Howdy. I'm Joel, a people-centric product designer who designs creative and functional solutions to complex business problems.

Projects

Mosaic.us

Builder Portal Orthomosaic Feature

Increasing trust with builders through visualizing construction progress.

Mosaic.us

Mosaic Tile Design System

Speeding up development through bridging the gap between design and engineers.

Test Project

Superpowered!

Building a stronger team through expressing your superpowers.

Website

Kris Ann Valdez

Helping an author connect with potential publishers and editors.

Story

That fact that my journey into product design has not been a straight line...is what makes me an effective designer. My english background prepared me to appreciate stories. My training in philosophy gave me a love for analysis and research. My varied experiences in pastoral ministry gave me the abilities to lead, communicate, and also empathize with a diverse range of people. Lastly, my experience in administration and operations in a startup environment gave me a front row seat to see how businesses operate.

I have 15+ years of professional experience, and I am now several years into product/ux design. In that time, I've gained experience in designing features, building design systems, working with developers to implement designs, and conducting user research. Most recently at Mosaic, I added to my design skills by getting six months of experience in coding frontend prototypes in React/Next.js. I am fortunate in that I have been exposed to a wide range of design challenges and have been able to grow a lot in the time I've been a designer. I'm excited to continue to grow in my career and help companies level up their platforms and products!

What Others Say About My Work

In terms of soft skills, Joel is easy to work with, creative, excels at handling change and adversity, and is a compelling communicator and public speaker...In terms of hard skills, Joel has a keen eye for design, both for product and graphically (including presentations etc), and is able to think computationally to write code. I was particularly impressed at how Joel picked up coding using React and shad-cn in his last six months on my team. I highly recommend Joel...

- Max Leiserson, SVP of Technology, Mosaic.us

"In the time that I've worked with Joel, there are a couple of words that come to mind and those are determination and perseverance...Joel is strong when it comes to digging into the problem space, finding out what makes people "tick", so to speak and then coming up with multiple solutions to make things better. I've seen Joel grow tremendously over the course of the year in working with him...Joel is a solid product designer and he would be a great addition to any product design team!"

- Salina Khatha, Product Design Manager

"I had the pleasure of working with Joel for several years, and he was a true jack-of-all-trades. Whether it was business operations or product design, he excelled at everything he did. Beyond his ability to execute, Joel is incredibly kind and has an infectious enthusiasm that makes him a joy to work with. Any team would be lucky to have someone like him."

- Parker Rounds, Head of Platform Operations, Mosaic.us

"...as a designer, there is no challenge that Joel doesn't accept and complete with excellence! He is a super fast learner, very resilient, pays attention to details and always has contributions and ideas to improve the designs."

- Guilherme Silveira, Sr. Product Designer

"I tried to save money by switching from the user-friendly Wix to Wordpress and spent frustrating hours trying to create a simple website. Finally, I reached out to Joel, who took my samples & ideas & ran with it to produce a clean, modern site—exactly what I asked for. I couldn’t believe how hard Wordpress was so navigate using the host, and was so fortunate to have Joel!"

- Kris Ann Valdez, Author