Portfolio
Product Leader, Conceptual Designer & Researcher
Hi, I’m Brendan. I help good folks make amazing software.
My expertise is in product discovery, UX research, conceptual design, Product Management, ProductOps, knowledge management, facilitating design workshops, and building high-performing design and product teams. The tools I’ve built grow businesses, create swarms of passionate champions, and win prolific awards.
I’ve spent more than a decade learning from brilliant humans and honing these skills at Capsim, small startups, and now in a research team working at the cutting edge of human computer interaction.
Below is a small look at what I’ve done. Here’s a formal CV for official channels.
Most importantly, if any of this strikes your eye, let’s talk. It’s always easier to connect over a conversation.
Enjoy. 🙌
Selected Work
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At Capsim, I spent nearly 10 years bringing new software simulations and authoring tools to life, as I led new product development.
Here, we’ll look at a period between 2017-2021. This began with our discovery, design, and development of the award-winning training tool, Inbox, which I led as Senior Product Manager.
Later on after discovering the expert-creator gap, I led development of the Inbox Authoring Platform and our subsequent two-sided marketplace for corporate training, as Director of Product Design & Development.Want to see how the work was done?
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I spent the final 5 years at Capsim leading designers and product people as Director, Product Design & Development. I feel it is my calling to responsibly lead humans to their best.
Our aim was to elevate our design practice and craft experiences students, professors, and corporate trainers loved.Here, I managed 4 Product Managers, 5 Product Designers (UI, UX, Interaction, Research), 1 Scrum Master, and a rotating team of engineers. I was directly responsible for their growth and the performance of our product suite.
Want to see how we did our work?
Highlighted Cases — Design Playbook, Communication Style Guide, Design System, Agile Transformation, (for fun) Hiring through Game Design
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Throughout 2021 and 2022, I explored how researchers synthesize knowledge and form new theories as part of a small, funded research team of academics and designers.
Here, I led interviews with academic researchers in HCI, software builders, web3 founders, and New York Times best-selling authors. We codified insights from these interviews in a networked notebook constructed for the exploration and accretion of knowledge in this rapidly growing field.
Our goal was to publish our work to the CEO of Edge & Node. We did so in February 2022, and this is now shared publicly today. Read on! Subsequent journal publications are coming in Fall 2022.
Some of the work is private, but password protected here.
Case 1 — Information Architecture + Knowledge Management in Obsidian and Roam
Case 2 — Designing Interviews + Codifying Qualitative Themes
Case 3 — Publishing Academic Work
For fun...
I write quite a bit about design in the real world. Sign up here for a fun note on the last day of each month.
I’ve moved my writing to Substack, so here’s the backlog of pieces you may have missed.