Lovely to meet you!

Within the world of product design, I care deeply and feel most passionate about visual design, user research, and being a quality teammate. I believe truly great product design leads to business growth because of how we solve our customers’ real problems; critically, this includes understanding the problem behind what our customers are telling us, shipping software people actually want to use, and using data to inform and measure our decisions.

My work is currently focused on building Reforge’s new product offering, Work Artifacts. Before that I partnered with some of the brightest minds in tech as a UX Visual Designer at Reforge to design learning experiences and content at Reforge on topics like Product and Growth Leadership, Data for PMs, and Finding Product/Market Fit. The 5 programs I worked on accounted for $11.2 million in business revenue over 2 years and consistently ranked as top performing cohorts.

Since 2020 I’ve also been building Urality, a community activation platform. Most recently my work here has focused on designing tooling for executive Main Street professionals and community leaders in communities of 10,000 to 75,000 people.

Before falling in love with the field of design, I got my start working in the trade publishing industry for various large publishers, including Penguin Random House, as a managing editor of physical and digital products. It was there I first worked with designers of all kinds — type, visual, graphic, physical — and discovered where I wanted to go next in my career.

In my life…

I’m an American-Brit dual citizen

I attended the first Config in 2020!

Gardening and running are both important hobbies of mine

Always be traveling

Cat dad

I play guitar, and I’m currently learning how to play the bass

“Partnering with Justin on design always brought deeper understanding and meaningful clarity. Justin is a top-notch collaborator who skillfully navigates the line between total autonomy and efficient operations, escalating concerns or complex design decisions early, and driving forward an incredible output. ”
— Judy Merzbach, Strategy @ Reforge; Formerly Wayfair, Deloitte
“Justin did a phenomenal job on the design and buildout of the Growth Leadership program at Reforge. He took our words, frameworks, stories and tools and turned them into fantastic and easy-to-comprehend visuals. This was one of a few factors that led to a 70+ NPS for our program which was the highest rated of any 4 week program at Reforge this Spring. ”
— Adam Fishman, Growth Advisor; Formerly Imperfect Foods, Patreon, Lyft
“Justin is as professional as they come. He has become a key contributor on the product in a short amount of time, with a commitment to producing high quality deliverables.”
— Justin Copenhaver, CEO + Founder, Urality

Experience

  • • Ensure delivery of high-quality, consistent design work

    • Conduct and incorporate research into my process (from discovery to leveraging quantitative)

    • Use activation, engagement, and retention metrics to measure success

    • Advocate for and contribute to high-level strategic decision-making with product and executive teams

    • Work from and contribute to the development of Kiln - our design system that standardizes visual styles, UI patterns, and functional logic

    • Collaborate cross-functionally with engineers, product managers, lead designers, and data analysts

    • Ongoing design work on the Urality product from research and discovery through production designs and QA

    • Created the Urality Design Lab (design system) and stood up maintenance and company education

    • Ongoing customer research, testing, and feature work

    • Supervised a team of 8 editors and lead the publication of over 250+ cooking and lifestyle books per year

    • Organized weekly design workshops with a team of interior and cover design leads

    • Conducted internal research on and collaborated with the engineering team on improving internal tooling and editorial systems (MyHouse)