Aaron Sagray

With a diverse, non-traditional career and fifteen years of experience in UX/interaction, product and strategic disciplines, I’ve had the opportunity to work for both high-profile companies and small startups, and across Consumer, Enterprise SaaS, Mobile, Internet of things, TV/Connected Home and more.

My goal has always been to work with smart teams to deliver delightful products. Design is about people, and I believe design can make a dramatic strategic impact for both corporate profitability and fulfilling customers’ unmet needs. To that end, I collaborate with leaders throughout the organization — championing the value of design vision, product strategy and execution.

Let’s build awesome things together!

Experience

  • Product Design
  • ACME Technologies
  • March 2016 to Present

ACME is a SaaS event and membership services platform which allows venues with reoccurring visitors to sell tickets, manage events, memberships, resources and resellers. The highly-configurable platform has many touchpoints – consumer web, point of sale, access control and back office management. Customers include MoMa, New Museum, Red & White Fleet and others.

  • Brought in tactics to scale design process and delivery.
  • Collaborates with customers, client services, product management & engineering to deliver a high quality product.
  • Director of Product Design
  • mPATH
  • August 2013 to March 2016

mPath is a native, mobile-first application lifecycle platform. Business professionals can create or modify productivity apps (like CRM, Projects, Inventory and Asset Management) in a matter of minutes, then instantly distribute them to their teams – all without coding.

First employee and UX team lead. I collaborated on the product vision, user experience, product roadmap and go to market strategy. I wore many hats in this role – driving design execution, customer discovery, UX research, team building, recruiting and marketing communications. I also assisted with business development, analyst relationships, investor meetings and board updates.

  • Defined product vision and design “North Star”.
  • Created product flows and created wireframes, prototypes, visual design and animations.
  • Hired, lead and mentored team.
  • Worked with executives and product owner to define and prioritize features in the product roadmap.
  • Built relationships with board, investors and early customers.
  • Collaborated with customers to arrange qualitative research opportunities.
  • Collaborated with engineering to deliver and refine a high-quality product. Contributed to iOS and front-end codebase.
  • Arranged for acquisition of the team by ACME Technologies before company operations were suspended.
  • Product Design Lead
  • Urban Airship (via Tello)
  • December 2012 to August 2013

Responsible for product design, writing, front-end markup and some marketing on PassTools and Urban Airship Wallet Studio.

  • Collaborated on product roadmap and go to market strategy with GM of Digital Wallet.
  • Partnered with Google and Alaska Airlines to integrate a pre-release version of Google Wallet and launch a partner customer in time for Google I/O 2013.
  • In just two months — completely redesigned and rebuilt PassTools to become Wallet Studio. Wallet Studio features the first drag and drop template builder for both Google Wallet and Apple Passbook.
  • Designed flows, wireframes, visuals and contributed to front-end codebase.
  • Design Director
  • Tello / PassTools
  • June 2012 to December 2012

Responsible for all product design and much of the writing, marketing and front-end markup for both the Tello Mobile feedback application and the PassTools application.

  • In just 1.5 months — designed, built and launched PassTools: the first visual design-time tool and enterprise-scale API for Apple Passbook.
  • Acquired four months later by Urban Airship (December 2012).
  • Creative Director
  • Rauxa (via ThoughtMatrix)
  • October 2009 to June 2012

First designer, brought on to start an agency-caliber creative services practice at this established application development firm. Projects include web applications, mobile applications, content management implementations and strategic marketing for Fortune 1000 clients.

  • Led, mentored and recruited key members of our growing creative team.
  • Collaborated with account and project managers to deliver a great client experience, which resulted in repeat business.
  • Championed new design process, based on Lean Agile, which reduced time to ship.
  • Developed new relationships with clients and created new proposal processes, which resulted in more agency wins. Suggested new initiatives to clients, resulting in more reoccurring revenue.
  • Stepped into other roles, such as project management and front-end development, when team was resource-constrained.
  • Founder
  • Feverish
  • June 2001 to October 2009

Started freelancing — and ultimately built a boutique agency to provide user-centered design solutions and marketing strategy.

  • Built lasting relationships with both larger partner agencies and organically-acquired clients.
  • Drove profitability by adopting the “virtual agency” business model and using trusted contractors and remote development teams.
  • Developed a broad range of skills including business development and client relationship management, vendor management, front-end scripting and SEO.
  • Creative Director
  • Tager Group
  • March 2002 to June 2005

Led creative team and contractors to develop integrated marketing projects spanning many mediums, including event branding, DVD design, user experience, radio, print collateral and website design.

  • Created consistent and intuitive user experience for a “before its time” television and web-based home automation system.
  • Conceived and executed successful brand for the inaugural Literacy Classic football game in four months. Sold out San Jose State University stadium for first time in 10 years.
  • Developed DVD sales tool resulting in a significant increase in sponsorships for the Cinequest film festival.
  • Art Director
  • Catapult Direct
  • 2000 to June 2001

Responsible for Art Direction and design of direct mail, dimensional mailers, and websites. Led small teams to concept and design strategically-focused marketing materials.

  • Jr. Designer to Art Director
  • marchFIRST (via USWeb/CKS, via CKS)
  • 1998 to 2000

Design and Art Direction for long-term, motion graphics, web, print and other on-screen projects. Member of teams of 3 to 18 designers and developers to create projects for Fortune 500 clients.

  • Worked with senior team to design logitech.com. Winner of the One Show Interactive Design Merit award. Client requested that I assume role of Art Director. Led team in further enhancement of the site.
  • Created application-specific motion graphics in In-Store Demo CD-ROMs for Apple. Developed a new process to complete localization and internationalization of demos several weeks faster.

Education