👋 Hey, I'm Geoff

When I approach design, I do so through these five lenses:

🩶 Empathy

For all designers, this process needs to start with the user. Asking them to articulate their needs so you can gain true empathy is the fuel that drives true product development. The reciprocal joy of helping solve someone else's problems and making their life easier is what should fuel the continued drive to create.

⚙️ Comprehensive Perspective

Having a meaningful understanding of the underlying principles of the software being built should be considered essential. It allows a designer to truly grasp the constraints and possibilities while still being able to advocate on the user's behalf. Whether coming at it from static screens, underlying code, or a hybrid of the two, a designer should think of these as multiple ways of approaching the same surface. It is all interconnected and inseparable.

📓 Storytelling

Everything a designer builds should be viewed through the lens of the narrative structure of a film. The first act is understanding what the user’s goal is and what’s at stake for them. The second act is about identifying what obstacles are getting in their way. The third is about creating a satisfying resolution by arriving at a solution based on what was learned along the way.

🎛️ Systems Thinking

Nothing is designed in a vacuum. Every consideration and decision should be thought through relative to the whole. The only way to approach a problem is to fully understand the scope of the situation and then distill it down to its most fundamental elements. This removes clutter and chaos and surfaces the signal in the noise.

⏱️ Time-Traveling

A designer needs to live in the "now.” Making pragmatic decisions about what to build within the constraints of resources and time. Simultaneously they should always be visioning into the future to solidify the ideal state. Traveling fluidly between these points in time is critical to maintaining context relative to the past, present, and future.