Tyler is available for hire
Hire TylerTyler Townley
Verified Expert in Design
Designer
Location
Portland, OR, United States
Toptal Member Since
February 8, 2017
Tyler is a manager, strategist, and product design consultant. Prior to consulting, he was the design director at Life360, a venture-backed startup focused on location sharing, safe driving, and home automation. He collaborated for over ten years as a product designer for startups and for companies like Nike and Amazon.
Portfolio
Work Experience
Product Design Consultant
2005 - PRESENT
Self-employed
- Partnered with established companies, nonprofits, and startups to concept, design, and build digital products.
- Worked solo, alongside teams, and in a leadership position, hiring and growing teams as needed.
- Built apps, websites, and robots.
- Created branding materials for a automotive startup.
- Led the user experience design for the site where I crafted user flows, structured the architecture of the site, and ensured that the site was able to expand as new features were being developed.
- Selected photography, art directed marketing work, and built a design language for the brand.
- Helped launch a Los Angeles-based film industry service.
- Designed the logo, brand materials, and responsive website for the company.
- Worked with a health and wellness company to design native iOS and Apple Watch applications.
- Designed and built a native Android fitness application as well as marketing materials and social media marketing materials.
- Contributed to user experience flows, application architecture, interface design, and interaction design.
- Prototyped many variations of the application before helping build and ship it to the Google Play store.
Technologies: Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, InVision, Principle, Sketch
Head of Design
2015 - 2016
Life360
- Designed across the company of 100 people for our flagship iOS and Android applications.
- Managed product design across user experience, research, user interface design, and communication design, partnered closely with product management and engineering leadership.
- Crafted the design language, brand, and style guides, and contributed to the product roadmap and strategy of the company.
- Worked with a variety of cross-functional teams as the principle product designer. I led user research and user interviews, and worked with our analytics team to ensure that informed design decisions were being made.
- Operated as a hands-on product designer, where I worked through UX and UI projects large and small. I tested and released my designs to millions of users. My designs continue to contribute to a strong business and well-understood user experience.
Technologies: Apple Keynote, Zeppelin, InVision, Principle, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Sketch
Senior Product Designer
2013 - 2016
Life360
- Led UI and UX for the design team. Completely overhauled the user interface of both the iOS and Android applications.
- Designed the home screen of the application and crafted a design architecture to allow for features to be built on top of the experience. The changes I helped bring to the application improved user retention and drove user engagement and growth of the company.
- Designed the first user experience, creating everything from Apple iTunes and Google Play Store graphics through to in-app user flows and interaction design. This work improved user conversion and helped ensure steady and improved user growth.
- Updated the messaging service, where I designed, tested, and helped launch chat functionality into our service. It was a location-based chat service, which proposed unique constraints, but allowed for unique experiences which our users found invaluable.
- Updated the user interface and interaction design guides. Led our design language updates and championed the use of component and pattern libraries. Helped ensure our engineering team had all assets and components they would need to speed up their process. Working with our test engineering team (QA) to utilize the updated UI, we built automated tests to search for UI bugs in the software before shipping.
- Helped craft messaging and communication channels with users. Being a mobile app that specializes in location sharing, we had a fair amount of new technology to communicate to our users. I worked with users to structure and process and language that was familiar and inviting to ensure they understood the value of our service.
Technologies: Apple Keynote, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Zeppelin, InVision, Principle, Sketch
Senior UX Designer
2012 - 2013
Fell Swoop
- Led visual design in a company of UX consultants. Worked on a variety of consulting roles for companies both large and small.
- Crafted branding for a luxury engagement ring and diamond company. Helped develop the brand language and contributed to the user experience of a native web-based luxury eCommerce site.
- Interviewed and helped facilitate in-person user research sessions for a publicly traded vitamin and nutrition company. Designed the company's flagship product for the year, working with their team to elevate their inventory and better retain customers.
- Worked with a large telecom company to build marketing materials and make updates to their corporate website. Art directed photography selections and for visual design and branding work found in digital and print media.
- Worked with a startup in the insurance space to design, brand, and launch their company. Designed their website and crafted key user flows that would feature prominently on their website.
Technologies: Axure, Balsamiq, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
Art Director & User Experience Designer
2011 - 2011
Microsoft
- Led design projects [NDA] for a robotics team at Microsoft.
- Designed a visual language for the project.
- Crafted the first user experience.
- Conducted user research.
- Provided interaction design for gestural interface, voice recognition, visual input, and remote input.
Technologies: Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
Education
2008 - 2009
Master's (Hons., First Division) Degree in Graphic Design, Communication
University of the Arts London - London, UK
2002 - 2007
Bachelor's Degree in Graphic Design, Art History, Industrial Design
Western Washington University - Washington State, USA