An AI-literacy talk. 50 First Dates taught us how language models learn, without knowing it.
The model in three words
Params: set once, at training, then frozen. Context: set fresh, every session. Memory: gone by morning, unless you bring the tape.
Your job, not its feature
With a stateless model, keeping the world coherent is on you, and grounding isn’t truth: grounded garbage is still garbage.
Where the analogy ends
Memory asymmetry is power asymmetry, and the machine never paints you back.
Built for the room
A web deck that fits a projector or a phone: a slide index, swipe and arrow keys, a “starting soon” loop of trivia, and a ukulele track synthesized in the browser.
Every conversation is a first date. Bring the tape.
Design systems at brand scale, from the first reusable components on the new Marriott platform to the Web UI Kit today.
Foundation
Helped lay the Digital Design System’s foundation: UI toolkits, type ramps, design tokens, and documentation as a shared source of truth for Design, Dev, QA, and Content.
Scale
Led design and development of the first truly reusable components on the new platform, with Dan Mall and Brad Frost. About 300 new pages in 13 languages shipped on time for the Starwood / Bonvoy launch.
Components
Designed Banner Multi-Image for the Web UI Kit: 2–4 photos in three collage layouts, scroll parallax, and brand-aware tokens across the portfolio.
CoMixer
A content dressing room: editors fill structured fields and watch the page render in real, brand-themed components before approval, instead of judging copy in a static comp.
You can’t automate fit. But you can finally see it.
Bobo companion system
IndependentMulti-surfaceDignity-first
Systems UX for companionship and everyday support, for an aging parent who needs help without being reduced to a patient UI.
Surfaces
A TV home on glass, a phone remote, a companion hub, and a character with presence, sharing one design language.
Scene-aware
The assistant knows what’s playing and suggests what’s next, so help arrives in context.
Constraints
No camera or body tracking. Help framed as presence and co-play, not monitoring.
Research
A physical, color-coded remote (orange, blue, green, with food icons) to simplify choice.
Experience
Senior User Experience Designer
Marriott International, Digital / UX&D · Mar 2025 – present
Web UI Kit
Design-systems work on Marriott’s Web UI Kit: Storybook, Figma Code Connect, tokens, and reusable components that hold up across brands.
Storybook as the proof
Partner with Design and Engineering so the live Storybook component is the proof, not a handoff artifact.
CoMixer
Built CoMixer, which renders editors’ content in real brand-themed components during approval.
Accessibility
Champion accessibility and standards as product quality, not a compliance afterthought.
Founder
Creative Experiences LLC · Jan 2024 – present
Design systems and prototyping
Design systems, prototyping, and client delivery for companies and individuals.
Bug Trainer Pest Co.
Shipped a marketing site and field app for Bug Trainer Pest Co.
Independent work
TokenKit, Bobo, Finity, Yeehaul, NB-95, RL Coach and FlashterFX, all below.
User Experience Specialist
Geospark Analytics → Seerist · Sep 2020 – Jan 2024
One of the first 25, the only designer
Joined as one of the first 25 employees and the only designer; partnered with full-stack and product through planning and in-sprint.
Shipped on time
Live search, mass communication, and a mobile app redesign, and kept icon and asset libraries alive through the Geospark → Seerist rebrand.
Tools
Storybook, Material and HIG, Mapbox.
Senior UX Designer
Marriott International · 2012 – Sep 2020
Titles
Senior UX Designer, Digital Studio (Apr 2019 – Sep 2020); Global Digital Standards; Loyalty & Personalization; early UX lead on the Marriott.com agile pilot.
Digital Design System foundation
Helped lay the foundation of the Digital Design System: UI toolkits, type ramps, design tokens, and documentation.
First reusable components
Led design and development of the first truly reusable components on the new platform, with Dan Mall and Brad Frost; scaled to hundreds of pages in dozens of languages.
Starwood and Bonvoy launch
Delivered about 300 new pages in 13 languages on time for the Starwood acquisition and Bonvoy launch.
Booking, portal, research
Sticky Summary booking UX; On-Property Associate Portal (2018); qualitative research for loyalty and personalization.
Also built
Finity Sovereign Mk I
A physical product concept, designed and rendered as a 3D object in the browser.
An animation composer for the web: stack effects as clips on a timeline, scrub it, and export the result as JSON to use again. Its front page is a grid of a hundred animated Swipey faces; the playground is the tool.
Aviation as a metaphor for systems: five eras of flight, a pastry chef in the cockpit, and Wald’s bombers. The deck runs in Deckster, which I built so the audience flies planes over the slides from their phones.
