hi. i'm brad.
i translate customer signals into fast, confident product decisions.
chicago-based. builds from zero. outcomes that stick.
Over the past 20 years, I’ve worked in content, information architecture, design, research, and operations. Sitting in every seat at the table has shaped how I see problems and how I work with the people solving them.
In 2011, while working at Encyclopaedia Britannica, I spent weeks embedded in classrooms across the country. In a fourth-grade classroom on the south side of Chicago, I watched a little girl get teased because the site she was reading on had big fonts and bright colors. It signaled to the class that she was on the "kiddie" version.
I brought it back to the office and shared it with everyone. Eventually, that observation became a feature: a level-switching mechanism that let students read at their own level with no visible change to the interface. It shipped, it met a real need for students and teachers, and at the time it was the only institutional tool that could do it.
The insights that move products forward often don't live in dashboards. They live in the moments people don't think to mention.
You have to get close enough to find them. And build the teams and systems that can act on what they reveal.
Outside of work, I listen to a lot of house music and take many, many silly pictures of my dog.
Four principles shape how I approach every project: get close, clear the noise, measure intentionally, build to last. Each case study traces one through real work, in sequence. Each leaves behind infrastructure on which the next is built.
