I'm Aaron, a product designer in Lāʻie, Hawaiʻi. I care about the people doing the work, clarity over cleverness, and shipping. I'm looking for a founding-designer role, or a senior IC role where I can shape the product from the start. I work remotely from Hawaiʻi and I'm open to relocating for the right team.
I also teach: Human in the Loop, a course on designing with AI.
My story
From founder to platform scale.
I've co-founded companies and been the founding designer on funded 0→1 products. One of them, Aprenda, I designed, built, and sold.
I've also led design inside bigger companies: Instructure, Kuali, BambooHR, and BILL, where I redesigned the Accountant Console that thousands of accounting firms use.
I've been AI-native since 2022. At Verdi, I designed an AI co-pilot for product teams that shipped before ChatGPT.
How I work
Five things I bring to every team.
Name the real problem before touching the UI.
At BILL, the most useful thing I did was reframe "ship more reports" as "build one system," and get the company to fund the harder, better path.
See it at BILL →Lead as a player-coach.
I set the direction and hold the quality bar, and I stay close enough to the work to prove the direction is right. At Sendola I designed the hard parts and fixed how the team shipped.
See it at Sendola →Influence without waiting for authority.
At Kuali, with no mandate, I made the case for one design system across seven products, won leadership, and started a guild that kept going after I left.
See it at Kuali →Validate before you build.
At Bridge, companies asked to buy our prototype before any code existed. Since then I test with real customers before anyone builds.
See it at Bridge →Grow the designers around me.
I managed designers at Kuali and BambooHR, mentored at Sendola, and have coached designers for nearly a decade. I try to leave every designer better than I found them.
See it at BambooHR →Let's talk.
Building something from zero, or need a designer who can lead and still ship? I'd love to hear about it.