The XPS Relaunch
Led implementation for an embargoed global launch covered by Reuters and Ars Technica.
Steve here.
I design and build fast, accessible interfaces with enough beauty to delight and enough sense to feel obvious.
- Design engineer
- Accessible UI
- AI-augmented development
Hello from Pennsylvania.
I live in Pittsburgh with my wife and our kids. I'm a first-generation college graduate, earning my bachelor's degree at Carnegie Mellon while working there full-time.
I design. I make art. I write music and poetry. I have many passions across many disciplines, and I love exploring them all.
New guitar riffs and drum beats play in my head all day, more than I could ever document.
I desire to honor God in all I do and use my talents to serve others.
I often say I have the opposite of writer's block.
Both, on purpose.
I push boundaries when a project needs it, but I'm happy playing it safe when it serves the audience better.
Push.
In experimentation at Dell, I trim milliseconds with CSS tricks and vanilla JavaScript.
I reworked my team's code review skills into a shared, accessibility-aware agentic workspace that almost a dozen engineers rely on.
At CMU, an agency handed me flat comps with no notes about interaction, animation, or accessibility. So I hand-built it into Drupal from a JSON feed.
Safe.
For Dell's XPS relaunch I learned GSAP mid-build so an agency's animations could ship on time. GSAP kept their animation and functionality intact. Rebuilding it in vanilla JavaScript and advanced CSS would have been more performant, but riskier on a deadline.
On cmu.edu, I wove the wordmark square above and behind page sections on scroll. Leadership kept the square but cut the weave. Though disappointed, I could see why.
Serve the person on the other end.
I got into accessibility because I like being friendly and reliable, an advocate for people who need it. Every interface has a person on the other end; some of those people use a screen reader, a keyboard, or a slow connection. One exception: A/B test variants shouldn't fix an inaccessible control unless they're testing accessibility. So results stay honest and protect the data.
Performant and accessible is the floor. Above it, I want the work to be beautiful enough to delight yet practical enough to feel intuitive.
Visual frequencies.
Music artistry
I write and perform music, and I manage my music career with Claude as a marketing and business advisor. The project holds my plans, release ideas, marketing materials, and tour schedule. It drafts, organizes, and suggests. Final edits belong to me.
Color & sound
Color frequencies correlate with sound frequencies and affect the way people feel. I've spent a lot of time in research and built a color wheel based on frequency instead of pigment or hue. I use color combinations with intentional resonations.
Brand, color, type
I love branding, color, typography, and setting the direction for a product, company, or team. Gathering in unity behind a shared vision excites me.
Desire
In design and in music, I desire to instill a sense of wonder and sometimes a little bewilderment.
My heart is in the work.
I do my best work when a team can turn to me for direction.
I like being the point person, close to the people who make the big calls, with my own hands still in the work. I'd rather set direction and build it than hand off a mockup and walk away.
Work that matters.
Fifteen Years of cmu.edu
Fifteen years of homepages for my alma mater, with the front end in my hands.
University Design System
The templates, authoring tools, and brand standards behind hundreds of university sites.