Product design that makes complex software feel obvious

What product design covers - and what it's for

Good product design is mostly invisible. Users find what they need, understand what state things are in, complete tasks without second-guessing, and recover easily when something goes wrong. When it works, nobody comments on the design; they just get on with their jobs.

That outcome comes from decisions made at several levels, and I work across all of them:

• Structure - how information and features are organised, named and found.
• Flow - the steps people take to complete tasks, and what happens at each one.
• Interface - the screens, components, states and words people interact with.
• System - the patterns that keep all of it consistent as the product grows.

Most of my work is on complex, data-heavy software: enterprise SaaS platforms, healthcare credentialing and operations tools, AI products, and B2B platforms with large catalogs and several types of buyer. These are products where the problem is rarely a lack of features - it is too much information, too many steps, or too little clarity about what happens next.

Why usability is a business problem

Poor usability is expensive in ways that rarely show up as a single line item. In healthcare, a national study found physicians gave electronic health records a mean usability score of 45.9 out of 100 - an "F" grade - and lower scores were strongly linked with burnout. In software generally, Pendo's analysis of product usage found that 80% of features in the average product are rarely or never used: effort spent building things users cannot find or do not need. And in B2B buying, where 86% of purchases stall at some point, a confusing product in a trial or pilot gives the buying group one more reason to pause.

The good news is that many of these problems are found cheaply. Jakob Nielsen's analysis showed that testing with five users uncovers about 85% of usability problems in a design, which is why small, repeated rounds of testing are built into how I work.

Principles I design by