Who I am
Greetings! I’m Evan.
As of September 2023, I’m leading a new Design Systems team and strategy at CrowdStrike.
Before CrowdStrike, I led the cloud security product design strategy and managed a team of international UX Designers as Senior UX Manager @ Rapid7’s InsightCloudSec (formerly DivvyCloud, acquired in 2020).
Before that, I was tackling complex cybersecurity problems in the cloud as the Director of UX @ Fugue, Inc (acquired by Snyk in 2022).
Prior to cybersecurity, I solved problems in the personal finance space as the Lead UX Designer then Director of UX @ HelloWallet (acquired by Morningstar in 2014, then KeyBank) using behavioral psychology to help average Americans budget, save for retirement, and pay down debt.
I love leading teams in creating empathic experiences, data visualization driven products, and collaborating with engineering and product teams to build products that make an impact.
My Core Skills
My career has given me the experience to have…
Empathic Design Practices & Management
I believe in the power of human centered design practices that leverage empathy toward our users and customers. Empathy is contagious, so its essential to ensure any team I’m managing feels that empathy…so they can infect our users.
Product, Engineering, and Design Experience
Knowing both how you can solve a problem and how it relates to the business accelerates the conversation between product, engineering, and UX.
Confidence in Giving Direction
Having led and managed the UXD teams at HelloWallet, Fugue, and Rapid7 as well as advising other companies on lean, agile principles of iterative-design means confidence in the ability to lead.
Creative Vision
The ability to construct something from nothing, while not falling into the pit of perfectionism.
Product & Leadership
Agile Methodologies
Design Team Leadership
Product Management
Product Development
Competitive Analysis
Cybersecurity Software
JIRA / Confluence
Product Design
UX/UI Design
Data Analytics
Wire-framing
Information Architecture
Data Visualization
Prototyping
Figma
Design Systems
Research
AR/VR
Engineering
JavaScript
HTML/CSS
Node.js
React/Angular
SVG/Canvas
Unix/Linux
MySQL
Usability Engineering
AWS/GCP/Azure
Cybersecurity
Other
Video Production
Music Production
Computer Music
Graphic Design
Generative AI & LLMs
Conversational Design
How I Lead
Organizing UX Teams for Success
Maintaining Processes
The product design process is crucial for a UX team because it provides a structured approach to developing products that meet user needs and business goals. I work with my team to ensure this process leads to human-centered design practices, consistency, efficiency, risk mitgation, and iteration.
Kanban / Sprints
The responsibility falls on the Manager of the team to keep everyone focused on their crucial goals. I develop Kanban and/or Sprint boards with collaboration from the team to ensure we were organized and executing effectively across multiple teams.
After all, I am a certified scrum master 😎
Measuring Progress
I create dashboards that would help the team improve by looking at high level metrics. These same metrics communicate to leadership and other teams the load the current team was under.
I always aim to help proactively inform leadership on what was being asked of our UX Designers, and how we could make the best use of their time.
Making Org-Changes Seamless
No one loves reorganizations, but sometimes they are necessary. My job has been to ensure there is as little disruption as possible on critical in-flight work the team is working on.
I strive to provide new leaders/partners with everything they need to know the people, the process, and their current work. Its important to also give easy access to resources that may be scattered about!
Inspiring UX Teams
Screenshot of a Confluence page used to brainstorm and define our Product Design Principles. (circa 2022)
Defining Product Design Principles
I’ve always help lead - collaboratively - the definition of core design principles that are specific to the product and target personas we build products for.
With agreed upon principles teams are more consistent in their designs, they have a shared language to advocate for our users, and it helps guide priorities for our Product partners as well.
Miro Board with customer testimonials, used to prime teammates for a brainstorm. (circa 2022)
Communicating Possibilities Through the Lens of the User
Every once in while its important for the team to take a step back from specific work, and see the forest from the trees.
One way to accomplish that is to create a possible future state of the product we are working on, and what our customers have to say about it.
A photo from a Design Sprint I ran at HelloWallet with Product, Support, and UX Designers (circa 2012)
Running Design Thinking Workshops
Early in my career I used the power of Design Thinking workshops to drive team alignment, user-centered design practices, individual UX Designer skills, and generally get the team aligned on the “why” they are working on something.
I’ve ran these workshops for senior leadership as well, to help them drive cross-functional collaboration and to provide a more structured problem-solving approach.
A persona our UX Researcher created at HelloWallet. (circa 2013)
Persona Creation
We must always answer the question “who are we designing for?” with more than just a name. Getting teams to research, develop, and sometimes even iterate on persona creation takes work – and my job has been to ensure we have budgeted the time to do it.
If there hasn’t been time to develop persona’s, then I usually lead teams to use the “Jobs to Be Done” framework – to ensure we at minimum are designing for key outcomes our users need.
I’ve used and encouraged UX Teams to use FullStory & Pendo to help measure our impact with each iteration.
Measuring Our Impact
For many of the products I’ve worked on, if there was no data analytics solution I’d implement it ASAP.
It allows us to gain profound insights into user behavior, preferences, and pain points. This knowledge becomes the driving force behind our strategies to improve user experience and craft meaningful, captivating products.
Analytics are not only for measuring what could be–but also whether we are having the impact we need. I believe in failing fast, so if we are off track its time to course correct!
Draft OKRs I developed with our Product Management partners for the UX Team
Creating Clear Objectives using OKRs
I’ve found that teams love knowing the specifics of what success means. High level goals are great as a vision, but in day-to-day work its essential to know what we need to measure early in the design process to know what “progress” looks like.
I push to develop measurable OKRs at the beginning of any project. I believe in their ability to increase focus, foster the experimental mindset, and even help guide UX Designers on what they are being measured on from a performance standpoint.
Developing Effective Strategies
As a UX and Product Leader, I prioritize user-centric strategies for developing experiences and initiatives that align with business goals.
I collaborate with all teams – leadership, product, engineering, marketing – to identify success drivers and iterate along the way for effective solutions. My approach is rooted in user understanding, business alignment, and iterative validation for impactful outcomes.
Recommendations
“Evan is an extraordinary talent. He is creative, artistic, technical, passionate, smart, dedicated, loyal, fearless, entrepreneurial, and, most clearly, a can-do guy that wants to win. He was responsible for countless product decisions and implementations over the years that better positioned us to win in the market. He also was a critical partner thinking through product strategy.”
“Evan is a multi-faceted leader. He created the design organization from ground-up at DivvyCloud and continues to push for superior product experiences for all of DivvyCloud’s users. He is very experienced in managing stakeholders at all levels and is able to steer a group in the toughest circumstances towards alignment with ease. He will go above and beyond his responsibilities, and takes full ownership to make an impact on the business as a whole. I am thankful for his partnership in elevating the product management and design functions at DivvyCloud. Wherever Evan is, I am certain he will continue to make a significant impact on the business. ”
“Evan and I worked together for about 3 years at HelloWallet, during which we worked closely on the UX and design of a new product feature. Evan really built the UX team at HelloWallet from the ground up, at first advocating for the user through his role as a UI engineer, and then building a rock solid team of UX designers that continue to amaze me with their thoughtfulness and craft every day. Evan is an inspiring individual; always thinking about the next iteration, always pondering a big concept, always putting the user first. He is a product visionary who seeks to understand the “why” of every project he is involved with. Evan is also a great teacher and advocate for design. Over the course of our time together he encouraged me to advance my own UX skills and encouraged me to think deeper about my visual design work. Evan brings innovation, passion and creativity to any team he is a part of.”