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Ryan Tillett

Hello

I’m Ryan Tillett, a senior product designer and hands-on leader based in Austin. I help teams make complex products, workflows, and decisions easier to understand and use.

My path has moved through enterprise product teams, consultancies, agencies, and my own studio. That range has taught me how product strategy, systems thinking, brand, and delivery influence one another—and how to connect them without losing sight of the people doing the work.

I’m most effective where direction and execution meet: framing the problem, making ideas tangible, building alignment, and helping a team carry the work forward. I’m also expanding my use of AI-assisted workflows and front-end implementation to shorten the distance between a promising concept and working software.

RESUME

EXPERIENCE

Feb 2025 – Jun 2026

Lead Product Designer

ADP — Lyric Onboarding · New York, NY

  • Led product design for self-service onboarding, translating product requirements, workflow gaps, and shared-service dependencies into incremental solutions.
  • Defined clear workflow lifecycle states and a scalable category, type, and subtype taxonomy to support different integration patterns.
  • Shifted the product from rigid templates toward flexible workflow creation and translated decisions into prioritized stories, prototypes, accessibility annotations, and engineering handoff.

Oct 2023 – Feb 2025

Lead Product Designer

Walmart Global Tech — Learning & Development · Bentonville, AR

  • Led discovery and product design for a zero-to-one enterprise learning product serving a broad U.S. associate audience.
  • Used story mapping to align Business, Product, and Engineering around a prioritized, incremental roadmap.
  • Demonstrated that a deeper learning-path hierarchy reduced mobile comprehension and progress tracking, influencing a simpler phone-optimized model.

Feb 2022 – Jul 2023

Director of Product Design

Arrive Logistics — Austin, TX

  • Led and coached three product designers while remaining hands-on across strategy, workflows, critique, and delivery.
  • Directed work for internal applications serving approximately 1,500 daily users and an external portal receiving approximately 10,000 monthly visitors.
  • Authored a communication-channel strategy later carried into implementation and introduced story mapping, user stories, estimation, and planning practices.

Apr 2018 – Feb 2022

Experience Architect

Projekt 202 — Austin, TX

  • Led discovery and experience design for Apiture Implementation Admin, a SaaS platform for configuring and submitting white-labeled mobile banking applications.
  • Used workflow research and story mapping to align a small cross-functional team around an aggressive licensing deadline.
  • Supported migration of 120+ existing customers and launch of 20+ new customers, eliminating a significant annual licensing expense and reducing time to market from weeks to days.

ADDITIONAL EXPERIENCE

  • Nov 2017 – Apr 2018

    Senior UX Designer

    iHeartMedia — Austin, TX

    Conducted contextual research, translated findings into prioritized product increments, and supported iterative design, testing, QA, and feedback triage.

  • Jul 2015 – Nov 2017

    Senior Interactive Art Director

    Somnio — Austin, TX

    Led experience strategy and creative direction for technology clients including IBM, Dell, HPE, and AT&T.

  • Jan 2013 – Jul 2015

    UX Design Consultant

    Pixelui — Bozeman, MT

    Designed responsive digital experiences and expanded proficiency in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

  • Jan 2004 – Dec 2012

    Director of Web Development / Founder

    Future-Farm — Bozeman, MT

    Founded and operated an interactive design agency serving more than 100 organizations.

CAPABILITIES

Product Strategy & Discovery

Product framing · Discovery · Competitive analysis · Story mapping · Roadmaps · Prioritization · Stakeholder alignment · User stories

Interaction, Systems & Research

Complex workflows · Information architecture · Taxonomy · User flows · Interaction design · Prototyping · Contextual interviews · Usability testing

Leadership & Delivery

Hands-on leadership · Mentoring · Design critique · Cross-functional facilitation · Agile planning · Accessibility · Engineering handoff

Tools & Technical Practice

Figma · Miro · Atlassian · Adobe Creative Suite · Pendo · Google Analytics · HTML · CSS · JavaScript · AI-assisted prototyping

EDUCATION

  • 2019

    Certified Scrum Product Owner

    Scrum Alliance

  • 1998

    Bachelor of Fine Arts — Visual Communication

    Montana State University

AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS

  • 2020
  • "Under the Radar"
  • Projekt202—Annual Company Awards
  • 2016
  • Innovative Marketing Excellence
  • IBM Innovative Marketing Awards—Assessment Generator Tool
  • 2012
  • Best Toy & Hobby—Integrated Marketing Campaign
  • Internet Advertising Competition—Kidrobot Dunny Azteca II
  • 2006
  • Gold Addy—Interactive Website Consumer
  • American Advertising Awards—Future-Farm
  • 2005
  • Gold Addy—Interactive Website Consumer
  • American Advertising Awards—Buffalo Ranch
  • 2004
  • Gold Addy—Advertising Self-promotion
  • American Advertising Awards—Future-Farm Brand Identity
  • 2004
  • GOLD ADDY—Website Self-promotion
  • American Advertising Awards—Brickhouse Creative
  • 2000
  • Macromedia Flash—Site of the Day
  • Macromedia—Yellowstone Geographic