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I build high-performing design teams that build better products.

For more than 15 years, I’ve helped organizations build stronger design practices, develop designers into leaders, and create more user-centered products. As a player-coach design leader, I partner with product and engineering teams to improve workflows, align strategy, and deliver meaningful customer outcomes.

Leadership

My leadership focuses on building strong UX teams and creating the structure and processes that help teams do their best work. I spend much of my time coaching designers, running critiques, improving collaboration between product, engineering, and UX, and helping teams think beyond individual features toward larger workflows and product direction.

I care about outcomes, but also about building sustainable, healthy teams. Work takes up a significant part of our lives, and I believe people do their best work when they feel trusted, supported, and connected to a shared purpose. Through coaching, candid critique, and career development, I’ve helped designers grow from intermediate to senior and senior to staff while building highly collaborative teams with strong trust and retention.

Coaching with Purpose

Building a culture of trust and mentorship where designers develop autonomy, confidence, and clarity. Personalized growth plans and regular critique sessions help turn feedback into growth.

Mentoring a designer at a whiteboard with a target

Design Processes and Alignment

Creating scalable patterns and processes that enable creativity while maintaining consistency. A well-structured system empowers teams to move fast without losing quality.

JTBD & ODI Thinking

Integrating Jobs-to-be-Done and Outcome-Driven Innovation principles to ground creativity in user goals. I help teams translate qualitative insights into actionable strategies and measurable success criteria.

Case Studies

Deep dives into leadership initiatives that shaped team development, organizational design maturity, cross-team alignment, and strategic clarity.

JTBD and ODI strategic discovery initiative

JTBD/ODI Strategic Discovery

Led a cross-team strategic discovery initiative that unified product teams around shared user workflows and measurable outcomes, creating a foundation for aligned product strategy and future vision work.

Private case study

Aligning UX Strategy Across Complex Workflows

Coached a team of six designers through a cross-team UX strategy initiative that translated JTBD/ODI research into current-state stories, vision stories, and workflow-driven roadmap direction across complex security domains.

Private case study

Building a UX Organization

Built and scaled a distributed UX team, developed designers, established research and design practices, and integrated user-centered design into an engineering-led product organization.

Private case study

Selected Work

A selection of product design work and maker projects, demonstrating strategic thinking, hands-on craft, and how I translate user outcomes into clear, usable interfaces across consumer and technical contexts.

Network Testing Dashboard

Designed a dashboard to provide real-time visibility into active network tests, helping engineers and managers spot issues faster and stay aligned across projects.

Network Throughput Test

Designed a traffic-mix testing interface that lets engineers emulate real application workloads, ramp load, and validate device performance and policy accuracy under realistic conditions.

5MinuteFretboard

Teaching through interaction
A drill-based tool that helps guitarists master the fretboard through short, repeatable exercises.
My focus: progressive flows, light gamification, and accessible micro-learning.
Skills demonstrated: onboarding, state clarity, micro-interactions, scoring logic.

Jam Along

Creative tools for musicians
A practice app with pitch shifting, tempo control, and fast navigation for both Apple Music and local audio.
My focus: intuitive creative controls and reducing friction in deep-work sessions.
Skills demonstrated: multimodal interaction, keyboard shortcut integrations, expert workflows, early AI/ML exploration.

1MinuteWorkouts

Habit-forming movement for desk workers
A fitness app that nudges users to move and offers short and long workout options.
My focus: low friction starts and creating simple paths to action.
Skills demonstrated: habit-forming UX, haptics, content architecture, notification strategy.

Rounds Timer

Designing for clarity under pressure
A minimal, high-contrast interval timer built for quick glances and hands-free training.
My focus: real-time state clarity, sound cues, and glanceable layouts.
Skills demonstrated: motion timing, haptics, usability under cognitive load.

What others say

A few words from people I've had the pleasure of working with over the years.

About

My career spans both consumer and enterprise software. I started in e-commerce and consumer technology before spending the last 15+ years leading design teams in complex SaaS, platform, security, and AI-driven products.

I’m a product design leader who pairs strategic clarity with a maker’s curiosity. For more than a decade, I’ve built and coached teams that deliver thoughtful, user-centered products, grounded in consistency, simplicity, and strong design craft.

Outside of work, I stay hands-on, building small iOS apps to solve my own Jobs-to-Be-Done, learning pottery from my wife, quilting her pieced tops on our computerized, long-arm machine, or relearning old-school heavy metal songs on guitar that I used to play as a kid.

These projects keep me experimenting, learning, and connected to the creative process. They’re a reminder that good work doesn’t require burning people out. I’ve seen again and again that when teams have space for life outside the product, the work gets sharper, more thoughtful, and more sustainable.

Contact

Email: justinmandell@gmail.com
Location: Remote (Indiana, US)

👋 Contact Me!

Whether you’re exploring ideas, looking for a collaborator, or just want to say hello 👋, I’d love to connect and talk about creating great software together.

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