I help teams figure out what customers want, what to build next, and how to make it work

I've spent 15+ years building products, designing services, and leading teams in startups and in larger organizations. In that time, I've learned that having customer evidence and knowing what to do with it are two very different things.

I use product strategy, customer discovery, and hands-on design to help teams turn what they're learning about customers into better products and services. Sometimes that means research and facilitation. Other times I'm designing, prototyping, testing, or working with the people implementing changes.

Today, through How This Works co, I work mainly alongside early-stage teams, from focused customer discovery sprints to retainer-style engagements. I bring the people making product decisions into customer conversations so we can work from what customers have done or are doing rather than what we assume they want.

Selected work

This work spans startups and larger organizations, spanning customer discovery, product strategy, product design, service design, and team leadership. Some stories are about decisions that changed direction. Others are about what it took to make that direction real.

Replay customer hypotheses narrowed over five cycles

Replay

Customer discovery & product strategy · Developer tools · 2025–present

Tablet mockups of the Karmascore app, showing a relationship dashboard with a top-relationship score, memories logged, and a memory streak, plus a feed of recent memories

Karmascore

Fractional product leadership & design strategy · Wellness · Jun 2025–Oct 2026

Shared portfolio view for Duke Energy’s Emerging Technologies Office (ETO)

Duke Energy

Design leadership & product strategy, SoftServe · Energy · Nov 2022–Jul 2024

Shep browser extension for enterprise travel

Shep (acquired)

Fractional product & design leadership · Travel tech · 2017–2021

Sesame booking flow tested before launch

Sesame

Founding product design & customer research · Healthcare · Aug 2018–Aug 2019

Two children looking through a cardboard tube while building a blanket fort

Acme

Service design & customer research, Fjord · Consumer financial services · 2017

Shared portfolio view for Cigna smart toothbrush case study

Smart toothbrush

Product strategy & experience design, SoftServe for Cigna · Healthcare · Apr 2022

View through a large window over Kyiv, Ukraine, with autumn trees and a monument in the distance

SoftServe

Design leadership & practice building · Enterprise consulting · 2021–2024

Tablet on a desk showing the Bank of America commercial banker dashboard, with client relationship revenue, credit rating, and deal details

Commercial bank CRM

Service design & product design, Fjord for Bank of America · Financial services · 2017

Connected phone mockups of the Bank of America investor-research app, showing My Feed, Find, Report, and Event screens

Bank investor research

Product design & customer research, Fjord for Bank of America · Financial services · 2018

When I'm most useful

I'm drawn to work where understanding customers, making product decisions, and figuring out how to deliver them are closely connected.

Sometimes that's a rough idea taking shape. Other times it's an existing product that needs to evolve, a complicated service involving several teams or systems, or an organization trying to make sense of conflicting customer information and business constraints.

My venn diagram overlaps product strategy, service design, and product design, from customer discovery and framing through prototyping, testing, and implementation. I work closely with the people making decisions and doing the work, so what we learn from customers can inform what happens next.

I came into this through UX and service design, and that 100% shapes how I operate. I lean into the messy, complicated bits where several actors, channels, or teams are involved and the right response isn't obvious.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is part of how I work, too. I use it to examine research, explore ideas, prototype, and write basic code. It helps me move faster, but customer behavior and human judgment still guide the decisions.

Skipper facilitating a problem-framing workshop with a product team

Book a time

Working through a customer question, figuring out what to build next, or looking for experienced help with product and design work?

Let's talk about what you're working on, what you've learned so far, and where I might be useful.

25 minutes, no scoping pitch.

Skipper in Marin County, just north of San Francisco

Where am I?

Marin County, CA · Pacific time