In 1955's Designing for People, Henry Dreyfuss opines on the responsibilities and role of the product designer:

[They should be] prepared to measure public taste, understand production problems, comprehend a budget and balance sheet, talk business on an executive level with a client, be salespeople, diplomats, psychologists, and be able to work intelligently with engineers.

In an interview with Reyner Banham, Eliot Noyes expands on this:

[Design] often illuminates the nature of the company to itself and stimulates fresh internal courses of action. The processes of sound industrial design touch the phases of product planning, ergonomics, engineering, economics, manufacturing, aesthetics, and marketing, and so must be an integral part of a company's product development processes.

I've always strongly believed in this sort of holistic model of product. For over 20 years, I've been lucky to practice in these intersections as a designer, product manager, and founder.


I currently work on design & product at Retool in San Francisco.

Previously, I co-founded General Reactives, a software startup that created forward-thinking design tools like Sketch.systems, Subform, and Variance. I also run Constraint, a product consultancy that's helped build software in consumer, energy, weather, retail, and healthcare sectors.

A little further back, I was Head of Design & Product at CrossFit. I led teams creating technical platforms and products, creative directed the brand and marketing, managed external partnerships, and developed strategy that helped take CrossFit from a dedicated niche to the world’s fastest-growing fitness company.

Before that, I co-founded Mindstream, a digital product agency with clients like DreamWorks, Paramount, and Warner Bros. I also helped bring some of the first newspapers, television networks, and live sports onto the Internet at a joint venture of Knight-Ridder and Gannett.

Over the years, my work has been featured by Fast Company, Wired, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Apple. I hold a B.S. in Industrial Design from Virginia Tech.


I love meeting new people and sharing ideas, so please say hello:

I'm always up for chatting about product development and management, computational tools for creative thinking, and design history and pedagogy.