I’m Chris, a senior UX and product designer, educator, and author based in Los Angeles. I move between shipping products and teaching the designers who will build what comes next. That loop keeps my work honest: what I teach has to survive contact with real teams, and what I build has to be explainable to a first-year student.
I studied painting at Colorado State University and media design at ArtCenter College of Design, and I still think like a maker. I draw to think, and I believe design is a making practice: what you make at first will likely not be very good, and that means you are learning to make it better.
Today I teach interaction design at Santa Monica College, teach at Otis College of Art and Design and ArtCenter, and mentor designers through Designlab and ADPList. Before that I taught at UCLA Extension, UC Irvine Extension, Loyola Marymount, and UT Austin, and designed the UX/UI bootcamp curriculum for Trilogy and 2U.
My approach is simple: understand people, make the problem visible, and test small ideas quickly. I care about craft, clarity, and kindness in critique.
- 15+years in UX & product
- 1,000+students taught
- 3books & guides
Books, writing, and speaking
I wrote Learn Human-Computer Interaction and Effective UX Design Strategies, and recorded UX design video courses for Packt. I publish on Medium, including pieces picked up by UX Collective, and I’ve contributed to UXmatters, UXPA, ZURB Glare, Optimal Workshop, and ProtoPie. I also speak and run workshops on AI, design systems, and sketching-first design.
Sketches and Illustrations from my articles on Medium
Contact
Tell me about the problem.
I’m not the user, and neither are you. If you have a product that needs a clearer direction, a class that needs a guest, or a team that needs a workshop, tell me what you’re working on and I’ll reply within a few business days with next steps.