Directed Design

Independent design partner for growth-stage startups

Make your product as clear and compelling as your vision.

Directed Design helps growth-stage startups create product experiences customers love—and design systems their teams can use to build exceptional new features quickly.

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The moment

You have traction. Now the product needs to carry the full weight of the company’s ambition.

Early adopters can forgive rough edges. Growth-stage customers cannot. Directed Design turns accumulated UX debt, inconsistent patterns, and improvised interfaces into a product experience built for the next stage.

What changes

A better product—and a team that can keep making it better.

The work connects product experience, a practical design system, and the habits required to use it.

01

Customers feel the difference

Clearer journeys, stronger usability, and a product experience that earns confidence at every touchpoint.

02

Teams move with a shared bar

A system, patterns, and workflows that make high-quality design faster and easier to build.

03

Founders build design judgment

Practical models for evaluating product quality, supporting designers, and growing the function with confidence.

The program

Three stages. One continuous path from friction to scale.

Every stage stands on its own and naturally prepares the next. You decide how far to go.

01

Design strategy

$20,000 fixed fee

Find the highest-leverage path from product friction to a coherent product and system strategy.

  • —Stakeholder conversations, component audit, and technology-stack analysis
  • —Design workshops and a focused feature redesign to establish how the team works
  • —A strategy that identifies the five largest UX opportunities and scopes the build

02

Design and build

Fixed fee, scoped together

Create the product quality, system, and adoption habits that let teams move faster without lowering the bar.

  • —Representative product pages and flows aligned with stakeholders before component work begins
  • —An incremental, QAed component system that reaches real product teams
  • —Usability testing, metrics, code checks, and AI-enabled workflows that make adoption stick

03

Advisory support

Optional monthly retainer

Keep a senior design partner close as the organization learns to carry the work forward.

  • —Standing office hours and direct access for practical design questions
  • —Coaching and small working exercises with product, engineering, and design
  • —Ongoing perspective while the company grows its own design organization
See how it works in detail →

Proof

The system is only useful when it changes how the product and team work.

“Sam is a UX god. We were blown away by how quickly he broke down our complex goals into a simple, beautiful, intuitive design. Not only did we launch an awesome product on time, but the work went way above and beyond our expectations. He taught us a ton about building great products, and he laid the foundation for our engineers to keep building great designs. Our only regret is that we didn’t book more of his time!”
Jason Corso

CEO and co-founder, Voxel51 A.I. Platform

“We brought Sam in to polish our web app's design, expecting him to simply tidy up the rough edges. He did that brilliantly, freeing our team to move faster while keeping the bar high. What we didn't expect was that his UX workshop for our engineers would become one of the most valuable investments we've made. Our team now instinctively thinks about user experience as they build.”
Raj Dosanjh

Cofounder/CTO, Paid.ai; previously Palantir

“We needed that je ne sais quoi that would take our product from functional to fabulous. Turns out, it was Sam. I initially contacted Sam because I admired his work at FarmLogs, and we needed a similar level of design polish. But what we got was so much more: a better understanding of the journey our prospects take before they become customers, a documented design language that we are applying not just in our product but across our marketing materials, and an appreciation for what is needed at our business’s stage of growth. I could not recommend Sam more highly.”
Dawn Verbrigghe

Founder and CEO, Jottful

Is this the right moment?

You may be ready for Directed Design if…

  • 01Your product has traction, but its experience has not caught up with the business.
  • 02A major customer, enterprise sale, or next stage of adoption is raising the quality bar.
  • 03Your team is spending too much time debating UI patterns and too little time building.
  • 04You are considering your first serious design hire and want to make that investment count.

Start with a conversation.

Tell me a little about your company, then choose a time to talk through what growth requires next.

Book an intro call ↗