Eric BellA little about me
Hello there! I’m Eric, a digital product and service designer who came out of library science. I’m a UX generalist who specializes in complex, behind-the-scenes challenges that span multiple user groups or internal teams.
What I bring to a team is a holistic vision of a cross-product experience, and the facilitation to unify complicated cross-department experiences, as well as design mentorship to support those efforts.
I’ve shipped three startups from soup to nuts, optimized existing products, and I visualizing and aligning product strategy and execution. I have a bad habit of sticking through a project until it succeeds or dies under my feet.
The last six years I spent leading the design team at Vineti, where we built a platform to orchetsrate the next generation of cell nd gene therapy treatments. Before that I directed product design on the Rakuten Manga project, a platform for fans to translate digital comics into their own language, and I formed and facilitated the design team at Viki, a Rakuten subsidiary. I’ve worked at a small social media startup, design agencies in Tokyo and Seattle, and designed the Japanese input methods for Microsoft’s erstwhile Windows Phone 7.
Currently I’m looking for complex system & service problems to work on, an established design team to learn from & mentor, who are geographically distributed with intentional onsites.
Working together
Team dynamics
Feedback. Is a gift. Sharing or receiving, nothing is personal. Everything is a data point towards insights to align impact with goals.
Conflict. We are a team not a family. Let’s confront our disagreements constructively rather than avoid the conflict.
Safety. Emotional safety is critical for a collaborative team that wants to tackle its risks rather than hide them. How might we support each other to continue improving our dynamics?
Collaboration
Pairing. Working together live saves communication disconnects and dramatically shortens feedback loops, let’s schedule some time.
Visibility. I believe in passive visibility of team work, via information radiators or shared task boards, to create awareness and allow for serendipitous interactions.
Synchronicity. My preferred work dynamic is intentional synchronous pairing balanced with focused async execution and visible team communication. How might we find the best work cadence so that we can all maintain our most sustainably productive team routines?
Presence. Distributed by default, on-site by intention. Let’s meet up in-person 2-4x year for project intensives.
Work mindset
Process nerd. There are so many ways to get things done, let’s figure out the project mindsets that work best for us.
Librarian. Many coworkers have told me I’m the most organized person they know. I habitually take notes and synthesize takeaways and follow-up tasks.
Information Architect. My mental model is not yours. Let’s find the right balance of structure and flexibility to maximize everyone’s mental model for where things should go.
Accolades
I shy away from trumpeting myself, but my colleagues do seem to keep saying nice things about me.
Jag Stuart Borrys