Aloha, I'm Aaron. I've built products at every size: napkin sketch, funded startup, and $290B a year on BILL.
Selected work
Scaling accountant insights across 700+ firms.
Reframed a reporting backlog into one insights system, built the framework before the polish, and led the team that shipped it.
Open case study →
Bringing an older performance product up to date.
Led design on goals and reviews as Performance Management ARR grew from about $32M to $40M, while managing two designers.
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Helping farmworkers open an account 60% faster.
Flew out to the farms, watched onboarding take 12+ hours for every worker, and rebuilt it. Support calls about account setup dropped 80%.
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Saving a product Kuali was about to shut down.
Fewer than 20% of plans ever got finished. I rebuilt it around a guided flow in three months, part time, and Kuali hired a team to build it.
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One design system across seven products.
No mandate and no budget. I made the case for one design system, won leadership, and started the UI Guild that kept going after I left.
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Winning back a customer who audited us and walked.
UC San Diego found gaps and balked. Three days on site, four features designed with their users, and they signed.
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Keeping every at-risk customer by making programs simple.
Customers threatened not to renew. I tested the redesign with every one of them, and all of them stayed.
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Taking Bridge from training to talent management.
One month to an MVP for the CEO. Companies asked to pay before any code existed, and the product team doubled.
Open case study →
More work
AI co-pilot, shipped before ChatGPT.
Founding designer on a multiplayer AI co-pilot for product teams. Helped raise ~$1M pre-seed.
0→1 · AI-nativeAn LMS I designed, built, and sold.
Took an education concept the full arc from idea to a product someone wanted to own.
AcquiredWant a walkthrough of any of these? Get in touch →
How I lead
Name the real problem before touching the UI.
At BILL, the most useful thing I did was reframe "ship more reports" as "build one system," and get the company to fund the harder, better path.
See it at BILL →Lead as a player-coach.
I set the direction and hold the quality bar, and I stay close enough to the work to prove the direction is right. At Sendola I designed the hard parts and fixed how the team shipped.
See it at Sendola →Influence without waiting for authority.
At Kuali, with no mandate, I made the case for one design system across seven products, won leadership, and started a guild that kept going after I left.
See it at Kuali →Validate before you build.
At Bridge, companies asked to buy our prototype before any code existed. Since then I test with real customers before anyone builds.
See it at Bridge →Grow the designers around me.
I managed designers at Kuali and BambooHR, mentored at Sendola, and have coached designers for nearly a decade. I try to leave every designer better than I found them.
See it at BambooHR →The close
I'm Aaron, a product designer in Lāʻie, Hawaiʻi. I care about the people doing the work, clarity over cleverness, and shipping. I'm looking for a design leadership or founding-designer role where craft and leadership live in the same person. I work remotely from Hawaiʻi and I'm open to relocating for the right team.
I also teach: Human in the Loop, a course on designing with AI.