At Capital One, I helped build out the infrastructure to support design culture at the scale of hundred of designers, while also spinning up new functions for the organization, including establishing and leading our events, publishing, and Responsible AI teams.

After 13 years, Adaptive Path left the consulting business when it became part of Capital One’s newly formed digital design group. Along the way, I had become an international public speaker, delivering keynote talks on practically every continent.

In 2005, I codified an emerging pattern in Web applications that decoupled user interaction from server communication. I decided that was a mouthful, so I called it “Ajax”. Ajax introduced new interaction models and soon became a part of practically every site on the Web.

From 2002-2016 we brought our community together for UX Week, a conference of inspiration and education for UX practitioners, for which I served as conference chair and onstage MC for many years. We also held events on design methodology, management, and service design.

At Adaptive Path, I held the titles of President and Chief Creative Officer, providing creative support and mentorship to our team leaders. I led large engagements for clients such as NPR, Allstate, CNN, Nike, and Disney, as well as our pro-bono research and development work.

In 2002, The Elements of User Experience became a book, eventually being used in college courses around the world and introducing thousands of people to the field for the first time. I can't count the number of people who have personally told me the book changed their lives.

With six other designers, I co-founded the UX consultancy Adaptive Path in 2001, when few had heard of this kind of work and fewer still believed in its value. We became influential by writing about and teaching our methods and insights (sometimes to our competitors!).

In 2000, my diagram “The Elements of User Experience” became one of the most widely referenced frameworks for understanding user experience design for digital products. If you’ve seen any of the hundreds of “UX Iceberg” diagrams out there, it was probably based on Elements.

Hello humans of Bluesky! I’m currently an executive leadership coach, but I’ve been in tech for more than 25 years now, so here’s a thread of ways you may have come across me or my work. 🧵