we were responsible for the design of built in apps like Mail, Photos, Browser, SMS, and Calendar, as well as mentoring the wider developer community on designing in Metro, our distinctive design language.
The Design Play Conference
I envisioned, produced, and hosted a conference for like-minded creative folks that ran over five years, each in a different city. I love bringing people together.
Talks
And Now the Good News
A talk about finding the sweet spot between denial and despair, something designers are uniquely suited for.
Designing With Abuse in Mind
A behind-the-scenes look into all the complexity, the surprises, and the lessons learned on the front lines of one of the most challenging social issues of our time.
DesignOps Inspiration Gallery
In this talk, I explain some of my favourite techniques learned over 20 years.
Writing
CRUD vs Canvas
Software has been frustrating for decades, but things are going to change for the better when software gets more malleable.
What Steve Jobs would say about your pivot to AI
Your product should solve a real user need, doubly so during AI hype and backlash.
Google Maps vs Apple Maps
This 10k word article comparing the two popular mapping apps went viral in 2014 because of its its impressive depth.
Let's chat!
Reach me at jb@lot23.com. I'd love hear from you.