Most usability problems
aren’t usability problems.
I help teams understand what’s making complex products harder than they need to be—and use design to simplify workflows, reduce rework, and improve adoption.
View selected workSelected Outcomes
Selected Work
Three projects where the visible interface problem pointed to a deeper issue in the product model, workflow, or decision-making behind it.
Modernizing Scientific Software Through Product Design Strategy
The interface wasn't the real problem. The platform was still organized around instruments — not the workflows scientists actually needed to run.
Led product design strategy for the modernization of an enterprise scientific software platform used by materials scientists. I reframed the experience beyond instrument-centric design and helped align product, engineering, and business stakeholders around a more extensible, workflow-centered direction.
Representative task simplified: 14 → 3 actions
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My role: Led product design strategy and workflow modeling to reframe the platform around scientists’ research processes, working with product ownership to build alignment around a more extensible, workflow-centered direction.
Simplifying a Scientific Platform to Improve Adoption
A powerful materials platform whose legacy interface made it hard to learn and adopt beyond expert users. I led discovery and product definition, changing the product model — reorganizing a fragmented experience into a single, familiar input–compute–output workflow to lower the barrier to entry for users beyond the expert core.
Reframed a fragmented platform into one input–compute–output workflow
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The simplified product model: one familiar input–compute–output flow replaced a fragmented experience, reducing what new users needed to learn before becoming productive.
Designing the Human Layer in an AI Workflow
Photographers didn’t trust automated picks they couldn’t interrogate or correct — earlier automation attempts had failed despite the technology working. I led UX strategy and product design direction to orchestrate 30+ ML algorithms into a single calibration-driven workflow, making recommendations legible, adjustable, and reversible rather than automating photographer judgment.
Reported review time: ~18.5 hrs → ~1 hr
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From 30+ Algorithms to One Curator Experience
Designed the orchestration layer that transformed machine learning outputs into a curator-controlled workflow, behind a reported drop in review time from approximately 18.5 hours to about 1 hour.
My Practice
I think of design as a translation discipline.
I translate how people work, where products break down, and what teams assume into clearer product direction.
- Customer behavior → Product opportunities
- Expert workflows → Product structure
- Workarounds → Unmet needs
- Assumptions → Testable direction
Perspectives
These articles diagnose the organizational patterns that most reliably limit product and design impact — and describe how to address them. They reflect the same approach I bring to practice: understanding why a system produces its current results before trying to change it.
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Avoiding the Design Cycle of Doom
How organizations constrain design’s value without knowing it
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The Outcome Certainty Trap
Why certainty often undermines discovery
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The Assumption Gap
The gap between assumption and knowledge is where risk lives