High impact design leaderDad to three spirited boys Let's jump in
Work: Leadership
Led the design function to launch a multi-platform gaming experience to Atmosphere TV's millions of viewers
As design lead and leader, I helped streaming-for-business giant Atmosphere TV build and launch a lean design system, grow the team, and contributed to the launch of a mobile trivia game with an audience of 10mm/mo
Work: Contributor
First-hire designer at TurnKey Vacation Rentals helped position this series-D startup to be acquired for north of $600mm in 2021
As the first individual contributing designer at TurnKey, I was instrumental in helping series-d TurnKey reach towards profitability and be acquired in 2021 by Vacasa for $600mm.
For Recruiters
- 10 years+ experience as a titled product designer
- 7 years as a player/coach director of design
- 9 years managing teams, size: up to 7 product designers
- 2024: lead IC designer for multi-device trivia game with a 70% conversion rate for sign up
- US citizen, permission to work, no visa necessary (you always ask)
Where I thrive: I do best in early-stage companies as a first-hire designer. I love being in the craft, creating customer discovery habits, documenting new SOPs, and working directly with engineering, product, sales, support and more.
Recommendations
Michael Ludden • 1st
I worked with Jon at Atmosphere TV. He is humble, driven, and has a real knack for going beyond the surface.
He asks the right questions, truly uncovering what’s important to the users/customers he is working with, and always seeks to understand first so he can design with the end in mind.
His research methods are both sound and dig deeper than what any individual stakeholder group might be looking for internally. This led to understanding by groups across the org in a holistic way that I am yet to see from other designers and researchers, leading to truly transformative results with how Atmosphere presented to the world.
[He’s] a tremendous mentor for everyone on both his team, and the other product/eng contributors around him.
John Smolen • 1st
Jon & I worked together at Atmosphere TV where he completed some stellar research that ended up informing our go-to market strategy and sales narrative.
What impressed me about Jon was that he obviously is great at conducting thorough research, structuring the right format, questions, etc. but he wowed me with his ability to succinctly sum up and pull out insights that were useful.
I’d highly recommend Jon to anyone looking to better understand their product market fit, shape their customer messaging, or build a more attractive proposition for their prospects.
Leadership Principles
Safety First
Create psychological safety
Teams have to be cultivated. For the health of a design practice, for retention, and for happy, productive designers. Safety isn't just a top-down embrace of feedback. It means teaching the team what productive feedback sounds like. And teaching individuals how to receive and process critique.
No walls
Remove silos
Conway's Law says that a product will reflect the structure of the team that built it: chasms in the team creates holes in the product. I counteract 'silo drift' by facilitating CX vision workshops between design, engineering, product mgmt, sales, marketing, customer success and more.
Growth Mindset
Give individual attention
Part of being a leader is making sure that the work of individuals gets the visibility that it deserves. Behind this is an effort to see the work of the team, and understand where each member needs to perform in order for the team to function as a cohesive whole.
Articles on Leadership
On hiring
Our hiring process for the design team at Auctane
How we created a thoughtful, human application process for design candidates at Auctane - and how that effort helped attract, hire and retain top talent.
Structuring a winning team
How to build a winning design team during a period of accelerating growth
Whether you’re in a period of turnaround, startup or accelerated growth, there are things you can do to make sure you create a successful and sustaining design practice.
Becoming a Manager
How I leveled up and found my purpose as a manager
How walking through the fire (so to speak) helped me become a much (much) better manager.
Other Experience
Speak
Official SXSW Conference
Part of the official SXSW conference, speaking to an audience of 120+ designers about customer journey mapping in conjunction with a Journey Mapping course I was teaching at General Assembly
Teach
General Assembly
I spent 2 years teaching evening courses at General Assembly, most notably a 10-week intro to UX course and 1-time customer journey mapping sessions
Grow
Executive coaching
Over the years I've engaged numerous executive coaches, most recently a 6-month engagement with Adaptive Path founder and renowned author Jesse James Garrett
I built this sidebar menu
If you’re browsing on a desktop device, you’ll be able to see a menu at the left – that’s a dynamic sidebar menu that I created as a Wordpress plugin. I coded it in php and vanilla js with an assist from chatGPT on some elements that were new to me (like a debounce function). GPT also was a huge help in debugging. Since this functionality involves positioning elements around the viewport, you can bet there was plenty debugging – indeed, it was most of time spent writing this small plugin.
If you’re interested to learn more, you can find it on the waypoint826 Github.