Brian Hildman
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Bio
Diana Ardaryan
Brian and I worked together on the Stores UX team at Gap inc. He was the primary designer and subject matter expert for a couple of our in-store iOS mobile and tablet applications. During my time with him at Gap, Brian constantly tried to find ways to optimize and innovate on work flows for both internal HQ employees and in-store associates. He is a natural at bringing people together from different functions of the business, some who have very little knowledge of UX, to facilitate brainstorming sessions for various projects. Brian’s mastery of the subject allowed him to create fun and easy-to-understand artifacts explaining our large and complex ecosystem of stores products to different groups across the organization. His goal was to bring alignment , collaboration, and innovation across products and team members like engineering, store operations, product management, change management, and revenue & accounting. Brian’s passion for UX is contagious - he takes a human-centered approach to his work, whether it’s in his digital work or in the way he supports others on his team.
Will Abbott
Brian was great to work with. His attention to detail within a UI and capability to see and improve systems at scale always impressed me. His work ethic is quite remarkable, and not only on his own projects. As a great teammate, he would take the time to listen, understand, and give quality feedback on other’s projects. His application of design thinking toward proving out concepts and rapid iteration was a great asset for our team. He really payed attention to the end user’s needs. Aligning the service and design ecosystem of Gap’s internal tools around them.
Diana Ardaryan
Brian and I worked together on the Stores UX team at Gap inc. He was the primary designer and subject matter expert for a couple of our in-store iOS mobile and tablet applications. During my time with him at Gap, Brian constantly tried to find ways to optimize and innovate on work flows for both internal HQ employees and in-store associates. He is a natural at bringing people together from different functions of the business, some who have very little knowledge of UX, to facilitate brainstorming sessions for various projects. Brian’s mastery of the subject allowed him to create fun and easy-to-understand artifacts explaining our large and complex ecosystem of stores products to different groups across the organization. His goal was to bring alignment , collaboration, and innovation across products and team members like engineering, store operations, product management, change management, and revenue & accounting. Brian’s passion for UX is contagious - he takes a human-centered approach to his work, whether it’s in his digital work or in the way he supports others on his team.
Will Abbott
Brian was great to work with. His attention to detail within a UI and capability to see and improve systems at scale always impressed me. His work ethic is quite remarkable, and not only on his own projects. As a great teammate, he would take the time to listen, understand, and give quality feedback on other’s projects. His application of design thinking toward proving out concepts and rapid iteration was a great asset for our team. He really payed attention to the end user’s needs. Aligning the service and design ecosystem of Gap’s internal tools around them.
Diana Ardaryan
Brian and I worked together on the Stores UX team at Gap inc. He was the primary designer and subject matter expert for a couple of our in-store iOS mobile and tablet applications. During my time with him at Gap, Brian constantly tried to find ways to optimize and innovate on work flows for both internal HQ employees and in-store associates. He is a natural at bringing people together from different functions of the business, some who have very little knowledge of UX, to facilitate brainstorming sessions for various projects. Brian’s mastery of the subject allowed him to create fun and easy-to-understand artifacts explaining our large and complex ecosystem of stores products to different groups across the organization. His goal was to bring alignment , collaboration, and innovation across products and team members like engineering, store operations, product management, change management, and revenue & accounting. Brian’s passion for UX is contagious - he takes a human-centered approach to his work, whether it’s in his digital work or in the way he supports others on his team.
Will Abbott
Brian was great to work with. His attention to detail within a UI and capability to see and improve systems at scale always impressed me. His work ethic is quite remarkable, and not only on his own projects. As a great teammate, he would take the time to listen, understand, and give quality feedback on other’s projects. His application of design thinking toward proving out concepts and rapid iteration was a great asset for our team. He really payed attention to the end user’s needs. Aligning the service and design ecosystem of Gap’s internal tools around them.
Diana Ardaryan
Brian and I worked together on the Stores UX team at Gap inc. He was the primary designer and subject matter expert for a couple of our in-store iOS mobile and tablet applications. During my time with him at Gap, Brian constantly tried to find ways to optimize and innovate on work flows for both internal HQ employees and in-store associates. He is a natural at bringing people together from different functions of the business, some who have very little knowledge of UX, to facilitate brainstorming sessions for various projects. Brian’s mastery of the subject allowed him to create fun and easy-to-understand artifacts explaining our large and complex ecosystem of stores products to different groups across the organization. His goal was to bring alignment , collaboration, and innovation across products and team members like engineering, store operations, product management, change management, and revenue & accounting. Brian’s passion for UX is contagious - he takes a human-centered approach to his work, whether it’s in his digital work or in the way he supports others on his team.
Will Abbott
Brian was great to work with. His attention to detail within a UI and capability to see and improve systems at scale always impressed me. His work ethic is quite remarkable, and not only on his own projects. As a great teammate, he would take the time to listen, understand, and give quality feedback on other’s projects. His application of design thinking toward proving out concepts and rapid iteration was a great asset for our team. He really payed attention to the end user’s needs. Aligning the service and design ecosystem of Gap’s internal tools around them.
Experience
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Designlab
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United States
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Design Services
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100 - 200 Employee
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Mentor
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Sep 2015 - Present
I provide advice and guidance around User Experience Design & Research for folks looking to transition into this field. I provide advice and guidance around User Experience Design & Research for folks looking to transition into this field.
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Freelance/ Contractor
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Sep 2005 - Present
Consulting for product teams large and small that require design thinking, research, analysis, and passion. Currently working on a series of articles exploring "Pain & Product Design". Empathetic Masochism: Why Embracing Pain Results in Healthier Product Outcomes https://medium.com/@brianhildman/empathetic-masochism-why-embracing-pain-results-in-healthier-product-outcomes-8d7a1ba4a952 Consulting for product teams large and small that require design thinking, research, analysis, and passion. Currently working on a series of articles exploring "Pain & Product Design". Empathetic Masochism: Why Embracing Pain Results in Healthier Product Outcomes https://medium.com/@brianhildman/empathetic-masochism-why-embracing-pain-results-in-healthier-product-outcomes-8d7a1ba4a952
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Dialpad
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United States
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Software Development
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700 & Above Employee
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Senior Product Designer
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Mar 2022 - Mar 2023
Full-stack design responsibilities for Dialpad’s Contact Center as a Service (CcaaS) track, designing ai-centric analytics experiences used by supervisors and managers in contact centers. Dialpad wanted their day to be efficient, while feeling modern and sexy. For analytics that means making data visible, simple, and actionable. - Led design for Dialpad Business Intelligence, a historical analytics experience. Drove project from a small pilot to release. Increased daily active users by 88% over 3 months, and saved users an average of 2-10 hours per week from manipulating raw data in spreadsheets. - Led user research efforts around data viz. to provide discovery insights, and usabiliIty findings. Leveraged quant/qual insights to affect strategy, reduce friction, identify e2e opportunities, and build a shared empathy for supervisor drivers and pain points. - Scoped projects to identify risk, advocate for additional resourcing, and mentor designers as we brought them into the track. Show less
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Edelman Financial Engines
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United States
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Financial Services
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700 & Above Employee
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Sr. User Experience Designer
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Oct 2020 - Mar 2022
I lead the UX within a new department for several retail experiences, connecting prospective clients with financial planners in order to build trust, foster financial security, and grow NCI. - Brought an online scheduling experience from a small pilot to release, delivering a 10% Set Rate lift. - Co-led the first E2E baseline usability findings for the prospect experience, presenting quant and qual insights to inform resourcing and roadmap discussions for 2022. - Represented UX during an agile transformation workshop series, and mentors other designers. - Led the UX for ADA initiatives. Evangelized designing for accessiblity, created a system to identify and track accessibility issues to bring key products from failing to AA compliance. - Identified gaps in EFE’s design system, and crafted new components. Show less
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Gap
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United States
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Retail
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700 & Above Employee
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Sr. UX Designer
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May 2018 - May 2020
Product designer on the Stores team, where we simplified store operational processes by understanding the goals and frustrations of both retail associates, and our shoppers. Responsible for designing solutions around point of sale, inventory management, compliance, and fulfillment. Facilitated service design sessions with cross-functional teams to align on strategy, and expose complexity. Conducted user research during Discovery and Design phases. Led stakeholder interviews, contextual inquiries, and in-store usability tests. Leveraged qual and quant data to validate a process that guided associates through their daily stockroom audits, giving the business access to new data to use as a baseline for future iterations (Accuracy %, Units Audited). Took a Proof of Concept for daily audits from pilot store to fleet. Rolled the feature out to 4 unique brands with different associate behaviors and procedures, spanning 3,300 stores in 3 locales (US, Canada, Japan). Collaborated with Store Support, Operations, and Employee Training to ensure a seamless rollout. Identified gaps in the Store’s design system, and evolved 4 new components in alignment with their team. Leveraged the design system to deliver final specs for development in order to sunset our legacy POS technology. Show less
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Walmart
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United States
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Retail
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700 & Above Employee
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Sr. User Experience Architect
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Jun 2017 - Nov 2017
I was brought on to evangelize service design and systems thinking, in order to bring a mobile in-store pickup experience from beta to fleet. - Faciliated a cross-functional service design workshop on in-store pickup to align on strategy, build empathy, and assist in ethnographic analysis. - Helped MVP product grow from beta to a nation-wide chain expansion of 1500+ stores, delivering on project goals for: NPS, Wait Time, Perceived Wait Time, & Adoption Rates. - Co-led a hacked Google Sprint to inform roadmap decisions, gathering insights on shopper attitudes around Chatbots. - Assisted with ethnographic research, including shop alongs and employee shadowing. - I came into a product at MVP, helping out alongside the team and Answer Lab with a usability test in Houston. We took the qualitative feedback to simplify the process, and the resulting flow got us to meet our goal of an avg wait time of 5 minutes. This resulted in securing necessary approvals from Central Operations to expand our product from around 15 stores, to over 1500. This came just in time for the critical 2017 holiday season. Show less
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MetaDesign
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Germany
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Design
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200 - 300 Employee
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Sr. User Experience Designer - Contract
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Apr 2017 - Jun 2017
Brought on to to consult for a consumer electronics client. Brought on to to consult for a consumer electronics client.
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Ticketmaster
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United States
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Entertainment Providers
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700 & Above Employee
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Sr. User Experience Designer
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Nov 2014 - Feb 2017
I provided solutions for Ticketmaster ONE, a SaaS platform designed around the lifecycle of live events for live events professionals. We were tasked with creating sticky products by designing for dopamine and oxytocin - fueling the next generation of live events professionals who are addicted to their job. - Led the UX for Ticker, a B2B native iOS/ Android app for B2B live events employees to visualize their data to make informed decisions. - Planned and conducted contextual inquiries for Discovery research, and validated ideas through usability testsing. - Partnered with Thoughtworks to implement agile methodology and research into Ticketmaster’s process. Feature development times went from taking month(s), to week(s). - Worked with product to implement Mixpanel, grew user base from 30 to 1000 active users, and increased retention by 40%. - Evolved research around the Entertainment personas that use the Ticketmaster One platform. (Venue Execs, Box Office Managers, Venue Operations, Artist Managers, Marketers, Organizers, Analysts.) - Presented a concept for streaming data and marketing add-ons at the TM 24 Hackathon. Show less
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Best Buy
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Retail
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700 & Above Employee
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Mgr. User Experience/ Digital Experiences & Mobile
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Sep 2012 - Aug 2014
Tasked with innovating Best Buy’s omnichannel experience to compete with Amazon. - Led the UX for BBY’s mobile and in-store channels, resulting in a double digit growth in revenue over 2013. - Managed an external designer when timelines got tight to deliver a modern Windows 8 mobile shopping experience. - Delivered prototypes and UI, including partnering with insights to validate ideas through usability testing. Tasked with innovating Best Buy’s omnichannel experience to compete with Amazon. - Led the UX for BBY’s mobile and in-store channels, resulting in a double digit growth in revenue over 2013. - Managed an external designer when timelines got tight to deliver a modern Windows 8 mobile shopping experience. - Delivered prototypes and UI, including partnering with insights to validate ideas through usability testing.
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Saatchi & Saatchi
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United Kingdom
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Advertising Services
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700 & Above Employee
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Interaction Designer
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Aug 2011 - Jun 2012
My career jumpstarted in a fast-paced agency environment for shopper marketing. I found a knack for helping teams understand how users use technology, but realized the agency business model in 2012 sold solutions and deliverables to clients, without the margins or timelines to validate ideas and generate lasting user value. - Explore and execute the Shopper Marketing and E-Commerce experiences for Fortune 50 clients. - Met the Interaction Design & Information Architecture needs for the North American Saatchi X network providing UX across horizontals for Saatchi's clients - Took complex requests and worked with account and stakeholders to make them simple Clients: Procter & Gamble. Walmart. Pepsico. TracFone. Show less
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Martin Williams Advertising
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United States
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Advertising Services
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1 - 100 Employee
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Interactive Contractor
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Oct 2010 - Mar 2011
My responsibilities included Development, Creative Tech & User Experience for M|W's interactive advertising campaigns for their midwest clients. My responsibilities included Development, Creative Tech & User Experience for M|W's interactive advertising campaigns for their midwest clients.
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Designer
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Sep 2010 - Mar 2011
Awarded 1st Place Nationally for Best Academic Conference for Students & Professionals within our division. - Assisted with branding & fundraising, to execute a conference that bridged hundreds of students with advertising professionals. Awarded 1st Place Nationally for Best Academic Conference for Students & Professionals within our division. - Assisted with branding & fundraising, to execute a conference that bridged hundreds of students with advertising professionals.
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Designer
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Aug 2009 - Jan 2010
I got to represent dreams, memories, far away places, and global cultures for WE's potential clients. Design & Digital Asset Management. Client liason. I got to represent dreams, memories, far away places, and global cultures for WE's potential clients. Design & Digital Asset Management. Client liason.
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University of Wisconsin-Stout
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United States
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Higher Education
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700 & Above Employee
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Assistant Designer
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Sep 2007 - May 2009
- Designer for UW-Stout's marketing initiatives - Worked with my clients from project conception to completion. Brainstorming, Designing, Printing, Delivery. - Designer for UW-Stout's marketing initiatives - Worked with my clients from project conception to completion. Brainstorming, Designing, Printing, Delivery.
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Education
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2006 - 2010
University of Wisconsin-Stout
BFA Multimedia Design, Business Administration -
2005 - 2006
Century College
None, Graphic Design
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