My career as a product designer began as a side project for my boss, Bill, at COMPanion Corporation. I was working on a degree in animation at the time and had taken a few Photoshop and design classes. A lot of complaints were coming in about confusion on icons in the Alexandria application. Bill, knowing about my history in design, asked if I would put together a new layout of the problematic screen without icons.

I spent the next few weeks researching application layout and came across an article by Jakob Nielsen discussing Heuristics for User Interface Design. After countless hours diving into this rabbit hole, I had discovered a new world of User Experience Design. I was hooked!

When I brought my new design to Bill for review, he was so impressed by the design, and the amount of thought that went into it, he immediately tasked me with redesigning the entire application. I was given a new job title and a small budget for any applications, tools, books, or classes that would help move the project forward.

I spent the next couple years exploring different methodologies and finding out which ones worked for me. Big successes and bigger failures pushed me to refine my process and really nail down the quickest way to deliver a great product. Once I had finished refining each screen in the Alexandria application, it was time to move on to the next project.

I moved onto KeepnTrack and realized that a lot of what I had done with Alexandria didn't really apply to KeepnTrack. The user base was completely different and many of the assumptions I made early in the process were incorrect. Initially these mistakes felt as a step backward, but the more mistakes I made, the more I learned about the unpredictability of users.

This led me to the revelation that assumptions were the number one cause of my mistakes during the design process. The importance of understanding the user and their goals cannot be overstated. I began looking for ways to validate assumptions I had made during the design process. I created a group of users that became my sounding board for proposed designs. My early sessions with this group were hectic and inefficient, but they were effective at gathering the data I needed to make better decisions.

I have now been designing for over 12 years and I still find ways to improve and learn almost every day. I still make mistakes, but I'm much quicker at understanding the cause and finding a solution. I still don't fully undestand the user and I don't think I ever will. People are unique and complex creatures. Even though they can be categorized into groups, all it takes is one person to throw a wrench into the works. Without a solid foundation built on user data and testing, your application will have a hard time weathering the storm.

Growing up in an abnormally large family was amazing and horrible all at once. Silence was rare and precious around the house. I think a big part of my ability to read and understand people came from being surrounded by them at all times while growing up.

We moved to a remote farm West of Cedar City when I was 10. For the next decade I was waking up before dawn to milk cows, feed animals, break the ice off water troughs, and then head to school. Free time was spent riding bikes, playing video games, drawing, and listening to music.

I met my wife at work and we've now been married for eleven years. She's a Web Content Manager at a global mining company named Boart Longyear. It's interesting how much product design has in common with marketing. Although our motivations might be slightly different, we're both striving to understand and engage the user.

We have a nine year old son named Jack and a four year old daughter named Lily. Jack is a lawful good paladin and completely spoiled us as parents. We initially baby proofed the house, but quickly realized he just didn't get into things. He had his own toys and stuck to them, it was incredible. Our daughter Lily, hasn't been quite the same experience. She is extremely curious and gets into everything. Lily likes to take things apart just to see what happens, but at least she's very creative in her destruction.

Most of my interests revolve around creation. I have countless board games, but I've spent more time creating my own games than I have playing the ones I bought. I own hundreds of miniatures for tabletop gaming but I spend more time creating terrain for the game than I do playing. I built an arcade machine from scratch and again spent less time playing it than it took to build. I believe the core of my interests lie in finding a problem and creating a solution. This is probably the reason product design grabbed me so hard, I love solving problems. Thinking through complex issues is my idea of relaxation.

I have been writing and running D&D campaigns for over a decade. The idea of solving larger than life problems with no boundaries drew me to D&D while the creativity and social aspect has kept me coming back. I've spent hundreds of hours creating terrain for our gaming sessions. In some cases I'd spend 20 hours creating a set piece only to have the group run away after ten minutes on the terrain. Even when they don't get much use, the looks on their faces when a massive lava-fall pouring over the entrance to skull mountain is placed in the center of the table is hard to top.