Brian Christiansen is a Product and Design Leader in Greater Boston available for remote and local opportunities. Over the past 15 years he’s designed for consumer and enterprise SaaS businesses. His products are beloved by their users and stakeholders alike, and have generated tens of millions in revenue.
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Professional Summary
I’ve spent the past 6 years with The Weather Company designing powerful tools for meteorologists to keep the public safe from severe storms, as well as get their daily forecast. These tools included workstation-class native software as well as cloud applications. These tools are the standard in the broadcast meteorology field with roughly 90% marketshare. I pushed my teams to think broadly and build cutting edge tech, including with AI.
Before that I ran my own design practice, designing learning systems for Mac software shops, as well as SaaS systems in the healthcare industry.
My first job in the industry was with UIE (now known as Center Centre) where I designed and managed a dozen web apps to help designers learn design. These included event websites, an online video subscription service, a podcast network, and the company’s primary web site. I had the opportunity to rub shoulders with with some of the best designers in the industry which had a big impact on my view of the design and product world.
With a broad foundation of skills and experience, I consider myself a generalist in the field, able to play many different roles in a team. I work along side specialists, able to fill skill gaps between team members, while leading projects holistically.
When working with web tech, I am a proponent of using open web technologies to produce accessible, progressively-enhanced, responsive designs. Holding a M.Ed. in Instructional Design, I enjoy working where design and learning intersect.
The skills I have used the most over the past decade of UX work include,
- Facilitating cross-discipline stakeholder groups in product discovery workshops
- Building unambiguous product requirements traceable to core user and business needs.
- Researching and interpreting customer or user needs, from user research and usability tests, including drafting personas and scenarios.
- Sketching and ideation, both solo, in small groups or leading team design studio workshops, including constructive critique.
- Prototyping in paper and digitally (most recently with Figma), I prefer to get to web-native/app-native prototypes quickly to work with reusable styles and patterns, but there are situations that call for different forms.
- Organizing and guiding specialist talent for the execution of the visual and development aspects of the project. Technically adept, I’m at home working side-by-side with developers of all types.
- Product manager in the broadest sense–building teams of coworkers and contractors, managing the design process, right down to managing version control and deployment, to overseeing the QA process.
- I’ve mentored many interns, and love to teach.