Hey there! 👋🏻

I’m Jesse - a Product Designer & Design Mentor. For the past 10 years I’ve been leading user centered design projects that create measurable results. I love collaboration, clean design, and UX strategy.

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Principles

Illustration of curved arrows showing a cycle or process flow.

Discovery is an Attitude

Discovery happens throughout a project not just at the beginning.

A triangle diagram showing the relationship between Engineering, Product, and Design.

Work Collaboratively

Good ideas can come from anyone. Get a variety of perspectives on work in flight.

Circular arrows forming a recycle symbol on a dark background.

Outcomes over Output

Be accountable for the success or failure of the product. Maintain an extreme level of ownership.

Design Process

Design Process ➡️

Discover

  • Frame the problem

  • Create a plan

  • Conduct research

  • Identify assumptions

Define

  • Build themes and clusters

  • Select opportunities

  • Create a point of view

Develop

  • Ideate

  • Create a product vision

  • Create a hypothesis

Deliver

  • Prototype and analyze

  • Build key features

  • Track key metrics

  • Document outcomes

Design Outputs ➡️

  • Design Brief

  • Project Timeline

  • Research Plan

  • Learning Plan

  • Facilitate Workshops

  • Opportunity Solution Tree

  • Journey Map

  • Research Reports

  • Design Studio Summary

  • Validation Findings

  • Vision & Strategy Presentation

  • Wireframes

  • Prototypes

  • Case Study

Mentorship

In addition to my full-time job I provide mentorship for students enrolled in Designlab’s UX Academy and Career Services. Both Career Services and UX Academy mentorship include weekly 1:1's with students as well as written and video recorded feedback on deliverables.

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  • Designlabs UX Academy included providing critique throughout the design process including project goals, personas, point of view statements, task and user flows, site maps, story boards, wireframes, component libraries, prototypes, and final deliverables.

  • Career Services enabled me to provide resume reviews, portfolio reviews, early career advice, book recommendations, early career design expectations, and moral support to Designlab students.

Two men on a video call smiling. The man on the left has dark hair, a baseball cap, a navy hoodie, and is in a room with white paneling and a small desk with a computer. The man on the right has dark hair, glasses, a beard, and is in a bedroom with a bed, shelves, and framed pictures on the wall.

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Jesse’s top 20 books

Book cover titled "Information Architecture for the Web and Beyond" with a polar bear illustration, authored by Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville, and Jorge Arango.
Cover of a book titled 'Org Design for Design Orgs' by Peter Merholz and Kristin Skinner, featuring illustrations of three colorful fish.
Book cover titled 'Measure What Matters' by John Doerr with a foreword by Larry Page, highlighting its success with over a million copies sold and discussing Google's, Bono's, and the Gates Foundation's use of OKRs.
Book cover titled 'User Story Mapping' by Jeff Patton with a colorful illustration of a bird with pink, blue, and green feathers.
Colorful overlapping geometric paper cutouts on a cover design.
Book cover for 'Sprint' by Jake Knapp, with John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz, published by Google Ventures. The cover is blue with yellow, white, and light blue text.
Cover of a report titled 'The User Experience Team of One.' The cover features colorful, abstract, wavy patterns in red, pink, green, purple, and blue. There is a small illustration of two human figures standing on the left side of the cover.
Book cover titled 'Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love' by Marty Cagan, published by Wiley.
Book cover for 'The Making of a Manager' by Julie Zhuo. The cover is light blue with black text and features illustrations of paper airplanes, including one red and one white, flying diagonally across the cover.
Book cover of 'The Lean Startup' by Eric Ries with blue background and white circular design
Book cover titled 'The Coaching Habit' by Michael Bungay Stanier, with a subtitle encouraging asking fewer questions and leading differently, featuring a blue and yellow color scheme.
Book cover for 'Continuous Discovery Habits' by Teresa Torres, with a dark blue background and colorful abstract lines.
Book cover titled 'Practical Design Discovery' by Dan Brown, part of the A Book Apart series, with a brown background and a black circle marked 22.
Book cover titled 'Expressive Design Systems' by Yesenia Perez-Cruz, part of the A Book Apart series, with a pink background and black circle with the number 31.
Cover of a book titled 'Accessibility for Everyone' by Laura Kalbag, part of the 'A Book Apart' series, with a green background and a black circle indicating it's number 23.
Book cover titled 'Empowered' by Marty Cagan and Chris Jones, with subtitle 'Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products,' and a blue banner at the top stating 'Product Leadership Lessons from the World’s Top Tech Companies,' published by Wiley.
Cover of the book 'Lean UX' by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden, published by O'Reilly, titled 'Designing Great Products with Agile Teams', with a small yellow banner in the top right corner that says 'Includes a new chapter.'
Book cover titled 'UX Strategy' with an illustration of a coyote, and the author's name is Jaime Levy.
Book cover titled "Don’t Make Me Think Revisited" by Steve Krug, with a red background, a cartoon image of a woman's head with tied-up hair, and smaller text mentioning "A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability".
Book cover titled 'The Design Thinking Toolbox' shows a drawing of a toolbox with creative objects like a brain, cubes with wings, scissors, and books emerging from it, set on a black background with white text and colorful accents.

Kind words.

  • Within a short period of time, Jesse influenced those around him to bring a world-class experience to market and would always push others to further improve and collaborate. Jesse leaves a positive impact on the organization he works for with his creative thinking and UX/UI leadership.


    Senior Product Analyst at LendingTree

  • Jesse is a great colleague and very hard working. He is very inquisitive and has a knack for explaining design principles and the importance of UX. Jesse is able to create designs, conduct user research and embed design principles into a product.


    Product Manager at LendingTree

  • Jesse is a very talented designer and his depth of experience in product design makes him a huge asset. He’s a great collaborator and team player, and does a commendable job connecting the dots between product teams, researchers, copywriters, branding, etc. to oversee the user experience from product conception to launch and beyond.


    UX Manager at Duke Energy Corporation

  • Jesse is an innovative thinker who takes ownership for achieving results. He is always learning and looking for ways to make an impact. He has an advanced ability to stay composed under pressure. Jesse is going to be a great UX leader for years to come.


    Senior Director, Customer Experience at LendingTree

  • Once Jesse and I joined focuses on a product team focused on PNG, I experienced his true craft as a designer. As a product manager, I'd bring Jesse complex problems and he'd return customer-friendly designs. He worked seamlessly with our engineers to create the best outcomes.


    Product Director at Dualboot Partners

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1:1 Coaching

I love helping designers achieve level up their careers by providing advice and critique.

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