I’m a design leader who makes complex problems feel simple and human. I’ve built teams, crafted everything from playful games to AI-powered experiences, and love collaborating to bring ideas to life.
AMAZONProduct Design & Research Manager, Alexa
I lead multimodal UX design and research for Alexa, delivering cohesive experiences across voice, touch, and visual interfaces on Echo devices, Fire TV, and mobile. My team of designers owns key initiatives including Now Playing, Audio and Video Home, Timers and Alarms, and personalized recommendations, serving more than 90M monthly active users on over 600M devices. I drive UX strategy across modalities, launch LLM powered features that simplify discovery and boost engagement, and evolve design systems for consistency at scale, while mentoring a diverse team and fostering a culture of collaboration, ownership, and excellence.
pattern ui/uxPrincipal UX Designer
As founder of Pattern UI/UX, I partnered with startups and global brands to deliver intuitive, scalable product experiences through strategy, design, and collaboration. I led design from research and flows to prototypes and UI, validating concepts with testing to ensure impact. Clients included Disney’s Marvel Snap, where I contributed to gameplay and monetization that helped the title surpass 10M downloads and $20M in early revenue. I also facilitated sprints, mentored teams, and established best practices, always focused on creating human-centered experiences that drive growth.
popcap, an electronic arts studioStudio UX Director
I led UX design across mobile, console, and PC, building and mentoring a cross-disciplinary team while shaping gameplay, onboarding, live events, and monetization for titles like Plants vs. Zombies Heroes, Bejeweled Blitz (70M+ downloads), and Peggle. Our work drove over 1B global downloads and top-grossing rankings, guided PopCap’s shift to free-to-play, and integrated UX practices into EA while preserving the creative quality and player-first values that made our games beloved.
smashing ideasCreative Director
I guided concept development, design execution, and client collaboration for brands like Disney, Mattel, and Nickelodeon, creating digital products that reached millions of users and extended properties into interactive ecosystems. My leadership helped launch dozens of e-books, games, and mobile apps, many surpassing a million downloads, while also driving UX in areas such as in-flight entertainment, security, and interactive TV. I mentored designers, fostered collaboration, and shaped the studio’s creative vision and culture of curiosity, creativity, and excellence.
The Work.
Transforming Alexa’s Most Popular Destination
I led design efforts to evolve Alexa’s most popular destination, the place customers land after saying “Alexa, play music,” the Now Playing screen. Research revealed key challenges: customers grew tired of the same songs, often struggled to decide what to play, and frequently forgot to use their devices for music. To address this, I partnered with research and product to define customer “Jobs to Be Done,” and worked closely with engineering to create an API that allowed providers like Amazon Music and Spotify to surface personalized recommendations. Alongside this, I restructured the information architecture, elevated the visual design, and introduced persistent controls, artist imagery, and more intuitive navigation validated through usability testing.
The results transformed a simple playback screen into a more engaging and valuable experience. Streaming hours increased by 25% (triple the goal), customer interactions rose 30%, and CSAT scores improved from 6.1 to 6.7. By focusing on the details, like surfacing recommendations by default, showcasing artists visually, and reducing friction in controls, we boosted both customer satisfaction and business impact. The work not only enriched how millions discover and enjoy music with Alexa but also laid the foundation for future ambient experiences that keep customers engaged even when they are not actively playing music.
Leading the Visual CX for Alexa+ Audio Recommendations
As part of the Alexa+ initiative, our team set out to redefine how customers discover and enjoy audio content. I led the visual customer experience for audio recommendations within one of Alexa+’s flagship efforts. Our goal was to move beyond transactional requests and create a more natural, engaging, and visual journey across Echo Show devices, Fire TV, and the Alexa mobile app.
I partnered with product to design how audio search results and recommendations appear in the multimodal agent layer. Instead of Alexa starting playback immediately, customers could now browse results with rich album art, podcast imagery, and contextual metadata. This design gave customers more control, allowing them to play, refine, or ask for additional options.
Through rapid iteration and close collaboration with engineering, we delivered a scalable visual first CX that supported music, podcasts, radio, and audiobooks. This marked a key shift from Classic Alexa to Alexa+, moving the experience from transactional to conversational and multimodal. By focusing on clarity, consistency, and delight, I helped set the standard for how Alexa+ surfaces recommendations, transforming everyday listening moments into richer and more engaging experiences.
Nice Words.
From my experience, there are very few designers who can do what Jim does. He dives deep into the vision, understands the constraints, communicates clearly with key stakeholders, and delivers a design that is strong from the very first pass. It only gets better as we continue to iterate together. Jim has added tremendous value to our project and our team.
Paul Bettner, CEO at PlayfulJim is a great design leader with strong technical skills and instincts, and he consistently fosters an environment where his team can thrive and do their best work. He has delivered impact on high-stakes product experiences, balancing customer delight through design with business KPIs and the technical innovation required to scale Alexa experiences for hundreds of millions of customers. Jim would be an excellent leader for any design or product organization looking to up-level both design quality and people leadership.
Benson Chan, VP of Product Design at OptumAs Product Lead for Alexa Audio, I had the privilege of working with Jim, an exceptional Design Lead whose creativity, expertise, and customer focus always elevated our work. The speed and quality of our collaboration are a true testament to his design talent. Jim takes on the toughest challenges with agility and skill, and his collaborative spirit and openness to new ideas have been key to the success of Alexa’s audio experiences.
Ryan Burnett, Head of Product for alexa at amazon