I'm Matt Michelson, and I'm a product designer in Atlanta, GA.
I’m an experienced Senior Product Designer with a passion for detail and a creative spirit. I strive to maintain a healthy balance of idealism, confidence, empathy, and pragmatism.
I have a drive for creating and refining elegant, intuitive digital products that solve client problems and deliver engaging, memorable experiences to users across multiple platforms. I create and implement design systems, serve as a consultant to guide my clients in the best direction, and serve as a manager and mentor to junior designers. I carry projects from start to finish because it’s more fun that way, and it works.
I thrive in an agile design environment, leading client presentations and discovery workshops, conducting qualitative and quantitative user research tests, and summarizing the findings for easier client understanding and application.
I architect application flows and define features and user stories through research and conversations with users and client stakeholders. I build wireframes as well as high-fidelity polished screens for multiple platforms and device sizes (including iOS, Android, web, and more). I particularly enjoy developing low and high fidelity prototypes for testing user flows and describing interface animations and interactions to our software engineers in perfect clarity. Sometimes this means I do sound effects with my mouth to properly communicate the details.
To produce and maintain robust design documentation, I’ve built up departmental processes and standards to ensure continuity as projects exchange hands and toolsets evolve. Of course, no process is perfect in a field that changes as often as UX, so I’m comfortable with ambiguity. I love working closely with software engineers and have found that they like working with me, too.
I help craft sales pitches and lend my experience to tech estimations. I also enjoy getting the opportunity to do some visual and brand design when the chance arises—I was originally a print and brand designer! (Oh, and one time I built a chair. That was cool.) Occasionally, I even get the chance to write and copy edit, and I am a firm proponent of the Oxford comma, AP style be damned.
I confidently communicate and present my departments’ work to clients, engineers, and my fellow designers on a daily basis. I have experience growing a design department from a solo operation to a small team of three with the occasional external contractor, and am comfortable allocating time and resources to staff different projects as appropriate, as well as providing mentorship and critical feedback in a positive, encouraging environment.
Of course, none of this would be possible without the skill and expertise of my extremely talented colleagues, and I’m indebted to them for all their patience and help. Perhaps most importantly, I always strive to learn and improve, and to share that knowledge with my colleagues and clients. I am driven strongly by my own values and seek a work environment that will allow me to give the best of myself. Thanks for taking the time to read this introduction, and I hope you reach out if you’re interested in working together so we can continue the conversation!
Tools and Processes
Sketch and Figma
Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere, XD)
Prototyping software (Invision, Framer, Principle, Flinto)
Zeplin, Abstract, Git, HTML and CSS,
JIRA, Confluence, Trello, Pivotal, Asana, Mindnode, Miro, Optimal Workshop, Treejack
Management Responsibilites
Mentoring and coaching Jr designers
Growing design department
Hiring and Interviewing
Development of Internal Processes
Management of software licensing and distribution
Hobbies / Special Abilities
Meditating
Mixing powerful cocktails
Kitchen experiments
Being married
Buying expensive design history books and planning to eventually read them
Reading sci-fi and fantasy / tabletop nerdery
Game development and 3D design
FILM CLUB