I run an independent design practice for companies that have outgrown the design they started with.
Selected clients
What I do
Design is a business decision, not a pixel exercise. I find where the experience is costing you something, and I fix it.
Services I offer
Four areas of practice, and the person you meet is the person who does the work. Most engagements pull from two or three of them.
The core of the practice. I get into the product, find where people stall, and design the fix — research through shipped interface.
Talk about a UX projectA system your team can actually extend — real components, documented rules, and accessibility built in rather than retrofitted.
Talk about a systemWhere it all began, and still does. Identity systems that hold together across product, web, and the physical pieces people put in someone's hands.
Talk about brand workFor teams who have designers but need direction — or need the way design gets requested, reviewed, and shipped to stop being the bottleneck.
Talk about your teamSelected work
Every engagement starts with something measurably not working. Here's what that looked like.
Avetta · Product workflow redesign
Led product vision and design strategy for a guided submission flow that reduced errors, improved first-pass approval, and lowered review costs.
DatacenterHawk · UX & brand transformation
Redesigned core product workflows and information architecture to expose more of the platform's toolset, built coloNOW — a cabinet marketplace that opened a new revenue stream for providers — and overhauled the marketing site and sales collateral, all unified under a new pattern library that held consistency as the product grew.
Greater Giving · Accessibility & UX overhaul
Ran a full 60-page accessibility audit — surfacing thousands of WCAG violations across a developer-driven product that hadn't seen meaningful UX investment in years — then led a frontend reskin that resolved both accessibility and usability issues, for cleaner workflows, better legibility, and users finally delighted to use the platform.
I learned that early. Shadowing a car dealership salesman using our platform — watching him open ten browser tabs because our analytics loaded too slowly, filling out paper forms by hand because the app never connected to the back office — made something click. Nobody had gone to look at what the user was actually doing. Fixing those small, invisible things created massive impact across the entire user base. That's when I understood what design actually is.
It’s not the mockup. It’s the system, the process, and the people who understand how all of it connects to the business.
Most companies miss results not because they don’t care about design — but because nobody with the right experience has gone to look. And nobody with the right leadership has stayed long enough to fix it at the root.
I’ve spent 20+ years being that person — going to look, staying long enough, and fixing it at the root.
That’s the whole model. The person you meet is the person who does the work — no account layer, no handoff, no ramp-up. It also means I’m not the right call for four parallel workstreams shipping by Q3. When that’s what you need, I’ll say so.
Outside of work, I’m a husband, a dad, a hockey fan, and a lifelong guitar player — a love that started the day my dad, a film composer, let me hear a Les Paul for the first time.
more about chris
Praise from clients
What leaders say about working together.
“We had a high-stakes presentation to Amazon we couldn't afford to get wrong. Chris delivered work that was exceptional — and I know he was a big reason it landed the way it did. That level of quality is just what he brings.”
“Chris balances leadership and hands-on execution in a way that's genuinely rare. He knows what he's doing and uses that experience to drive constant value. He approaches every growth challenge as an opportunity — and brings his team with him.”
“Chris knows how to coach, mentor, and build a team that performs. He understands the product and the users, and knows how to discover and validate the right problems to bring about solutions that actually work. He pushes everyone around him to be their best.”
“Chris is an exceptional design talent. He was always thinking ahead and bringing multiple perspectives on the problem we were trying to solve. I'd work with him anytime.”
Contact
If your product isn't growing the way it should, let's figure out why and what to do about it. Thirty minutes. No pitch. Just a clear-eyed look at where you are and what comes next.
