I'm David – a product designer, design leader, and builder who works at the intersection of craft and strategy.
I've spent the past 16 years designing experiences that have changed company trajectories, and building teams and processes to sustain that work. I work best across altitudes: from vision and strategy down to design system details and crafted interactions.
Patreon // 2022 - Now
As a Senior Design Manager at Patreon, I support Creator Success: a cluster of teams focused on helping creators run successful businesses end-to-end on Patreon. This spans audience building, content publishing, creator pages, free and paid media strategy, insights and analytics, IA/navigation, and guided actions that help creators make the best decisions.
As an IC and manager, I've led design for various high-stakes platform initiatives like Free Membership, Patreon's first new product outside of paid membership and the bedrock of the company's current direction. I've also led and grown the design system team, and bootstrapped AI prototyping with bespoke tools that have transformed product development. I've built a strong design team through hiring, process, and creating the conditions for designers to do their best work.
Tempo // 2020 - 2022
As the first full-time design hire at Tempo, I led the Engagement team through a major product overhaul that made personalized recommendations and activity metrics central to the experience. I ran numerous discovery and design sprints that turned ambiguous problem spaces into shippable solutions across content taxonomy, browsing and discovery, and personalized plans.
As a manager, I established new pods alongside product and engineering partners, defined their missions and roadmaps, and grew the design team through hiring, onboarding, and mentorship.
Method // 2015 - 2020
Led multidisciplinary design teams in strategic and experience design projects for enterprise & consumer products in Tech, Education, Aviation, Energy, and more across US and Europe.
Exhibited at the Barbican London and recognized on BBC and CNBC for work around the future of our food systems.
Gensler // 2010 - 2015
Established Digital Experience Design practice area for creating embedded digital experiences in architectural environments.
I’m in the process of updating recent case studies. Feel free to explore my past work for now.