Blake Howard

Lead Product Designer

Experience

Senior Product Designer

Dec 2021 — present

The leading customer data platform for hotels.

Led design strategy and execution for major feature work across all 8 products in the ecosystem, impacting 200,000+ hoteliers and 800M+ guests worldwide.
Owned and scaled the Figma-based design system to unify product experiences and improve delivery speed across teams.
Hosted department knowledge-sharing sessions on emerging trends, best practices and design-thinking methods.

Mobile App Platform Manager

Aug 2020 — Aug 2021

Connected water technology · relocated.

Oversaw end-to-end design and delivery of four IoT applications across US, Canada and Mexico markets.
Directed the design process with external vendors, aligning UI/UX and application development with product goals.
Acted as central liaison between US and China-based teams on software and hardware integration.

Product Manager & Designer

Mar 2019 — Jul 2020

Micro-gig marketplace, 1.3M+ MAU · Covid shutdown.

Established the company's first unified design system and redefined brand guidelines across web and mobile.
Led a full UI redesign that contributed to a 300% increase in completed daily transactions.
Co-led a 20-person cross-functional team and helped launch delivery services — 30% of company revenue in its first quarter.

Senior Designer → Head of Product Design

Mar 2016 — Mar 2019

AI-driven SaaS startup incubator.

Led design, product strategy and development across six AI-driven SaaS applications.
Directed a 10-person internal team and managed two offshore vendor partnerships totalling 40+ people.
Promoted from contractor to full-time to department head within two years.

Front-end & site build

2012 — 2016

Where the designer-who-codes habit started.

Built and maintained client sites in HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Early grounding in front-end constraints that still shapes how I hand off design work.

Design

UX strategy · Interaction design · UI design · Design systems · Responsive & adaptive · Motion design · Accessibility

Research

User research · Usability testing · Journey & empathy mapping · Personas · A/B testing · Data-informed design

Leadership

Design leadership · Product design management · Product strategy · Systems thinking · Cross-functional collaboration · Mentorship

Craft & tools

Figma · Prototyping · Wireframing · Information architecture · HTML · CSS · JavaScript · Generative AI