Engagements
Three flexible ways to bring in senior depth, scaled to your needs, timing, and roadmap.
I take on a small number of teams navigating complex content and experience decisions inside regulated and enterprise organizations. Choose the way of working that fits now, and move between them as your needs change.
Ways of working
Leadership, Advisory, or On Call
Leadership
Embedded senior design and experience leadership.
- Agencies and in-house pharma, healthcare, start-up, and enterprise teams that need senior UX, CX, and content leadership inside an active program.
- Experience strategy, information architecture, content frameworks, and regulatory-ready flows, worked hands-on with PMs, creative, copy, and engineering.
- A strategy call, then scoping by program, duration, and how I join the team.
Advisory
Focused guidance on a defined opportunity, challenge, or decision.
- VPs, directors, and senior leaders who need senior counsel on one defined question, without a full-time hire.
- A diagnostic, clear options, and a decision-ready deliverable: a Strategic Snapshot, an Engagement Sprint, or an AI Opportunity Diagnostic.
- A strategy call to define the question, then a scoped engagement.
On Call
Ongoing access to a senior thinking partner.
- Leaders running multi-quarter initiatives who want senior judgment available when decisions land.
- Working sessions on your cadence, async review between them, and direction for vendor and dev teams, onshore and offshore.
- A strategy call, then a monthly retainer scoped to the access you need.
When the scope calls for it, I can also assemble and lead the right team across copy, creative, and development.
Not sure which fits?
Start with a free 30-minute call, no pitch.
Engagement type 01
Leadership: Embedded Product Vision, UX & Experience Design Lead
Senior UX, CX, IA, content strategy, and engagement strategy inside active business goals. I work directly with PMs, creative directors, account leads, copywriters, visual designers, and engineering partners on campaigns (US and Global), platforms (app and enterprise systems), websites, apps, VR, and sales tools.
- Site architecture, wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity mockups
- Content frameworks, taxonomy, and IA documentation
- Regulatory-ready flows designed to survive RC, MLR, and FDA review
- Design system contributions and brand-template work
- Cross-functional partnership with copy, creative, account, regulatory, dev, and offshore teams
- Workshop facilitation and stakeholder alignment when the room needs it
- An agency needs senior UX leadership inside a brand program or pitch
- An in-house team needs senior contractor depth without making a full-time hire
- A multi-brand portfolio needs someone who can navigate regulatory complexity
- A project is mid-flight and needs experience leadership to land the work
- You want a senior partner who can work alongside your offshore or vendor teams
Engagements scope by program, duration, and team integration. Day, weekly, and project rates available.
Engagement type 02
Advisory: Strategic, Project-Based Counsel
Often that means product design and experience-first user flows that lift sign-ups and adoption. Sometimes it's strategy, a pitch deck, blue-sky options, or a voice in the room. Three common shapes:
Strategic Snapshot
Focused problem solving and options for a single, well-scoped problem. Single deliverable.
Stakeholder interviews, document and artifact review, focused diagnostic, single actionable deliverable.
A multi-quarter program has stalled and leadership needs an honest read. A new leader has inherited a team and needs a current-state assessment. A decision, deadline, or review is approaching and you need senior input to guide the team to ship on time and within budget.
Engagement Sprint
Positive forward movement. Defined problem, clear outcome, decision-ready deliverables.
Up to 10 interviews with real stakeholders, plus AI-assisted simulations where they help pressure-test ideas, reported separately from the interviews. Document and content review, competitive context where relevant, a prioritized flexible roadmap, an executive presentation, and one to two follow-up reviews.
An AI initiative needs to be defined and gotten into production. A redesign or platform consolidation is hard to use and over budget. A multi-brand program needs a governance reset. An organization needs a vendor-agnostic view of AI opportunities and design actions that can actually move revenue.
AI Opportunity Diagnostic
A short, multi-week engagement that assesses where AI could fit in your team's workflows and the efficacy of operations. Vendor-agnostic. Output is a prioritized roadmap, not a vendor list.
Stakeholder interviews, process mapping, data and workflow review, identification of high-leverage AI opportunities, identification of places AI shouldn't go yet, prioritized roadmap with clear next actions.
You're being pitched on AI tools and don't know which to trust. You have an AI initiative stuck in pilot. You want to understand where your team is actually ready for AI integration, and where the foundation needs work first.
Advisory engagements scale to scope and duration.
Engagement type 03
On Call: Senior counsel on standing call, on a monthly retainer
An honest extension of your team over time, not a single deliverable: we talk through the product refinements and implementations you'd rather not handle alone, with an outside point of view that brings clarity.
- Working sessions on the decisions that matter, on your cadence
- Async document and decision review between sessions
- Slack or email access for fast calls when timing is tight
- Vendor and dev-team direction, onshore and offshore, kept on task and on budget
- Quarterly strategic alignment review tied to current goals and metrics
- A multi-quarter initiative needs ongoing senior input, not a one-time deliverable
- A leadership team wants a thinking partner who has seen this kind of work succeed and fail at scale
- You want senior judgment available the moment a decision lands, without a full-time hire
Retainers are monthly and scope to the cadence of access you need.
Who I work with
The most useful seat I take in any engagement is the one between the leaders who set direction and the practitioners building toward it. I do my best work when I'm trusted by both.
Leadership tier
SVPs, VPs, Directors, PMs, brand managers, account leads.
The people who hire me, set the direction, and need senior judgment on the decisions that matter most. We work in 1:1s, working sessions, and the moments before a critical room.
Creative tier
Copywriters, visual designers, design directors.
My closest daily collaborators. I work shoulder-to-shoulder on the actual artifacts (wireframes, content frameworks, decks, prototypes) and earn trust through the craft, not the title above it.
Build tier
Dev partners, engineering teams, design system practitioners.
The people who turn the work into a product. I write to be built. Onshore primarily, with global partners as needed.
Adjacent tier
Regulatory reviewers, strategy partners, project managers.
The functions that wrap around the work. I treat regulatory partners (RC, MLR, FDA, SEC) as collaborators, not gatekeepers. The work moves faster when they're brought in early.
How I work across engagements
Every engagement runs through three lenses. They're not separate practices. They're how I look at any complex experience problem.
Pillar 1: Regulatory
Healthcare and financial product teams operate under real constraints: fixed regulatory deadlines, multiple rounds of legal and medical review, complex scientific content, and development windows that cannot be missed. Speed matters. Trust matters more. I help teams design UX and CX systems that meet business goals while respecting FDA, RC, MLR, and financial compliance, without losing clarity, accessibility, or time to market.
Pillar 2: Interfaces
New technology doesn't create adoption. Clarity does. I help teams design modern interfaces (AI tools, conversational systems, QR activations, mobile wallet integrations, sales funnels, multi-touchpoint experiences) in ways that feel intuitive, trusted, and grounded in real behavior. Users don't care about novelty. They care about getting what they need and moving on with the rest of their life.
Pillar 3: Systems
Enterprise systems fail quietly. They fragment over time. Each team builds its own version. I help teams design and govern systems that scale across brands, teams, and product lines. The work is half architecture, half organizational design. A system only works if the people maintaining it can actually use it.
Engagement kickoff
Strategy Call (free, 30 minutes)
Virtual. We talk through what's stuck and what success looks like. No pitch. If there's not a fit, I'll tell you and try to point you to possible solutions or partners.
Scoping conversation
If the strategy call goes well, a longer conversation with the relevant stakeholders to understand scope, timing, and constraints. This is where I'll ask the questions that make the engagement actually work.
Statement of Work
The brief or SOW with scope, deliverables, timing, and pricing. Can also be written for your marketing team if I'm serving as an adviser to procurement.
Quarterly data and actions check-in
Most engagements evolve. Every 90 days we step back, review what's working, and adjust based on current goals and metrics. Some stay the same shape for years. Others shift as the business shifts. The relationship matters more than the SOW.
Many engagements move from first call to signed SOW in 2–3 weeks.
As a UX leader and subject matter expert, he provided essential governance and content strategy for our brand's new design system and platform migration across indications for both HCP and DTC.
Courtney McKnight
Brand Account Manager
Tell me what's stuck.
30 minutes. No pitch. Let's discuss current goals and pain points and see the best options for you.
Book a Strategy Call