Product design, but for humans
Hi there. I'm Tony, a digital product designer and consultant based out of Salt Lake City.
I have helped build software humans love for nearly two decades, at companies like Omniture (acquired by Adobe), Workfront (also acquired by Adobe, oddly), and Amazon. I currently spend my days crafting HR software that people actually like (love, really) at BambooHR.Occasionally, I'll spend nights and weekends consulting for clients like React Rally, Everwall, Blossom Smart Watering Controller (acquired by Scotts Miracle-Gro), and ClientSuccess. If you have a project you'd like to chat about, please, get in touch.
These are a few of my favorite things
I've chosen a few of my favorite projects to highlight for you. If anything piques your interest, just let me know. I'd be glad to walk you through it.
Encore: a visual refresh with purpose
A company-wide effort to retire our aging UI, modernize the visual language, and bring the product back in sync with who we are.
BambooHR
The Fabric of our lives
Our design system, built from the ground up. Beautiful, composable components, comprehensive documentation, and a solid foundation for greater speed, efficiency, consistency, and scalability.
BambooHR
A modern BambooHR mobile experience
A renewed focus on consistency, usability, accessibility, and delight.
BambooHR
There’s More Where That Came From
There's plenty more that I'd be glad to share. You know the drill, just reach out and let me know.
Portfolio / Fabric Design System
The Fabric of our lives
For a product as vast and deep as BambooHR, the lack of a well thought out design system was a major problem. And creating one was a major undertaking.
The Backstory
As BambooHR scaled, the cracks in our design foundation began to show. In the early days, with just two designers, it was easy to stay in sync — patterns were informal, work was shared organically, and consistency came naturally. But as the team grew to 10+ designers (now bumping up against 30), this ad hoc “system” quickly broke down.Without standardized components or a shared source of truth, designers resorted to copying and pasting from outdated files. Design decisions were undocumented and repeatedly rehashed, leading to misalignment and mounting inefficiencies. Worse still, these internal inconsistencies began to bleed into the product itself. Visual and UX inconsistencies crept in, and design debt began to snowball at an unsustainable pace.Decisions became arbitrary. Critique lost its footing. Quality suffered. Something had to change.
My Role
As Principal Product Designer, I created Fabric, our first formal design system, to bring order to the chaos and provide a scalable foundation for the future of BambooHR’s product design.This was a ground-up effort. I led the creation of every component in the system — from fundamentals like buttons, form fields, banners, and modals, to more complex patterns like tables, tabs, feedback messaging, and popovers. Each one was approached systematically: I audited existing implementations, identified patterns, resolved inconsistencies, and designed with both current needs and future flexibility in mind.I also established foundational standards across typography, color, spacing, and interaction states — ensuring cohesion and accessibility across the product.But building a design system isn’t just about the components — it’s about enabling people. So I invested deeply in documentation. Every component included the what, the why, and the how:• When to use a primary button vs. a secondary?
• How do we handle dropdowns with icons?
• Which size is appropriate for which context?All of these questions now had clear, documented answers.
Screengrab of documentation site
Screengrab of documentation site
Screengrab of documentation site
The Components
At the core of Fabric is the component library — the living, breathing heart of the design system. While it’s tough to capture the full scale of what was built in a few screenshots, I’ve included some examples to offer a glimpse into the depth and breadth of the work.Every component was thoughtfully designed, standardized, and documented to ensure consistency, usability, and scalability. The library became a go-to resource not just for designers, but for the entire product development org.To ensure adoption, I didn’t just build it — I evangelized it. I led onboarding and training sessions for the design team, product managers, engineers, and QA. I made sure every team understood how to use the system and why it mattered. I even presented the initiative at a company-wide all-hands meeting to highlight its strategic value and impact.This wasn’t just a tool for designers — it became a shared foundation for everyone building the BambooHR product.
The Documentation
To support the adoption and longevity of the Fabric design system, I built Weave — a centralized documentation site that brought clarity, structure, and guidance to our entire product organization.Weave became the connective tissue between design, engineering, and product — housing everything from component usage guidelines and style specs to design philosophy and accessibility standards. Every element of Fabric was documented with intention:• What it is
• Why it exists
• When and how to use it
• And, crucially, how not to use itWeave helps make the system transparent and accessible to everyone. It helps new designers onboard faster, gives engineers the context they needed to implement accurately, and empowered our entire product development org to speak the same design language.Weave continues to be a powerful lever for scaling quality across our product.
The Impact
Fabric became a shared language between design and engineering — reducing ambiguity, increasing velocity, and enabling our team to scale without sacrificing quality. It didn’t just clean up the UI; it raised the bar for how we collaborate, critique, and build.What started as a response to growing pains evolved into a strategic asset — one that now underpins every product experience we deliver.
Screengrab of component library
Screengrab of component library
Screengrab of component library
Screengrab of component library
Ready for Another?
Thanks for stopping by. Take a look at another project below, or head on back to all projects.
Portfolio / BambooHR Mobile Experience
A modern BambooHR mobile experience
The existing mobile experience was pieced together without a coherent system of interaction and visual design patterns, and it showed. I set off to fix it.
The Backstory
Despite the best intentions of the myriad of designers who worked on the mobile apps since their creation, the mobile experience had become disjointed, inconsistent, and difficult to use. In addition to this, the visual design was beginning to feel stale, our accessibility standards weren't being met, and the app had fallen behind in terms of modern interaction design patterns and expectations
My Role
As we looked to add additional features to the app, I saw fit to pause, take a step back, and work backwards. We needed a system that we could build from that would ensure consistency and a high level of quality. Starting from scratch, I built out a mobile design system that supported the existing functionality in the app while refreshing the visual language. I designed it to be a solid foundation that we could expand and build on for years to come.
Home Screen
Details of an Inbox item - an Onboarding Task
iOS app - mock of employee directory
iOS app - mock of personal tab on employee profile
iOS app - mock of time off tab on employee profile
iOS app - mock of performance tab on employee profile
A Dark Challenge
One of the many elements I wanted to be considerate of as part of this project was dark mode. It presented a unique challenge, as each customer can select their own brand theme, from a choice of 46 preset colors.Fortunately, as part of the Fabric Design System, I split each brand color into four variants, spanning the value spectrum from light to dark. I used the brand color variants to create a more dynamic color theme in the desktop UI, rather than using the same flat color everywhere.I was able to capitalize on that effort in my approach to dark mode. For dark mode, I just reverse-mapped the same four brand colors I was using in light mode.So, no new colors need to be added, and the app is still fully accessible. And it looks pretty good, to boot:
A sample of three brand colors, broken into their respective variants
Brand color exploration - light green
Brand color exploration - light blue
Brand color exploration - pink
Brand color exploration - purple
Ready for Another?
Thanks for stopping by. Take a look at another project below, or head on back to all projects.
The Fabric of our lives.
A custom-built design system, providing beautiful, composable components for greater speed, efficiency, consistency, and scalability. We named it Fabric.
BambooHR
Portfolio / BambooHR Time Tracking
Time tracking that isn't soul sucking
Old-school time tracking software is stodgy, clunky, and difficult to use. How might we do it better?
The Backstory
Traditional timesheet and time management software (the kind employees are forced to use) is not designed with the end user in mind. It is more often designed for the buyer or for the admin.Time tracking was a huge gap in our product offering, and provided an exciting opportunity for us to design it in "The Bamboo Way." For us, that means reducing something down to its most essential parts, and reimagining it as a simplified user experience.
My Role
As principal designer, I worked with a product manager to take this project from initial customer research to wireframes, prototype, validation, user testing, visual design, and shepherded it through implementation, working closely with development. I designed the full setup, time input, timesheet, and approval flows. This included logging and managing time from the BambooHR native mobile apps.
The Timesheet
Traditionally, timesheets are more spreadsheet-like, difficult to parse and not at all engaging.I came up with a vertical layout, with the days ordered chronologically. The total time for each day is nice and big, and we show you your time range worked that day, from first clock in to last clock out.Clicking into a day reveals more detail for that day, including each individual time entry as well as any projects the time was logged against. Today is always automatically expanded.Over in the right column we give you your time totals for the day and week and a nice big clock in/out button.
Timesheet, on employee profile
Mobile Experience
Clocking in and out on your phone was an obvious primary use case that we needed to be sure was smooth and easy.I designed the full time tracking experience for mobile, including the timesheet, quick clock in and out, and even manager approvals.
Timesheet tab, employee profile
Day detail screen
Adding a time entry
Ready for Another?
Thanks for stopping by. Take a look at another project below, or head on back to all projects.
Bringing some order to the chaos that is modern home chores.
I made this one just for me. I call it: Presto Change-O.
Personal Project
Portfolio / Filter Change-O
Encore: a visual refresh with purpose
A monumental effort to modernize the visual language of a 15-year old product.
The Backstory
BambooHR had long been known as a standout in the HR software industry for its user experience and look and feel. And it’s true, for a long span of time BambooHR was in fact the leader in the industry. We went up against the likes of ancient juggaurnats like ADP, and we won every time.
But, it became clear from our research efforts, both internally and externally, that we had rested on our laurels for too long, and an update was in order. So, I kicked off Project Encore.
My Role
I led this large-scale visual redesign of our entire product—a cross-functional effort that touched every surface of the user experience. This was more than a UI refresh; it was a strategic initiative to modernize our visual language, improve consistency, and align the product with our evolving brand identity.From early concepting to final implementation, I was responsible for driving every aspect of the project. I kicked things off by leading research efforts, including preference testing and validation studies, to ensure our new visual direction resonated with users. Once we aligned on a direction, I collaborated closely with engineering and product leadership to shape the implementation plan—defining scope, phasing, and how the work would land within each team's roadmap.This was a high-resource, high-visibility project. I worked with our program manager to coordinate across product marketing, customer support, and our front-end engineering teams—who devoted several months of concentrated effort to the rollout. One of the most challenging (and rewarding) aspects was securing stakeholder and executive alignment. I facilitated reviews, led a hands-on workshop with the executive team, and presented to the company to make sure the value of the redesign was clearly understood across the org.As part of our design system leadership trio, I also collaborated with our engineering partners to evolve our component library in parallel with the redesign.This project was a beast—but also one of the most fulfilling projects I’ve led. It pushed my skills as a designer, leader, and partner across disciplines. And while it just launched recently, the early signals are positive, and the foundation it’s laid will support future product evolution for years to come.
Read a blog post from Bamboo about the update.
Ready for Another?
Thanks for stopping by. Take a look at another project below, or head on back to all projects.
The Fabric of our lives.
Our design system, built from the ground up. Beautiful, composable components, comprehensive documentation, and a solid foundation for greater speed, efficiency, consistency, and scalability.
BambooHR
A brief summary of my design career.
If you're looking for a glorified version of my LinkedIn, you came to the right place.
BambooHR
Sr. Product Designer » Product Design Lead » Principal Product Designer » Director, Product Design – 10+ years
BambooHR builds online HR software for small and medium businesses. As principal product designer, I have been able to lead the design on a wide range of product initiatives and have a significant impact on product direction.As a "full stack" designer, I have led efforts from initial research with customers (including on-site contextual inquiry) to wireframes, low-fidelity prototypes, usability testing, high-fidelity visual design and finally to working closely with development to ensure everything was built to our standards (which were very high).
Amazon
User Experience Designer – 1 year, 2 months
I worked on the Amazon Family team, researching and designing the future of the Amazon Baby Registry and the Amazon Family program. While at Amazon I designed a responsive, mobile version of the baby registry, which is used by millions of expecting families to help prepare for their new arrival. Highlights included researching and creating a new version of Jumpstart, which provided an interactive checklist for new parents to better understand what they needed on their registry.
Workfront (acquired by Adobe)
Sr. User Experience Designer – 4 years, 10 months
As a part of the design team at Workfront (called AtTask while I was there), I was able to completely redefine the product direction. Through heavy research we realized the secret was to focus on individual contributors and their experience in the product. Before then, they were largely ignored in favor of the primary persona, project managers. As the a result the project manager experience was counter-intuitively made far worse.We completely redesigned the product with this in mind and formed the foundation for what lives today.
Omniture (acquired by Adobe)
User Experience Designer - Just 8 months (hey, I was young)
It was at Omniture (now Adobe) that I cut my teeth on the complexities of enterprise-level application design. I worked on what were at the time called SiteCatalyst and the behemoth Discover. As a young designer, I was granted opportunities to learn about the reality and importance of interaction design, prototyping (we used paper prototypes way back then), and user personas. It was here that I discovered and studied Cooper's user centered design method, which helped form the foundation of my interaction and visual design philosophy.
Product Design Consulting
I've been lucky enough to spend occasional nights and weekends working with some great companies to help to them build beautiful, simple, world-class software. I have a passion for what I do, and it doesn't suddenly turn off at 5:00 PM every day. Consulting work has served as a creative outlet for me, while continuing to allow me to refine my craft on a variety of different projects for both desktop and mobile.Have a project you'd like to discuss? By all means, get in touch.
Get in touch.
If you'd like to see more of my work or just want to hello, I'd love to hear from you.