I work exclusively with early-stage, venture-backed technology companies with complex products (agriculture, healthcare, education, AI, etc).
My work is unique in a few important ways:
Are you a founder struggling to create a great user experience? Reach out—I do free design consultations for any company.
Hi, I'm Sam. I'm a designer, founder, engineer, design director, product manager, coach, design educator. Read my full bio...
We needed that je ne sais quoi that would take our product from functional to fabulous. Turns out, it was Sam.
I initially contacted Sam because I admired his work at Farmlogs, and we needed a similar level of design polish. But what we got was so much more: a better understanding of the journey our prospects take before they become customers, a documented design language that we are applying not just in our product but across our marketing materials, and an appreciation for what is needed at our business's stage of growth. I could not recommend Sam more highly.
Sam is a UX god. We were blown away by how quickly he broke down our complex goals into a simple, beautiful, intuitive design.
Not only did we launch an awesome product on time, but the work went way above and beyond our expectations. He taught us a ton about building great products, and he laid the foundation for our engineers to keep building great designs. Our only regret is that we didn't book more of his time!
All of my projects use a proprietary design process that I’ve developed over a decade of design work. The process is optimized for the high-pressure, high-risk environment of startups to create as much customer value as possible in a limited time.
Following this process helps ensure that my clients' products are highly-fit for the customer use-case, easy to use, and beautiful. The process gives founders confidence in their product by building from validated needs, early exposure to customers, and lots of feedback.
I tailor this process to each client's stage and their team's relative strengths, making smart trade-offs for speed and to reduce design risk.
This process is not for everyone. It requires founders with either market expertise or customer development skills, and it requires somewhat agile engineering teams. Your team must also be willing to work within the structure of design sprints outlined below.
This process is also not a fit for startups that primarily need marketing, branding, or conversion optimization design help. It's specifically for digital product companies in a complex domain where usability and simplicity are at the core of the value proposition.
I could talk about design, product, and tactics all day—schedule a free UX consultation for your company if you'd like to learn more.
All projects start with a 3-day session with founders and critical stakeholders. The purpose is to help me understand your design challenges, create a coherent design strategy, and to surface any potentially dangerous risks to the success of our work.
In the workshop, we will collaboratively cover topics like:
After the onboarding workshop, we break our work into design sprints. Each sprint is scoped up-front based on what we’ve learned in our workshop and since the last sprint.
Each sprint follows these stages:
Free strategy call to help you find the right design resource for your business goals, team, stage, and customer.
At the end of the call, I’ll recommend tools and designers that can help you get the right result for your project.
This is a one-week intensive design sprint targeted at your most important customer experience. This process is roughly based on the Design Sprint book from Google ventures.
It starts with a condensed version of my design kickoff workshop. Together we collaboratively describe your users, outline their entire journey with your product, brainstorm ambitious ways of creating new value, and sketch ideas for a new product.
Later, I'll return with a new design: a focused proof-of-concept that targets each of the highest-priority customer opportunities from the workshop.
This is the ideal artifact to validate ideas in customer discovery and for early-stage fundraising.
This is my primary service for startups who want to create a product that their customers love.
It includes the full version of my design kickoff workshop, where we'll synthesize your customer discovery conversations into a complete, detailed picture of who your customers are and what they want.
This process includes complete design prototypes of your entire application, laser-targeted at your customers' needs. Unlike the design concept sprint, these are highly-detailed interactive design mocks ready for engineers to build.
This is a collaborative service where I embed myself on your founding team and guide you step-by-step through the entire UX journey.
Get the benefits of an experienced design leader without having to find and hire full-time talent.
This is a highly-customized service. Past projects have included:
Innovation strategy—I lead a small group of your company’s best thinkers on a time-boxed sprint to reimagine the future of your customer experience. This is a ground-up, high-level conceptual redesign of your product or service on a multi-year horizon. My goal is to create a tangible vision that your whole organization can align around. This process is designed to resolve strategic disagreements, broaden minds, inspire great execution, and inform the next five years of your feature roadmap.
Coaching—using the curriculum and training methods I developed while teaching at the University of Michigan, I'll give your designers the tools they need to get to the next level in their craft. I recreate the experience of the high-output design studios I've run in the past: clear goals, rapid iterations, a high bar for quality, and lots hands-on support.
My style is to meet designers where they are, scaffold a design process that gives them direction, give them experience on real projects with real customers, lead by example, and foster curiosity for further self-guided learning.
Sam's work was simple, concise, and elegant—I can tell that he loves his work. He was super calm, knowledgable, and patient, and his ability to jump and quickly understand a business and its issues was awesome. Definitely recommended.
When you are ready to transform a big idea into a new product, Sam is an outstanding design and thought partner. He will help you navigate the ambiguity of invention, and he helps to translate your ideas into tangible user experiences that people can see and interact with.
Sam is uniquely able to help navigate the uncertainty of creation, and the “putting pencil to paper” in terms of UX design and product development. Oh, and he’s efficient and works fast!
I'm Frodo, and Sam's my Gandalf.
I’m so grateful to have Sam on this project, I don’t know where I would be without him (probably pulling my hair out).
If you're struggling with a big design project, my advice is this: get yourself a Sam.
Within 5 minutes of Sam starting his talk, I texted my team: 'Damn, Sam is good.' All 250 students in the audience were hooked.
His session was a fantastic mix of humor and entertainment, technical information, and emotional vulnerability that gives students the confidence to take a shot...
I can't recommend Sam highly enough for anyone interested in creating early-stage products, gathering feedback from potential users, or just learning tips for making it through the emotional grind of startup life.
Sam is an incredibly talented product designer and coach.
He was instrumental in helping FarmLogs design a product and brand that quickly became recognized for our ease of use, igniting years of rapid growth for our company.
I worked with Sam while he consulting for a startup where I was an intern. And I don't think it's too dramatic to say that his coaching alone made my internship feel worthwhile.
He was a great coach and mentor, guiding me through different phases of the design process. As industry tools come and go, it's this type of high-level thinking that I know will serve me well for a lifetime.
Thank you Sam!!
I began reflecting on how the hell I got here, going from a scared college freshman to shipping several features at Google this summer & currently working on a high profile Microsoft AI project.
Despite being an UMSI UX student, it was ENTR 390 that taught me the most about what a career in UX might look like. It was the most well taught, high functioning and practical course I've taken at UMich. My future projects & portfolio write-ups that would later get me these dream internships were all modeled after the one I made for 390.
I know how much work you three put in this course, and I want to convey how grateful I am for it. And beyond the basic design process and projects, you three also put an emphasis on ethics, inclusivity and accessibility in design that is so often overlooked in most courses.
I had the chance to work with Sam as a hiring manager as I was recruiting and hiring Designers for his team at FarmLogs.He brought a level of deep thinking and reflection that made him a true hiring partner in every sense.
He was always thinking strategically about how we could improve our recruiting process and candidate experience. He was also open to experimenting and trying new ways of finding and attracting talent. At the same time, he made a conscious effort to solicit feedback and iteratively improve his own interviewing and recruiting skills.
Any team would be lucky to have him and I'd love the opportunity to work with Sam again in the future.
I've hired Sam for design and executive level storytelling projects at JSTOR twice. He was my first choice because he focuses on organizational impact and hard work, never about his own ego. He’s the only consultant I've ever been completely comfortable bringing onto my team, and working daily with our executive team when called for.
When kicking off my flagship UX strategic initiative as a new VP, I needed someone who understood customer storytelling deeply, yet could manage VP and product stakeholders in a large organization. Our project was a huge success, shared with the entire organization and set forth our platform strategy from the point of view of happy customers. As a result, all the OKRs for our entire 300-person org were driven in large part from the story Sam wrote and illustrated with us.
Sam’s more than a great designer, he’s an expert in coaxing out product strategy and prioritization. He never ends a phase without asking if I’m completely satisfied with the work. I’m regularly looking for more ways to bring him back to support our team!
I worked with Sam very closely for a couple of years at FarmLogs. He was a really talented product designer, a very good partner to engineering, and his commitment to the product was inspirational.
One thing I admire about Sam’s approach is that he doesn’t design a solution before deeply understanding the problem domain. Before starting work on a new product, Sam starts by asking a lot of questions to understand what it is that we are trying to achieve—only then does he start designing the product. I saw many examples of Sam turning really complex problems into intuitive designs at FarmLogs.
Sam is also easy to work with and doesn’t take feedback on his work personally. Sometimes this quality is easy to overlook! He would make a great addition to any team and I recommend him highly.
I want to make this call incredibly valuable for you, regardless of whether we end up working together.
We’ll talk about:
After our call, I'll send you some design planning resources that are suited to your company.
If we agree your project might be a fit for my work, we can schedule a followup call to look at some of my past projects. If not, I’ll do my best to introduce you to another designer that’s a better fit for you.
Booking an introductory call is completely free with absolutely zero obligation.
I love meeting founders—I hope you'll give it a try 🙂
