Jeff White

Stepladder

Our work focuses on improving outcomes for medical technology companies and the patients and healthcare professionals they serve.

Healthcare brands we've worked with:

Baxter
Hillrom
McClurg Healthcare Advisors
Premier
Trially.ai


Before specializing in healthcare, Stepladder provided UX and visual design services to clients ranging from Fortune 100 companies to seed stage startups in a variety of industries.

Clients included:

Amazon
Microsoft
Motorola
Citrix
Remitly
BabelBark
Cvent
Trupanion
Bamboo Learning
Code.org
Panopto
Woot!

Founder and Head of Design

Rebls

Design & Product Management Executive for seed stage startup.

•  Developed overall product vision, brand, visual language, and
product requirements for a v1 responsive web app
•  Designed all aspects of UX, directed visual designers through
development of visual language and brand
•  Translated market insights into product requirements
•  Managed engineering team including CTO
•  Involved in all aspects of business from recruiting to fundraising

Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer

Creative Director

Designer

Amazon

Lead a team that designed & delivered 27 applications for
the Amazon Fire Phone.

•  Managed a team of 6 UX Designers
•  Established and communicated application design processes
vertically and horizontally across many Amazon teams
•  Created and evangelized OS and application-level patterns
•  Presented to executives including CEO

Interaction Design Manager, Fire Phone

Designed applications and OS experiences for the Amazon Fire
Phone.

•  Designed Phone, SMS, Email, Calendar, and Contacts
applications
•  Established process and documentation standards adopted by all
application teams
•  Created patent-pending application design frameworks

Sr. User Experience Design Lead, Fire Phone

Design Lead, Kindle for iPhone and iPad.

•  Collaborated with stakeholders to define requirements for
cross-platform experiences
•  Lead team of internal and external visual and UX designers to
deliver Kindle for iPad and several versions of Kindle for iPhone

Sr. User Experience Designer, Kindle for iOS

Designer of Kindle for iPhone v1.0 - 2.7 and Kindle for BlackBerry.

•  Designed the UI architecture, interface, and interaction flow of
applications and experiences
•  Developed conceptual diagrams, wireframes, visual mockups,
click-throughs, and prototypes
•  Designed and conducted usability tests
•  Contributed the first mobile design pattern to Amazon’s existing
pattern library
•  Presented design to the UX team, product team, and executives

User Experience Designer, Amazon Kindle

Jewelry TV

Design lead for multiple teams building enterprise web applications.

•  Guided overall product development for several internal web
applications
•  Responsible for interface and interaction design of rich internet
applications
•  Developed methodology for conducting agile user-centered
design
•  Conducted usability tests, interviews, and contextual inquiry

UI Engineer (Interaction Designer)

Premier, Inc

Business Analyst

Web Specialist

Web Content Consultant

Improving Medtech software ➤ Advancing UX careers with storytelling @ uxstorytelling.io/course ➤ UX Consultant ➤ UX Designer & Educator

In 20 years as a UX/UI designer I've shipped hundreds of apps, websites, and features for big tech companies like Amazon and Motorola all the way down to tiny startups being run from a garage. 

5 years into my career I co-published an article about Agile UX work a colleague and I were doing at a broadcast retail company.

That led to several speaking engagements, and 1.5 years later I was in Seattle presenting the design for Kindle for iPhone 1.0 to Jeff Bezos.

I worked at Amazon for 6 years where I:

→ Designed and shipped dozens of Kindle reading apps used by millions
→ Got promoted 3 times
→ Managed and lead teams
→ Worked on highly visible "special projects"
→ Presented to Jeff Bezos and other execs more times than I can remember
 
And then I got burned out. 

So to recover I co-founded a tech startup. This is not a joke. This is also probably not advice I would give to anyone. 

The startup fizzled out quickly but it was my first exposure to entrepreneurship and I was hooked.

I didn't know what to do, I just knew I wanted to continue being out on my own.

With the help of others I started contracting. Over time that grew into a 7 figure design firm called Stepladder. 

Things about Stepladder that I'm proud of:

→ Short but impressive list of long time clients. We form partnerships.
→ 100% referral based
→ 100% of clients are repeat clients
→ Experienced designers come here to have more freedom in their life
→ Younger designers come here to get started and learn

I never dreamed that I would speak at conferences, work at a big tech name, or start companies. Yet here I am 20 years later incredibly fortunate, full of gratitude, sometimes a bit tired, and having learned:

→ You can't do it alone
→ Helping people is the best part of this job

I share what I've learned over the years here on LinkedIn and work with clients at www.stepladderUX.com.

Thanks for reading.

Conscious Design

Conscious design for humanity and the planet.⚡️

Speaker & Author 

Climate Insiders

Investments in early stage climate tech startups. We support disruptive hardware deep tech innovations with the potential to reduce 1 million tons of CO2e emissions. We democratize climate tech investing, empowering thousands to align their money with their values and utilize money as a powerful tool to drive positive change in combating climate change.

Investor

The Craft

Global leader in conscious design. 
Advisor and partner for climate tech startups. 
Educating designers at top tier companies on how to create sustainable product led growth.

Founder & Principal Designer 

Webflow

• Created vision for Webflow's new ecosystem in 2 months with leadership buy-in. 
• Determined goals and led prioritization of first release for product parity. 
• Created new design system and theme for marketplace, which decreased team's time spent designing.
• Managed contract designers from Pivotal/Tanzu. 
• Cut costs for project budget and saved thousands of dollars.

Senior Product Designer, Marketplace

MessageBird

• Designed new MFA authentication product, which enabled company to provide stronger security for customers.
• Innovated on SMS routing legacy solution to improve margins and decrease time. 
• Identified customer churn on new product and created direction for product market fit.
• Improve activation and retention with setup guide. 
• Increased Daily Active Orgs by 48% and increased WhatsApp applications by x3 with new onboarding.
• Refined processes (PRDs, sprint planning, project kickoffs, retros, research ops, and design system).
• Created new components and templates for design system, enabling team to produce quickly and be visually consistent.

Product Designer, SMS & Authentication 

Hired, Inc.

• Increased candidates on marketplace by 13.5% decreased onboard time by 15.3%, increased highly qualified candidates by 11.1%.
• Redesign increased candidates from employment page to marketplace by 138%. with intros to employers by 214%.
• Strategized and designed acquisition hooks which doubled employer engagement, decreased candidate cost per lead, and increased qualified onboards.
• Designed customer scheduling for demos with 80% take rate, decreased contact time from 7 days to 3 days.
• Increased companies on marketplace with self-serve trial experience. 
• Tested new design system functioned from prototypes to building of specs by engineers.

Product Design, Growth

Y Combinator

•  Aligned CEO and investors around research, observational studies, and product roadmap.

Product Designer

Zendesk

• Designed Zendesk's first e-learning and live training for the developer platform on APIs, apps, and embeddables.
• Applied design thinking, needs analysis, SME input, and user feedback to iterate and increase CSAT to over 97%.
• Contributed to team's reusable design components, guidelines, language, and template, which increased team's ability to work quickly at scale.

Instructional Designer for Developers

Founder, Startup Advisor, Impact Investor — On a mission to accelerate conscious design.

On a mission to accelerate conscious design for humanity and the planet. Join the movement by subscribing to the newsletter and podcast.⚡️

Sera Tajima is a UC Berkeley educated Startup Advisor, Designer, and Investor. 

She uses her expertise to guide climate tech startups through strategic growth and trains designers on sustainable product growth, a radical new approach. 

Sera is a Principal Product Designer specialized in growth. She has worked in tech for a decade elevating design at companies like Zendesk, Webflow, BetterUp, and Y Combinator startups. 

Sera is a featured speaker at design events and universities. She most recently gave talks with Floxies, Uber Design Team, Design X, World Information Architecture Day, Femke’s design community, the Honest UX Design Podcast, the Beyond UX Podcast, and the University of Waterloo.

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The Battle

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Sera Tajima

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