Expert product design guidance—for a fraction of the cost of a full-time designer

Design office hours are the foundation for supporting your team. I’ll set up a standing meeting for anyone in your organization to drop in and get design help—no booking required.

This is an optional meeting with an open, “ask me anything” agenda. Discussion can be any topic, from detailed design advice to questions about design process, hiring, strategy, design systems, and more.

Common questions in design office hours are:

• “I’m stuck on this design—help!”
• “How do I make this feature feel simpler?”
• “How do I make this page look better?”
• “What component should I use here?”
• “What design process should I use for scoping/building/testing this idea?”
• “How do I get better design outputs from my AI agents?”

When you’re building something complex, it can be incredibly helpful to have comprehensive feedback on your design. I love diving into complex products and sharing what’s great—and what could be improved—on each screen.

This is usually a combination of asynchronous comments in Figma or another tool, followed up by in-person discussion on a video call.

Feedback usually includes:

• Ideas for making the product feel simpler and cleaner
• Ideas for detangling problem areas of the design
• Identifying issues with flows and navigation
• Small visual design fixes that elevate the design
• Fixing unclear wording or directions in the product
• Catching common mistakes or design “gotchas”

All my clients have a personalized meeting link to book me for personalized, one-on-one design collaboration sessions.

These are usually deep dives with an engineer or product manager to work on improving the big picture of a feature.

Workshops cover things like:

• Brainstorming simpler user experiences
• Planning multiple design directions to prototype
• Testing prototypes with various stakeholders to see what’s best
• Elevating the design with design theory, best practices, and industry tips and tricks
• Planning meetings to gather input, or presenting to stakeholders
• Review company goals and create design priorities that match

Believe it or not, there really is “one simple trick” for improving the quality of your software. It's lean usability testing.

If you show users early versions of your app, watch them use it, and fix what’s broken, you will be ahead of 95% of design teams.

There are two reasons teams don’t properly test their products. Lack of skill in running tests, and discomfort with getting negative feedback. I help with both.

I train my clients through my e-book on this process: How to talk to users .

We’ll proactively learn how to:

• Recruit qualified test subjects
• Interview to understand their biggest pain points
• Run usability tests
• Interpret user feedback
• Understand non-verbal feedback
• Create a regular cadence of testing

If you’ve never watched a person use your app without interrupting them, I strongly recommend you do. You will not see your product the same way again.

Being the sole designer at a startup can be a stressful and isolating job. I would know—I’ve done it many times.

It’s totally normal for designers to feel overwhelmed on the job. When designers are stressed, we often see a dip in design quality, overwork, and tension on the team.

Having a support system can be an enormous help to someone in this role, especially if that support is a fellow designer who’s been in their shoes. Even the most senior designers benefit from having a peer to check in with occasionally.

My work to support designers includes:

• Helping designers prioritize according to the company’s current goals
• Helping designers to automate or delegate routine design work that takes up a lot of time
• Thought partnership for planning pitches, design process, testing plans, etc
• Helping designers, engineers, and product leaders get on the same page and working toward the same goals
• Positive strategies to deal with common stressors or conflicts on product teams
• Personal and career mentorship to help designers learn and grow
• Help “managing up” so founders communicate in ways that support design

These can be structured as weekly 1:1s, monthly check-ins, or a more frequent cadence—whatever is most comfortable for your team.

After years of running design teams, I’ve come to one conclusion about how to get the best possible results: hire the best talent, and the rest takes care of itself.

When you’re ready to hire a full-time designer, I’ll help you find, hire, and onboard the best possible person for your company.

Clients get access to The founder’s guide to hiring product designers, which includes all my strategies, advice, and templates for hiring an incredible designer for your team.

Together, we’ll work through each step:

• Understanding your company’s current design needs
• Writing a job posting that stands out from the crowd
• Creating evaluation rubrics for all aspects of design
• Screening candidate portfolios to find the best talent
• Planning take-home design tests for the best candidates
• Learning to manage designers once they’re on board