I enable product teams to succeed as a whole through collaborative product strategy & design leadership.
Introducing me
I spearhead teams to ideate, strategize, product manage, design, and engineer innovative digital products.
Software development is a team game, and each product team needs leaders who can communicate the strategy and progress at different levels inside and outside of the organization. I work closely with leads in product management, engineering, product marketing, and analysis to make sure we are continuously creating value for both our customers and company. I have a keen sense of product strategy and making decisions with imperfect information from my time in brand and product agencies.
My decades in design within varied types of organizations and roles have made me adept at leading designers and researchers toward their best work within cross-functional teams. I have personally taken over a design team that was in turmoil and under-delivering, and I rapidly turned it into a productive, drama-free, collaboration machine.
If you are looking for a fearless design leader who makes product development flow and designers performant, look no further.
Personal Details
My current location
Portland, Ore.
Remote since 2011
Education I’ve completed
Pacific Lutheran University
B.F.A. in Design, 1999
Companies I’ve worked for
DockYard (Design & App Engineering)
StyleRow (Design)
GoCheck (Medical)
Stop, Breathe & Think (Wellness)
O’Reilly Media (Learning)
Myself (Sports, Education, Arts)
Cinco Design (Brand Design, UX/UI)
Nike—contract (Fitness)
Notable companies I’ve helped
Harvard
Nike
adidas
Belkin
Dell
Microsoft
Johnson Controls
Hammer Museum
LA Natural History Museum
Areas of practice
People recruiting & management
You can’t have a great product without a great team. I help recruit and manage product teams that are highly effective and made up of good people to be around every day. The work is serious, but there has to also be a level of positive vulnerability and trust for a team to get to a truly performant level. I work to keep the team agile and flexible throughout product development through coaching and continuous alignment.
View a presentation deck about my management philosophy and results.
Product strategy & research
Strategy is fundamentally discovering and aligning all parties on the opportunities and risks associated with the endeavor in order to focus the work on the most valuable areas of innovation. Building off of the early product alignment, I research product opportunities and test them with the target audience. These early prototypes and experiments help form our understanding of market demand and foster the pillars of the product experience.
Co-product management
Product management and design work best when they continuously support each other. Product managers are usually spread across many different needs and often have to spend more time in the weeds than they would like. My background has afforded me a lot of experience working side-by-side with product managers and maintaining a high-level view of the product that can help steer the ship and communicate progress outward. My PM partners love me and the designers who work for me.
Experience design
As the product innovation, roadmap, and market feedback become clear, I dig into the nuts and bolts of how the audience will reach their goals with the most joy and least friction. This work is often both iterative and driven by a great deal of experience building interfaces. If the work is deeper than digital and requires multi-faceted touchpoints, I will build user journeys to map the motivations and opportunities to meet the audiences at the right times via the right means.
Interface design & systemization
Interface design is important, but never nearly as important as building the right thing for the audience.’s goals. If all has gone well up to the point of applying a brand and design system to a great product, the results of interface design feel obvious and tasteful. I believe in designing for the user, not for the design awards. A lot of audiences are afraid of technology, and using a consistent and friendly language goes a long way toward adoption.
Production direction
Nothing goes well if the work does not translate well into code. Working with the development team at their level is the difference between OK and great execution. I pride myself in having great relationships with developers and making their jobs easier through a blend of experience and pragmatism. Being able to collaborate efficiently and bi-directionally in an agile environment is key to creating the right thing the first time. As trust goes up, the amount of ticket specificity and redlining can go down.
“I have never seen a designer as good as Ben at presenting work to a client. He just knows exactly what to say at the right times.”
Summer Lamson
Chief Services Officer, DockYard
“There are other designers who are great at one or two of the five areas of design. Ben is good at all and great at most. He is the best designer I have ever worked with.”
Kevon Saber
3 Time Startup CEO
“Watching Ben and Russell ideate is like watching magic!”
Jamie Price
Founder, Stop, Breathe & Think
Let’s start something.
503-889-6476