I design complex products that experts can trust, and the systems that let teams ship them.
For 15 years I’ve worked on software where the stakes are high and the users know more than the product does: attorneys, knowledge lawyers, researchers, and enterprise teams. My job is to understand how their work really happens, then build products that find efficiencies, surface the right information, and get out of their way.
Most recently I was a Principal Product Designer at NetDocuments, a document-management platform used by 4,000+ law firms, corporate legal teams, and government agencies. I led design for a ground-up platform redesign and set direction for the AI product suite across five product teams. After we rebuilt the AI Assistant around trust patterns like citations and visible reasoning, its ratio of thumbs-up to thumbs-down ratings improved about 28%, and the AI team was named NetDocuments Team of the Year 2025. I prototype in code every day, so teams can see how a product behaves before we commit to building it.
I’m based in Madison, Wisconsin, where I’ve also taught UX at UW-Madison. I’m endlessly curious, I love digging into messy problems, and yes, I always have way too many tabs open.
The most valuable research question I know is “Walk me through the last time this broke down.” I use interviews, on-site visits, journey maps, and working sessions with subject-matter experts to find how work actually flows, who owns what, and where it fails. The most important findings are usually structural, like discovering that the people who write a standard aren’t the people who use it.
In complex software, information architecture decides whether people can do their jobs. Getting roles, permissions, navigation, and where things live right matters more than any single screen.
When several teams ship fast in parallel, the product drifts apart on its own. Design systems, shared patterns, and clear governance keep it coherent. I’ve built them from a foundation (Ant Design, Microsoft Fluent) and extended them for new needs like AI.
In regulated work, a single bad answer can cost a client. Good design, especially AI design, shows its work, surfaces uncertainty honestly, and makes it easy to verify and edit. The AI does the labor, and the expert makes the call.
I define success with product and engineering up front, using signals like adoption, task time, and how often users accept or override what the product suggests. Then I check whether the work actually delivered.
I can test a working concept with users in days instead of weeks. That makes design less about producing artifacts and more about finding the right bet quickly, and I expect the designers I mentor to work this way too.
I lead from a servant-leadership philosophy: my job is to serve the people on my team, the customers we design for, and the community we’re part of. In practice, that looks a lot like good design. You listen first, clarify the problem, and protect space for people to do their best work.
At NetDocuments I mentored senior product designers through 1:1s, critique, and growth goals, and partnered closely with UX research. I worked across five product teams with product managers and engineering leads, ran design-thinking workshops with cross-functional teams, and made sure design had a seat at the table early.
Earlier, as VP of Experience at ReadySet VR, I built the design practice from scratch. I established the UX process, grew the team from 5 to 11 across design, marketing, and web development, and directed the research that shaped the roadmap. When the pandemic hit, I led a rapid pivot from a headset-based VR product to a web-based SaaS platform under real time and resource pressure.
I care about building teams where people feel their work matters and their voice is heard.
Teaching is part of my practice, not a side thing.
I've taught live, synchronous UX certificate courses for career changers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Miami, covering design fundamentals, research methods, prototyping, usability testing, and portfolio development. Since 2020 I've mentored 50+ designers through Designlab and ADPList, including through Designlab's Career Services program, where I work directly with graduates on portfolio feedback, iteration, and interview prep to help them land jobs. More than 10 have landed their first design role.
I believe the design community gets stronger when experienced practitioners invest in the next generation, and I'm always open to teaching, guest lectures, workshops, and speaking.
"I'm a senior software engineer and I've worked with a lot of designers. Amy is one of the best, and she's easily operating at a Principal level. … She didn't stop at the happy path. Her prototypes covered edge cases, state transitions, and the messy interactions, so I rarely had to stop and ask 'what happens if...?' … Customers loved what she designed, and it showed in how quickly they adopted it."
"Design decisions genuinely weigh on her, because she's always asking what they mean for the person using the product. … She's the most systematic designer I've worked with. She led the way on how we'd use tokens in our design system, and took the time to do it properly, thinking through how every pattern and component should hold up across the whole product. When Amy owns something, she really owns it."
"Amy is a strong advocate for users' needs and their feedback. She brings research into design conversations early and leverages it effectively. … Instead of stopping at Figma designs, she built working prototypes in our codebase. … Her work cut down on misunderstandings of designs during QA, reduced engineering resources needed, created more realistic demos for product partners, and made interaction patterns clear for our stakeholders."
"Amy is the rare designer who doesn't stop at the handoff. Beyond designing the experience, she picked up front-end tickets herself and shipped production code alongside our engineers, including accessibility fixes, layouts that hold up at narrow widths, and forms that clearly tell people what they need and why something isn't accepted. … Because she understands how things are actually built, her designs were realistic to implement, and conversations about trade-offs were quick and productive."
"Amy did a wonderful job of providing clear direction for me to work towards. She would seek to include me in creative discussion and find new ways to use my talents. She created an environment that motivated and encouraged me to want to do my best work. She was always willing to listen to me and even asked for my feedback."
"Amy is an invaluable team member who is dependable, self-motivated, and self-aware. Her personality and skills together continually impress all those who she collaborates with. Having worked with her for 5+ years on a number of small to large projects, I can say confidently that she can handle anything that comes her way, and she is an incredible strength for any team."