Hi. My name is Tim Sheiner. I am a design leader.

I am a thoughtful, hands on product designer who can conceive, architect, and grow a product as well as recruit, mentor and develop a team.

My passion is operationalizing design. I help organizations ship great and cost-effective user experiences by championing design standards, platform infrastructure, and the application of simple, effective design practices.

I contribute to product strategy by using system thinking to see around corners and identify the most effective leverage points for change. I deliver innovation efficiently by focussing my team’s creative energy on what actually needs to be innovated and using standards and pre-existing solutions for everything else.

I am currently looking for a full time leadership position at a company with a platform and a plan for positive change.

"Tim has a special skill for taking apart a complex problem and putting it back together better than anyone I have known. When they are reassembled, even the most complex ideas will flow with new, compelling logic and clarity."

Mark Hovde, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Pharsight Corporation

Leadership

I succeed as a leader because trust is my highest priority. I do what I say I will do; I listen carefully to all project stakeholders and I am fearless about asking questions until we are all on the same page. I always have a plan for the way forward, but also a keen sense for when the best outcome will come from clearing space and stepping back so others can lead.

Designers like to work for me because my biggest professional thrill is figuring out how to enable creativity in others. I develop high performance, self-empowered contributors by helping each of my team members set clear project goals and then using insightful questions within a positive, critique-oriented team culture to help them find their own best paths to a successful outcome.

For me, management is about communication, a shared sense of purpose and fun. Here are some images from an offsite design charette I ran with the Jut design team in my shop.

I've written a detailed breakdown of the best practices I've developed for running a high throughput design studio.

"Reporting to Tim was the rare opportunity to report to a mentor. Tim taught me what it takes for design to have a strategic role in an organization and how to think about design problems systematically. Tim also has an inspirational appetite for understanding the technical underpinnings of a problem and he showed me what it takes to ship great design. With the addition of being an incredibly empathetic person, Tim is a leader that any design team would be lucky to have."

Sajid Reshamwala, Lead Product Designer at Jut

Process

My personal design process combines user research, systems thinking and iterative prototyping to develop straightforward solutions to user needs. I’ve refined my approach across the verticals of e-commerce, financial services, pharmaceuticals, and cloud infrastructure.

I begin with user research to extract needs and stories.

Usually the best next step is to sketch work flows.

I often transcribe the interaction model into text because this familiar format is easy for all stakeholders to understand and edit.

Schematic wireframes with real content and accurate type sizes provide a good reality check regarding layout while still being pretty quick to iterate.

Pixel perfect comps are one way to explore UI nuance but working in code is my preferred approach to finalizing UI and UX at the same time.

Regardless of the state of the prototype or the medium from which it is constructed, I seek user input at each iteration.

I am a strong believer in talking explicitly about conceptual models to help engineering, product, and business stakeholders come together around a shared understanding of the nature of our collaboration.

"Tim is a natural born designer, a highly talented individual, and a force to be reckoned with. Through collaboration with Tim, I discovered for myself what the role of design function in a software company should be, how a design team operates, what drives a designer. I look forward to the great products that will carry Tim's mark on them, and will consider myself lucky to get another chance to work with him in the future."

Daria Mehra, Director of Quality Engineering at Quid

Projects



Streaming Analytics Platform

Full time employee responsible for:

  • Design Management
  • Creative Direction
  • Interaction Design

I was the initial design hire at a streaming data analytics start up where I built a design studio of 5 that executed all design work for product and marketing.

I acted as player/coach managing and growing my team, directing the overall creative output of my studio, leading detailed design projects and providing the executive team with UX strategy.

I oversaw the design of a simple, elegant website.

I designed a straight forward experience for adding data to the system.

I was creative director for the product design system including data visualizations.

I contributed syntax to Juttle, the programming language Jut developed. I wrote about the experience of translating what I knew about designing interfaces to designing a programming language.

"Tim is a very talented designer and big picture system thinker who can tackle complex problems and map them to elegant user experiences and designs. Working with Tim, I learned a ton about how to integrate top notch design thinking into product development and I would be very pleased to have the chance to work with him again."

Michael Demmer, Vice President, Engineering at Jut

"Tim is a great designer and brings a broad set of skills to the product development process. At Jut, he built and effectively led a talented team of designers. He consistently challenged our product and development teams by asking the right questions, and had a great sense for when and where to innovate versus leveraging the state of the art. He can institute rigorous process when it matters and do more free form work when needed. Tim is fun to work with, and most important, he is a high-quality human being. I'd love to work with him again."

Steve McCanne, CEO & Founder at Jut

Business Intelligence Platform

Full time employee responsible for:

  • Design Management
  • Product Strategy
  • Creative Direction
  • Interaction Design
  • Front End Development

I dramatically improved the Jaspersoft user experience by adding search functionality and by introducing an engaging and consistent visual design.

I also led the project to modernize the application front end framework, with a modular and standards-compliant design system I created and implemented before Bootstrap popularized the concept.

I championed and designed the faceted search functionality for Jasperserver.

I developed consistent visual and layout standards for all the Jasperserver interfaces.

I architected and wrote the markup and css for a modular, theme-able front end framework.

Semantic Markup

Object-Oriented CSS

"Tim transformed Jaspersoft. He took a product weakness and turned it into a competitive advantage."

Mary M. Flynn, Worldwide Sales Engineering, Jaspersoft

"Tim was the UX architect for JasperSoft's pioneering UI framework and his innovative generic HTML container served as a centerpiece for the project."

Angus Croll, Architect, Jaspersoft

Content Delivery Network Self Service Application

Contractor responsible for:

  • Product Strategy
  • User Research
  • Interaction Design

I collaborated with a great team at Hot Studio to work on the redesign of Akamai's self-service portal. I contributed to the user research, UX strategy and design that led to a much easier to understand navigational model for the experience.

"I hired Tim to help us with a project to redesign a complex enterprise web application. He connected immediately with our internal team and also developed a strong positive rapport with our client."

Danielle Malik, Executive Director, User Experience, Hot Studio

Internet of Things Platform

Constractor responsible for:

  • Process Design
  • Design Management
  • Interaction Design

I contracted with GE's Predix project to develop a process for integrating UX and Agile. The plan was that I would pilot this first with a specific scrum team and then work on exporting the approach to other teams within the organization.

I exceeded expectations at this assignment by focusing first on gaining the trust of the software manager and developers on the team through my understanding of the technical details of software development. From this position of credibility I was able to inject a long term vision and structured, repeatable user-centered methods into all stages of their Agile cycle. I consolidated the value I had introduced by mentoring a young designer on the team to be able to drive the vision and the Agile/UX integration process I had developed. Other scrum teams observed the positive outcomes of the pilot and began requesting dedicated UX support.

"Tim is an excellent designer, strategist, communicator and change agent. He consistently suggested ideas to me a month or more before I began to hear those same things from other people."

Dan Harrelson, Design Director for Energy Management & Design Technology, GE

e-Commerce Platform

Full time employee responsible for:

  • Interaction Design

I worked for the Apple Online Store on search and community features.

Undergraduate Interaction Design Program

Part time employee responsible for:

  • Curriculum Development
  • Instruction & Evaluation

I was part of the founding faculty for the undergraduate Interaction Design Program at California College of Art. I developed the curriculum for the class that introduced sophomore students to System Thinking and then taught it for 3 years.

Here is a video about a class project I organized with Adobe.

Data Modeling Consultancy

Freelancer responsible for:

  • Marketing Design
  • Illustration
  • Front End Development

I helped this data science consulting company explain their service offering to prospective customers.

This illustration explains how an analytic method called pharmacometrics is used to inform drug development decisions.

I created artwork to explain and represent each of the company's several service offerings.

Financial Services

Full time employee responsible for:

  • Design Management
  • Internal Strategic Consulting

At Schwab I managed designers and was also responsible for encouraging innovation.

One of my initiatives improved internal strategy discussions by introducing a simple, visual model of Schwab's retail business that was easily sketched on a whiteboard during meetings.

The model, reproducible by anyone, created a shared discussion context in meetings

One variation was used to envision new business lines

Another variation helped to plan different service levels

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Learn more about me or read my blog.