About
I've built the same thing my whole career, and it keeps getting bigger. In my agency and Flash years it was branded design systems, built fast, for Cadillac and McDonald's. At Google Cloud, a design tool for prototyping with real components, no code. At Reddit, an AI harness that became the company's de facto way to decide.
The move is always the same: find the thing a group of people does slowly by hand, and build the system that lets one person — or now, one model — do it well.
I'm a designer who engineers and an engineer who designs. That used to be a hard thing to staff.
I build the layer other people build on. It has a cost: the tool arrives before the organization is ready for it. A design tool asks designers to stop drawing pictures. A harness asks a team to believe the prototype is disposable.
So half the work is the system. The other half is writing it down clearly enough that someone can pick it up without me in the room.
Before this: a pillow company that did $750k in sales and landed on the Today Show. The menus and HUD for Halo 4. An encrypted walkie-talkie app for Motorola. At Reddit before Proto, GIFs in comments. The throughline is one instinct: make the complicated thing feel simple, and build the tool that keeps it that way.
| Years | Where | Title | What |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024–now | Principal UX Engineer | Lead of Reddit Proto, the AI harness that became the company's de facto way to decide. | |
| 2021–2024 | Staff UX Lead and Manager | Posting and commenting. Images, video and GIFs in comments, and a rebuilt post composer. | |
| 2015–2021 | UX Lead and Senior UX Engineer | Google Cloud. A no-code design tool, a prototyping framework critical to 8 launches, and the access controls that unblocked the IAM launch. | |
| 2014–2015 | Motorola | UX Lead and Senior iOS Developer | Encrypted push-to-talk for governments, militaries and enterprises. |
| 2011–2014 | PillowMob | Co-founder | Your face on a pillow. Profitable within 6 weeks. Sold my equity after three years. |
Education
School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Bachelor of Fine Arts, emphasis on Art & Technology.
Seen and heard on
- NBC's Today Show
- Wired
- Fast Company
- Stuff You Should Know
- Gizmodo
- Cracked
- Incredible Things
- Evening Magazine
- New Day Northwest
- Seattle magazine
- Engadget
- 9to5Mac
How I lead
I lead by clearing the way, not calling the shots. In my peers' words, I "just clear the way": unblock the work, then fix the system that blocked it. I don't manage people so much as remove what's in front of them.
- I have a big voice, and I use it to hand other people the mic. Everyone comments, and leaders comment last. I go looking for the views that aren't mine, because they make the work better.
- I make it safe to be new at something. Reddit Proto didn't spread because the tech was good. It spread because nobody was afraid to ask how it worked. Right now everyone is a beginner again, so that matters more than ever.
- I give the credit away. What I build is a stage for other people's work: I set up a boilerplate as a test bed for a teammate's accessibility work. Give credit, take blame.
- I bring the energy. A colleague joined Reddit because of it; another says Reddit is "on the Blair train." Energy is what makes a hard problem feel worth taking on.
- I persuade with a framework and the data. That's how GIFs in comments went from a paid perk to a free feature.
It works because it multiplies. I don't need to be the smartest person in the room. I make everyone else in it faster, braver and more capable, then get out of their way.
Right now I lead Reddit Proto, and I built this site the way I build there: the harness first, the pages second.
Away from the screen: picnics on Lake Washington with my wife and son, cycling the Pacific Northwest to African blues, and a daydream about a boutique hotel in the Cascades where city mice can bathe in the forest.
The problems I like best are the ones where judgment and taste matter more than throughput, worked on with people building something they believe in. Email me if you'd like to compare notes.
Open to a good conversation
If you're building the tools agents work through, let's talk.
The best version of this work can't go on a public page. Email me and I'll show you the rest in person.