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 well over a decade, at companies like Omniture (acquired by Adobe), Workfront (also acquired by Adobe, oddly), and Amazon. I currently spend my days creating HR software that people actually like (love, really) at BambooHR.My nights are spent 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.
A modern BambooHR mobile experience.
A renewed focus on consistency, usability, accessibility, and delight.
BambooHR
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
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
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 / The 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
While still a product customers love, the cracks in the BambooHR design were beginning to form. When there was just two of us on the design team, it was simple to stay in sync on patterns, approaches, and to share work. As the team grew to three, four, and ultimately 10 designers, this "system" didn't scale well.Rather than utilizing a library of standardized components, the design team found themselves copying and pasting from older design files. Standards weren't documented, and decisions and were continually being re-decided. This was incredibly inefficient. But worse yet, our own internal strife was beginning to manifest itself in the product, with high levels of inconsistency across the app. Design debt was mounting at a crushing rate.Without standards, decisions became arbitrary and difficult to critique. Not only does this not scale, it creates an inconsistent and frustrating user experience.This wasn't sustainable. Something had to be done.
My Role
As principal designer, I created the Fabric design system to combat this reality. I sought out to provide a dependable solution for design and development to keep up with the rapid growth of our teams, our product, and BambooHR at large. The task was daunting.I designed each component in the system, from buttons, form fields, modals, banners, feedback messaging, and popovers; to modals, tables, tabs and toggles, and more and more and more. The list is somewhat exhausting.I designed each component by taking inventory of what we do today, seeing where it can be standardized, and envisioning what the product will need to support in the future.I standardized colors, text sizing and styling, button and form input sizing and styling, including each state all of these elements could exist in.But perhaps most importantly, I documented all of it. Each component was documented. The what, the why, and the how. When do I use a primary button vs. a secondary button? What does that look like? What if I want to include an icon? What if it's a dropdown? Which size should it be?These questions now had answers.
Screengrab of documentation site
Screengrab of documentation site
Screengrab of documentation site
The Components
The heart of the design system is the component library. It's difficult to convey here the magnitude of what was built out, but I've taken a few screengrabs to give you an idea of what they looked like.I created a library of these components that the rest of the design team could pull from. I trained them on it, in addition to training the product management, development, and QA team. I even presented to the company about the effort at an all-hands meeting. This was a big deal.
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
Bringing some order to the chaos that is modern home chores.
Meet Presto-Change-O. The best little app that doesn't exist.
The Backstory
Furnace filter. Fridge filter. Smoke alarms. The batteries in your emergency kit. These are just a few examples of the dozens of things in a modern home that require regularly recurring attention. And just a few examples of things my restless mind just can't handle not having a handle on.I searched and searched, but couldn't find anything that solved this for me. Lots of apps were close, but nothing was quite there. There is one simple nuance in the behavior that made all the difference: I didn't want something due every six months, for example. I want it due six months from the last time it was done, which may have been eight months since it was done the time before that. It seemed like a simple ask, but nothing out there handles this elegantly. It's maddening.Also, I wanted to keep track of not only the next time something is due, but the history of when it was last done, and last before that. I wanted to be able to add notes and categorize items to better keep track.Nothing was out there, so I designed it myself.
My Solution
I wanted to keep it lean, native, and simple. You open up to a list of what's coming up in the near future, and what's been done recently.You can see a list of all the jobs that need to be done on the jobs tab. Tap into a job to get all the details on it.Simple. Presto-Change-O.
Timesheet tab, employee profile
Day detail screen
Adding a time entry
Portfolio / Filter Change-O
Encore
Modernizing the visual language of a 15-ear 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 monster of a project, from initial research to final implementation, and beyond. I drove the design, worked with engineering and product leadership to talk through scope, timelines, and how it would fit in the roadmap. As we came closer to launch, I worked our with project manager to coordinate with product marketing, customer support,
As part of our engineering team trio that managed the design system, I worked closely with the team to plan an architectural approach and update our design system components.
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 » Principal, Design Systems – 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.
Freelance Work
I've been lucky enough to spend many of my nights and weekends working with some great companies to help to them build beautiful, simple, world-class software. Shown are a few of my favorites. I have a passion for what I do, and it doesn't suddenly turn off at 5:00 PM every day. Freelance 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.
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.