10+ years experience building digital products and leading design initiatives in enterprise software
(The human is Nick Clark and the Chihuahua is Conner)
First design hire reporting to the head of product. Responsible for all things UX and design within our product. Created a repeatable design process to deliver consistent results for a growing team. Created a design system and collaborated with engineering on a UI library to aid in efficient implementation of front-end components.
First design hire and second product hire reporting directly to the head of product. Responsible for aspects of product management and the holistic design of a rapidly scaling cross-platform financial product suite with over 20k monthly active users. Present during high-growth phase, exited after unicorn valuation.
Responsible for designing and implementing new features on the Distributed Mission Operations Network (DMON) program for the US Airforce. I worked on web-based systems designed to manage flight simulator mission scheduling, standardization, and training efforts. The tech stack was Adobe ColdFusion (backend), jQuery (frontend) for most of my time there until we migrated to a React frontend and a Java Spring backend.
I believe in designing solutions to problems that genuinely help improve the lives of the people who use our products, while also creating value for the business. Only by practicing empathy, listening to our users, and truly understanding the problem space do we stand the best chance of being successful.
A few key skills that I think help me stand out from the crowd...
I've worked at several fast-growing startups as the first design hire. It's been my responsibility to build the UX function from nothing into something that can scale and deliver consistent results. I'm experienced designing innovative business-critical features and enhancements that are used by tens of thousands of users in the B2B space.
I take an elegant yet practical approach to visual design so as not to sacrifice usability for aesthetics. Both must exist in harmony to build trust and confidence with users.
I started my career doing front-end development. I know how to build everything that I design and how difficult each part is. As a designer this has afforded me the ability to design great experiences that can fit within a variety of budgeting & time constraints while still delivering real value.
Well versed in creating, maintaining, and implementing accessible design systems. I'm experienced working across functions to advocate for the use of a design system as a way to ensure consistent experiences while reducing development and QA time.
Reimagined the face of the Denim application with a new dashboard. Researched and discovered metrics that matter to customers and displayed them in a way that was meaningful. Propelled the company to a successful series B round.
Stax Connect is the payments-as-a-service arm of Stax and settlements was one of the biggest challenges since for a long time this part of our business was handled by 3rd parties. The goal of this project was to enable our internal risk team to approve merchant settlements for merchants processing payments via our new in-house settlements engine giving us more control over our customer experience.
Created and helped implement (via storybook) a new design system to improve usability across the platform and reduce development time/complexity for future features. Within the first year I curated over 60 accessible components, styles, and design patterns.
Designed nearly the entire virtual terminal application used by business owners to process payments via the web. This fintech product was comprised of reporting, invoicing, payments, customer tracking and more. During my tenure we took our DAU count from the 100's to the 10's of thousands.
I follow the double diamond approach as a structured way to bring repeatable results to the user centered design process. This process consists of 4 key steps: Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver.
One tenant of my design philosophy involves seeking out beauty and inspiration in completely unrelated mediums like architecture and in nature. I like to stay inspired by things that are outside of my day-to-day scope of work to help me continue to bring fresh ideas and designs to the table. The natural world is the gift that keeps on giving and Central Florida has no shortage of beauty to share.
Here are what some my colleges have to say about me.