I design both sides: what people see, and what the people doing the work use.

Today I lead product design for Instagram Shopping as an IC. Before that I was the first designer at Nuro, and the second at Instacart. I’ve managed teams of up to seven designers, and studied engineering and HCI at Stanford.

Instagram Shopping · 01

Design lead · 2020–2023, 2025–now

Making shopping work inside an app people don’t open to shop.

We tried building a shopping destination. It didn’t work. People open Instagram to be entertained, then shop when content inspires them. The job is to make that moment easy to act on.

Shoppable formats

We built shopping into the formats instead of a place to go.

Feed, stories, Reels, and Live carry products differently because people use each format differently. I managed the team across all four.

I’ve worked on Shopping twice. First on seller supply, as an IC and then a manager. Now I’m focused on getting shopping into Instagram’s main formats.

Current scopeIC, setting direction across several teams

Suggested shopping search

We suggest the search instead of waiting to be asked.

A tap opens products and related media. A follow-up question narrows the results. The hard part was choosing how broad the search should be, and whether to suggest one at all.

Business AI

Businesses couldn’t keep up with their messages, so we let AI take the first ones.

Instagram’s first business AI. A prompt on a business’s story opens a private chat that clearly says it’s AI, so someone gets an answer before buying instead of waiting days for a reply.

Creator monetization

We opened tagging to any link, not just our catalog.

Creators can earn on products Instagram doesn’t carry, and place each card where it belongs on the timeline.

Seller onboarding

We opened checkout inside Instagram instead of handing people off to a website.

Setup worked on a phone for the first time, on web, or through Shopify. Sellers only completed what they needed. In-app checkout went deeper into their payment systems so someone could buy in the moment.

Nuro · 02

First product designer · 2018–2019

The vehicle was built, but the product wasn’t.

The team had a working vehicle and a strong self-driving stack. No one knew whether the product was an ice cream truck you walk up to, something you hail, or a fleet behind someone else’s app.

Customer handoff

With no driver, the vehicle had to explain itself.

Finding the right vehicle, opening the right compartment, and knowing when the delivery was done all had to be easy to understand on your own.

As Nuro’s first product designer, I worked across the customer app, vehicle interface, remote operations, and fleet tools. I also ran the field research behind the hardware experience.

PatentNamed inventor · US 11,623,657 ↗

Remote vehicle startup

We brought up the whole fleet without anyone walking to a vehicle.

Starting a vehicle used to require an operator standing beside it with a laptop. Now one person starts them all and sees exactly what blocks any car that fails.

Grocery service pilot

We ran a real grocery service to find out what people wanted from it.

We hired drivers and shoppers and ran real orders. Sometimes a Nuro vehicle showed up instead of a car, so we could watch how people handled it long before the vehicle could do the whole job.

Fleet scheduling

We moved the fleet off Google Sheets and onto a real schedule.

Every car, operator, and task—from mapping runs to build tests—in one calendar. Operators got their day sent to them, and later the system began proposing the schedule.

Field research

How the vehicle greeted you mattered as much as any screen.

We had no researcher, so I ran sessions in daylight, at night, and in the rain. People were nervous approaching the vehicle, especially the doors, so sound, voice, and the screen had to explain what was happening.

Meta Verified · 03

Design lead · 2023–2025

Making a subscription worth paying for.

Meta Verified had one name but was really five products: a creator subscription and four business tiers, from $15 a month to about $500. Creators and businesses wanted different things, and every tier had to earn its price.

Why people paid

The benefits had to be things professionals couldn’t get anywhere else.

We researched what professionals would actually pay for, especially what they already paid outside services to do: grow an audience, prove they were legit, run an account with a team, and protect their work.

It was Meta’s first subscription, so we built the basics from scratch. I led Instagram design and owned the benefits we launched. Facebook adopted them too. Later I managed the team as the focus shifted to growth.

What happened nextIt worked well enough that Meta funded new subscription products off the back of it.

Live nowMeta Verified, live ↗

Links in content

Verification is what finally made links possible.

Instagram kept links out for years, partly because of spam and mostly to keep the app from turning into Facebook. Verified subscribers could finally add them, with limits on how often and how large they appeared.

Notability

The badge stopped telling you who was notable, so we put the follower count next to it.

Verification used to imply notability. Once anyone could get it, people checked follower counts to tell accounts apart, so we put the count next to the name. Creators could also filter comments and messages to other verified accounts.

Shared accounts

Messages and stories stayed with the owner, because those should be the real person.

Big accounts had been sharing passwords. Now owners could add people, see what each person did, and keep messages and stories private unless they chose otherwise. I set direction rather than doing the day-to-day design.

Links on profile

I designed Instagram’s answer to link-in-bio services.

People already paid outside services for this because a profile is where you decide if someone is legit. It became one of the two biggest reasons to subscribe.

Original credit

The subscription paid for the part that needed a human.

Big accounts copy smaller creators and keep the engagement. Detection ran for everyone, but subscribers could flag a post. If they were right, the copy was labeled with their name.

Instacart · 04

Second product designer · 2015–2018

No one was designing the work behind the groceries.

When I joined, the customer side had a designer. The people doing the shopping had none, and in-store shoppers and drivers ran the whole operation on mobile web.

Fieldwork

I took shopper shifts myself.

That’s me. The product made more sense once I was the person trying to keep an order moving.

As Instacart’s second product designer, I owned fulfillment and logistics. Its first native app carried in-store shoppers, drivers, and cashiers through a whole shift, and I designed the systems around it—from applying to getting paid—plus the tools operations managers used to run it. I also worked on parts of the customer experience.

What happened nextAutomated replacements became how the industry does grocery delivery, Amazon included.

Replacements

We replaced the back-and-forth texting with something automatic.

Something is out of stock about a fifth of the time. The old fix was a text thread with a customer who might not answer. Now their preferences are already there and the shopper keeps moving.

Shopper app

Replacements were suggested from what that customer had accepted before.

The app was the shopper’s to-do list, with something like Google Maps for each store. When an item was out, suggestions came from that customer’s history and what others tended to accept.

End of the order

The driver had to find the bags without the shopper there.

Picking was only half the job. Shoppers called anyone who hadn’t replied, paid on a company card, then barcoded each bag and recorded where it sat so the driver could find it.

Shifts and pay

Shoppers picked up their own shifts and could see where every dollar came from.

This was really an employment system. Shoppers set availability, picked up open shifts, and saw delivery pay and tips separately, week by week.

In-store fieldwork

We prototyped at the counter, in the store, on a borrowed iPad.

The butcher and deli counters were among the slowest parts of a shop. The app showed exactly what the customer wanted, down to three sausages instead of a weight.

Career

I’ve gone back and forth between managing and designing.

Across two periods as an Instagram manager, I led teams of up to seven, hired four designers, and coached three to promotion. I still do the design work myself and get decisions made across teams that don’t report to me.

Instagram2020–now	2025–nowShopping · IC 2024–2025Meta Verified · Manager 2023–2024Meta Verified launch · Lead IC 2021–2023Shopping, messaging, lead gen, and ads · Manager 2020Shopping seller onboarding · IC
Nuro2018–2019	First product designer
Instacart2015–2018	Second product designer
Prismatic2013–2014	Interaction Designer
Stanford UniversityEducation	MS Symbolic Systems · Human-Computer Interaction BS Management Science & Engineering

New York

Let’s talk.

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