About

Hey, I’m Adam. I’m a 34-year-old product designer in Charlotte, NC who started my career in engineering.

I care deeply for people and the problems they’re trying to solve. Figuring out what someone actually needs, then building the thing that gives it to them, is the part of this work I’ve never gotten tired of.

When I’m not working you’ll find me wrenching on my Tacoma, chasing two Golden Retrievers around, or out with my fiancée Morgan somewhere with good food and beer. Otherwise: sports, pickleball, and a standing hunt for the best Mexican in town.

In my spare time I started @tacoclout, an aftermarket parts brand for the Toyota off-road community. I built a highly engaged audience from nothing, ran the Shopify store behind it for about four years, and designed all of it: the brand, the storefront, and the search people bought through.

How I work

I came up doing front-end and never stopped writing code. It changes the job. I know what a platform will let me get away with before I start drawing, and I can hand a developer something they can build without a dozen follow-up questions.

Most of my time goes into sketching and prototyping. Problems are cheap to fix there and expensive to fix once something is built.

Then I test. Screener questions, think-aloud sessions, A/B tests, digging through support tickets. Analytics only get you so far. You have to talk to people to find out why.

I use AI daily. Agentic workflows mostly, plus design tooling. It has closed the distance between having an idea and having something real enough to put in front of someone. I’m still figuring out the line between it saving me a week and it quietly steering me somewhere I didn’t want to go.

Education

BFA in Web Design & Interactive Media from the Art Institute of Charlotte, December 2015. The program covered web and visual design alongside motion graphics, marketing, and business KPIs. I’ve kept learning the same way since: YouTube, LinkedIn Learning, and whatever the work demands.

I also hold a certificate of achievement in user experience from Accenture. View the certificate.

Concentration

Design

Product design for web and mobile, Interaction and interface design, Responsive design, Design systems.

Engineering

Front-end, Prototyping in code, Shipping production interfaces.

Research

Usability testing, Think-aloud sessions, A/B testing, Synthesis.

AI

Agentic workflows, AI-assisted research, Prototyping and tooling.

Brand

Brand identity, Visual communications, Systems and grids, Voice and tone.

SEO

Search engine optimization, Content strategy, Content marketing, Social media.

Mentions

• Best Portfolio, Graduating Class The Art Institute of Charlotte, 2015
• Alumni Excelling The Art Institute of Charlotte, 2017. Read the article