I’m a design leader who makes complex problems feel simple and intuitive. I’ve built teams, crafted everything from playful games to AI-powered experiences, and love collaborating to bring ideas to life.
Transforming Alexa’s Most Popular Destination
As the lead designer for the Echo Show Now Playing screen, I guided product design, user research, and creative direction for Alexa’s most visited surface. Millions of people say “Alexa, play music” every day, but the experience had remained minimal, showing little more than track details. Research uncovered clear opportunities: customers were tired of hearing the same songs, struggled to decide what to play, and often forgot to use their devices for music even though they were nearby. I saw an opportunity to improve discovery and delight by focusing on the details of design.
I partnered with engineering to create a new API that allowed providers like Amazon Music and Spotify to surface personalized recommendations directly on the screen. From there, I led my team through a design process that combined competitive analysis, usability testing, and weekly brainstorming. I explored multiple UI directions, refined the information architecture, and elevated the visual language by introducing artist imagery, persistent playback controls, and vertically scrollable recommendations that made content easier to browse and act on by touch or voice. Every design decision was rooted in customer feedback, from showing more recommendations above the fold to ensuring controls stayed accessible at all times.
The results were transformative. Listening hours grew by 25% (triple our goal), customer interactions increased by 30%, active listening days rose by 8.2%, and CSAT jumped from 6.1 to 6.7. Even a simple change, surfacing playback controls persistently, increased listening sessions by 8.5%. This project became one of the most impactful launches in Alexa Audio history, proving that thoughtful design at scale can create measurable business impact while making everyday moments more enjoyable for millions of customers.
When Music Meets LLMs
As part of the Alexa+ initiative, I led the visual customer experience for audio recommendations, one of its flagship efforts to redefine how customers discover and enjoy audio content. Our goal was to move beyond transactional requests and create a more natural, engaging, and visual journey across Echo Show devices, Fire TV, and the Alexa mobile app.
I directed my design team in reimagining how audio search results and recommendations appear in the multimodal agent layer. Instead of Alexa immediately starting playback, customers could now browse results with album art, podcast imagery, and contextual metadata. This gave them more control over the experience, allowing them to play, refine, or ask for more. Customers could now request content with simple utterances like “Can you recommend some happy music?” or more complex ones such as “I am feeling a bit down, could you play some music to cheer me up, but nothing from Jonas Brothers?”
Through rapid iteration and close collaboration with engineering, we delivered a scalable visual first CX that worked across music, podcasts, radio, and audiobooks. This marked a fundamental shift from Classic Alexa to the LLM powered Alexa+, evolving the experience from command-based to conversational. By focusing on clarity, consistency, and delight, my team’s work set a new standard for how Alexa+ surfaces recommendations, transforming everyday listening into richer and more engaging experiences.
Bringing Harmony to Fire TV
I led my design team in creating Audio Home on Fire TV, a new destination that brings music, podcasts, and radio into one cohesive experience. Customers previously had to jump between music apps to find what they wanted, which caused frustration and limited discovery. Our goal was to make Fire TV a true hub for audio, personalized, intuitive, and visually engaging.
We designed Content Home, a central place where customers could see personalized recommendations, recently played content, and quick entry points into audio types. Alongside this, we built Provider Destinations, branded areas where partners like Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Spotify could highlight their catalogs while still feeling consistent with Alexa. I guided the team through defining the information architecture, creating flexible templates, and developing a scalable visual system that worked across Fire TV and Echo Show Devices.
Customer feedback and data confirmed the impact. In research, 7 of 8 participants said they preferred having all their audio in one hub. After launch, the new recommendations experience drove significant engagement: more than 4 million customers initiated playback directly from recommendations within the first four months. These customers listened to an average of 50 minutes of recommended music per month, resulting in over 22 million additional listening days in a year and more than 323 million extra interactions annually. By focusing on clarity, usability, and visual richness, my team delivered an experience that not only simplified discovery but also turned Fire TV into a powerful daily destination for audio.
Helping Kids Fall in Love with Reading
As design lead for Kindle’s Rapids, a subscription-based reading app for children ages 5–12, I guided the redesign of the entire customer experience to help hesitant readers build confidence and joy in storytelling. My team’s goal was to make reading feel as fun and intuitive as playing a game while staying grounded in educational outcomes.
I directed the design of the full journey—from profile creation and browsing to the reading experience and parental dashboard. Stories were delivered in a playful text-message style, supported by professional narration, sound effects, and inline illustrations. Children advanced line by line with a simple tap, making the experience accessible for small hands and engaging across iPads and mobile devices. We added celebratory completion moments, favorites, and recommendations to keep kids motivated. Parents could view progress, genres, and history through a dedicated dashboard that also encouraged real-world reading conversations at home.
To ensure the experience grew with our audience, I established age-specific design guidelines in collaboration with editors and art directors. For younger children we emphasized short, high-frequency words, silly humor, and simple illustrations, while older readers engaged with more complex plots, abstract themes, and diverse visual styles. Accessibility was also central, with options like dyslexic-friendly fonts built into the design.
By balancing playful interaction with thoughtful educational scaffolding, Rapids created a reading journey that kept kids engaged in short sessions and encouraged them to eventually transition to books. The result was a product that combined delight, inclusivity, and parental involvement to make reading a habit worth returning to.
Brainz vs. UX
As lead designer, I was responsible for shaping the player experience for Plants vs. Zombies Heroes, a collectible card game that extended the wildly popular PvZ franchise into the competitive card battler space. My challenge was to balance strategic depth with the humor, accessibility, and charm that had made the brand beloved by millions.
I defined the end-to-end player journey, from onboarding through long-term engagement. I designed interactive tutorials that broke down complex mechanics like deck building and hero powers into approachable, character-driven moments. I also led the design of the collection systems, in-game HUD, and navigation, ensuring players could easily understand hundreds of unique cards and quickly act during fast-paced matches. Working closely with art and animation, I integrated the playful PvZ style into microinteractions, rewards, and victory screens that made the experience feel both polished and fun.
Through iterative testing and refinement, we improved clarity, pacing, and flow across the game. These design efforts paid off: PvZ Heroes reached more than 1 million daily active users during its launch period and climbed into the top 50 grossing iOS games worldwide. In its first year it generated tens of millions in revenue, demonstrating the strength of a design strategy that made a complex genre accessible to casual players while still offering depth for competitive audiences.
My Experience.
AMAZONProduct Design & Research Manager, Alexa
I lead a multimodal UX design and research team for Alexa, delivering cohesive experiences across voice, touch, and visual interfaces on Echo devices, Fire TV, and mobile. My team of designers owns key initiatives including Now Playing, Audio and Video Home, Timers and Alarms, and personalized recommendations, serving more than 90M monthly active users on over 600M devices. I drive UX strategy across modalities, launch LLM powered features that simplify discovery and boost engagement, and evolve design systems for consistency at scale, while mentoring a diverse team and fostering a culture of collaboration, ownership, and excellence.
pattern ui/uxPrincipal UX Designer
As founder of Pattern UI/UX, I partnered with startups and global brands to deliver intuitive, scalable product experiences through strategy, design, and collaboration. I led design from research and flows to prototypes and UI, validating concepts with testing to ensure impact. Clients included Disney’s Marvel Snap, where I contributed to gameplay and monetization that helped the title surpass 10M downloads and $20M in early revenue. I also facilitated sprints, mentored teams, and established best practices, always focused on creating human-centered experiences that drive growth.
popcap, an electronic arts studioStudio UX Director
I led UX design across mobile, console, and PC, building and mentoring a cross-disciplinary team while shaping gameplay, onboarding, live events, and monetization for titles like Plants vs. Zombies Heroes, Bejeweled Blitz (70M+ downloads), and Peggle. Our work drove over 1B global downloads and top-grossing rankings, guided PopCap’s shift to free-to-play, and integrated UX practices into EA while preserving the creative quality and player-first values that made our games beloved.
smashing ideasCreative Director
I guided concept development, design execution, and client collaboration for brands like Disney, Mattel, and Nickelodeon, creating digital products that reached millions of users and extended properties into interactive ecosystems. My leadership helped launch dozens of e-books, games, and mobile apps, many surpassing a million downloads, while also driving UX in areas such as in-flight entertainment, security, and interactive TV. I mentored designers, fostered collaboration, and shaped the studio’s creative vision and culture of curiosity, creativity, and excellence.
Nice Words.
Jim is a role model design leader. His passion for the products, compassion for the team, and continuous curiosity all come together to deliver creative solutions that raises the bar. Like the best creative leaders, he is able to foster an environment for his team to be successful even in the highest pressure situations. He does so not with platitudes of 'empowerment', but by setting the pace and rolling up his sleeves as needed.
James Liu, head of mb.os at mercedes-benz AGJim is a great design leader with strong technical skills and instincts, and he consistently fosters an environment where his team can thrive and do their best work. He has delivered impact on high-stakes product experiences, balancing customer delight through design with business KPIs and the technical innovation required to scale Alexa experiences for hundreds of millions of customers. Jim would be an excellent leader for any design or product organization looking to up-level both design quality and people leadership.
Benson Chan, VP of Product Design at OptumAs Product Lead for Alexa Audio, I had the privilege of working with Jim, an exceptional Design Lead whose creativity, expertise, and customer focus always elevated our work. The speed and quality of our collaboration are a true testament to his design talent. Jim takes on the toughest challenges with agility and skill, and his collaborative spirit and openness to new ideas have been key to the success of Alexa’s audio experiences.
Ryan Burnett, Head of Product for alexa personality at amazon