Head of Product Design
18 years designing systems, AI experiences, and digital products across QSR, fintech, aviation, and sports. Two shipped AI products. Three design systems in production. Currently Head of Product Design at Papa Johns.
Selected Work
Shipped AI products, enterprise design systems, and consumer experiences across QSR, fintech, aviation, and sports. One key unlocks everything for the session.
Three platforms, seven product teams, zero shared design language. I built the design system from scratch: tokens, components, accessibility standards, documentation, and the governance model that finally got Product, Design, and Engineering shipping from the same source of truth.
View case study →Most QSR apps force you to browse a menu. Lou AI figures out what you want from a conversation. I led UX for the voice and chat ordering assistant: conversation architecture, group ordering flows, personalization logic, and the engagement model that took it from prototype to live in the app.
View case study →Fans moved between the website, app, and broadcast constantly, and had three completely different experiences. I led research, persona development, journey mapping, and the unified design system that made it feel like one product across web, mobile, and OTT for 40M+ monthly users.
View case study →Crew managers were running Friday night operations out of a screen built in 2009. Every exception required five windows and a phone call. I redesigned the command center from the ground up: phased delivery, real-time exception surfacing, reduced operational costs by 11%.
View case study →14 enterprise banking products that looked like they were built by 14 different companies, because they were. I built APEX, a centralized design system on HTML/CSS that unified them all, cut dev costs by 18%, and finally gave millions of users a consistent experience.
View case study →Flight crew were managing their entire work lives, trips, reserves, trades, in a mobile app that had never been designed for mobile. I ran ethnographic research in crew rooms, mapped 40+ distinct jobs-to-be-done, and rebuilt it platform-agnostic. Scheduling efficiency up 40%.
View case study →The ask: show executives what data-driven hospitality actually looks like. Not a deck, a vision. I built the product strategy, motion design, animation, and hype video that made the case from browse to checkout. It got funded.
View case study →Corporate retail teams were flying blind. Store-level data scattered across six systems with no unified view. I designed a real-time video wall dashboard that consolidated sales, inventory, store calendars, and live feeds into a single command surface for rapid decision-making.
View case study →Nobody had built real AI phone ordering for a major QSR before. Not just IVR, but a full conversational agent that knows your account, your saved payment, your loyalty balance, and can complete an order without a single tap. I designed the conversation flow, edge cases, and the UX nobody had a playbook for yet.
View case study →About
Hi, I'm Brian.
I lead Product Design at Papa Johns. I joined to build The Ingredients, the company's first enterprise design system, and ended up staying to ship AI ordering experiences that nobody in QSR had built before. The design system got Product, Engineering, and Design working from the same source of truth for the first time. The AI work put us on a Google Cloud case study.
As Head of Product Design, I own execution across Web, iOS, Android, and AI. That means ordering, checkout, loyalty, personalization, and authentication, plus Lou AI and Papa Call, two shipped AI products that represent genuinely new territory for the industry. I still write design specs. I still do design critiques. I'm not the kind of leader who stopped making things.
Before Papa Johns, I spent over a decade in consulting and enterprise design, leading work for the NBA, IHG, Delta, Coca-Cola, The Home Depot, Mars, Unilever, and Tom Ford. My background in motion graphics, video, and animation isn't a footnote: it shows up directly in the executive vision work and product storytelling that actually move organizations.
How I work: I lead from evidence, not opinion, and I will defend a pattern with research before I defend it with a title. Most design systems die from neglected governance, not bad components. And the AI worth building is the kind that makes a hard moment feel easy, not the kind that makes a demo look clever. I still make the things I ask my teams to make.
Clients and Companies
Recommendations
Brian has been my right-hand partner at two organizations, and I trust him implicitly. He brings one of the strongest design crafts I have worked with, spanning design systems, end-to-end experience strategy, and execution, all while managing an exceptional velocity of work.
Leigh Haislip
Product Design Leader, Director Level
Brian is creative, professional, and consistently finds thoughtful, user-centered solutions to difficult problems. He stays flexible under pressure and adapts easily to rapidly changing situations and requirements, keeping the work moving forward without ever losing sight of the people it's meant to serve.
Laurie Gray
Practice Area Lead
Brian consistently demonstrated exceptional leadership, strategic insight, and dedication to delivering results. His ability to navigate complex challenges with both clarity and creativity made him an invaluable part of our team.
Mark Lanford
Principal Product Designer, Papa Johns
Brian can step into any project, work effectively with even the most challenging stakeholders, and consistently drive positive outcomes. His ability to balance quality, speed, and collaboration is rare and invaluable in complex environments.
Dipankar Bose, HFI CUA
Full Stack Design Lead, Enterprise AI
Brian is an outstanding UX Designer. He consistently demonstrates the ability to coordinate projects of all sizes, successfully manages customer expectations from kickoff through delivery, and brings a detail-oriented, dependable approach to everything he takes on. He's the kind of designer you want on a complex project.
Kelly H. Lee
Product Owner
Brian is an outstanding professional in the fintech industry, respected for his strong commitment to helping the team reach their goals and providing insightful feedback on projects.
Joann West
Business Analyst, Fiserv
Background
Papa Johns
Head of Product Design
Fiserv
UX Senior Advisor / Principal Designer
Nine Labs
Lead UX Consultant
HatchWorks
Sr. Solutions Design Consultant
ICP
Creative Operations Manager
Slalom Consulting
UX Consultant
Allure Global Solutions
Lead Digital Media Designer
Art Institute of Atlanta
Visual Design, Motion Graphics, Interactive Media
// WHY FORTY2.DESIGN?
A supercomputer spent 7.5 million years computing the answer to the great question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. The answer was 42. Nobody thought to figure out the question first. Good design starts with the right question.
Whether it's a design system, an AI experience, or a product that needs a thoughtful hand at the helm.
