I'm Elliot.

I design thoughtful product experiences that scale.




Projects

Turning complex product problems into scalable solutions.

Turning Taco Bell Customization Into Fan Expression

Lead Product Designer, 2025

Fan Style transformed Taco Bell customization into an experience where fans could turn their favorite orders into something they could name, save, and share.What began as an effort to encourage more sharing became a broader exploration of how customization could become a form of self-expression giving fans something personal enough to share beyond the transaction.


The Opportunity

Customers could already customize and share Taco Bell orders, but our Shop Pod team saw that relatively few people were using the existing sharing experience.Rather than simply making the share action more prominent, we explored a bigger question: What would make a customized order feel worth sharing in the first place?That led to Fan Style where fans could turn customized menu items into named creations they could save, revisit, and share with friends or followers.


How might we turn everyday customization into something fans would be excited to make their own and share?


Making Creation Feel Effortless

We wanted creating a Fan Style to feel like a natural extension of ordering rather than another experience customers had to learn.After customizing an item, fans could turn their creation into a Fan Style, give it a name, save it to their collection, and receive a personalized style card designed for sharing.Connecting creation directly to an existing behavior, ordering Taco Bell the way you like it, kept the experience simple while giving fans something more personal to take away from it.


Creating Something Worth Sharing

A Fan Style needed to feel personal, but it also needed to feel unmistakably Taco Bell.As the concept developed, Product and Marketing were exploring different approaches to the experience. I helped establish the product design direction and a structure that could support both the in-app experience and the creative expression around it.I defined the structure, layout, and constraints for the Fan Style cards, then partnered with Global Bell Creative to bring more personality into the experience through typography, gradients, and custom artwork. I also reviewed the creative for accessibility and technical feasibility.Those same layouts and assets extended into social sharing giving fans a polished way to share their creations with friends and followers.


Balancing Recognition With Brand Safety

One of our early directions explored a leaderboard where fan creations could compete for greater visibility and recognition.As we worked through the concept with Product, Engineering, Legal, and other partners, greater visibility also raised questions around moderation, intellectual property, and brand safety. Fan-created names needed moderation for profanity and copyrighted IP while unrestricted image uploads introduced additional risk.Rather than forcing the original concept forward, we shifted toward a more curated model where Taco Bell could editorially feature select creations. This preserved the opportunity for recognition while giving the brand more control over what received broader visibility.


Designing for Safe Sharing

We also reconsidered how much visual control fans needed to make their creations feel unique.Instead of allowing unrestricted image uploads, we partnered with Global Bell Creative to create a controlled set of artwork that gave Fan Style personality while maintaining a consistent visual system.Fans could still name and share their creations on social media, but the combination of established layouts and curated artwork allowed for self-expression within clear product and brand constraints.


Bringing Fan Creations Onto the Menu

The idea of recognition eventually extended beyond the digital experience. Select fan creations were chosen to become limited-time menu offerings taking something that began as personal customization and turning it into something other Taco Bell customers could actually order.It created an interesting connection between digital and physical experiences: fans weren't only sharing what they made. Some could see their creations become part of the Taco Bell menu itself.


Outcome

Fans created 35,000+ Fan Styles, demonstrating meaningful participation in an experience designed to extend customization beyond the transaction.Fan Style also received earned media coverage including Fast Company and People along with social amplification.Beyond the initial launch, the experience gave us a foundation for thinking more broadly about personalization, sharing, user-generated content, moderation, and fan participation within Taco Bell's digital products.


How This Shaped My Approach

Fan Style reinforced for me that some of the strongest digital experiences don't sit neatly within traditional product or brand boundaries.Creating something fans would want to personalize and share meant bringing together product design, brand expression, social behavior, technical realities, and safety considerations. It also strengthened how I work across disciplines helping Product, Engineering, Legal, Analytics, Creative, and Social solve different parts of the same customer experience.


Exploring Explainable AI for Creative Workflows

Design Lead | 2023-2024

Perception is an AI-powered color platform that helps designers discover palettes based on the feeling or idea they want to convey.Rather than starting with specific color values, designers could search by concept, explore related ideas, and use confidence scores to understand how closely different palettes aligned with their creative intent.The challenge wasn't simply generating colors with AI. It was exploring how AI could support creativity while still giving designers understanding and control.


The Opportunity

Inspired by Shigenobu Kobayashi's Color Image Scale, Perception explored the relationship between color, language, and emotion through emerging AI technology. Our Head of Design saw an opportunity to build on those principles while our data science team was exploring new ways to uncover relationships between color and meaning.The idea initially centered on helping people find colors that expressed the feeling they wanted for a brand or campaign. As the product evolved, we saw a more focused opportunity to help designers bridge the gap between creative intent and color selection.


How might we help designers explore color through meaning and emotion while making AI-generated results understandable enough to trust?



Designing Around Creative Intent

I joined the project after early wireframes had been developed and helped guide the experience from those initial explorations through beta. Instead of requiring designers to begin with a specific color, Perception allowed them to start with what they wanted the color to communicate.Designers could enter a term, explore palettes associated with it, and discover related concepts to refine their direction.“What color am I looking for?” became “What do I want this to feel like?”


Making AI Easier to Understand

We didn't want Perception to feel like a black box that simply generated results. One way we approached explainability was through confidence scores. Results included a percentage showing how closely the system associated a palette with the concept being explored giving designers another signal they could use while evaluating different directions.This reinforced a principle that became important to my work on the product: AI should support creative judgment, not obscure it.


Testing with Designers

As Perception evolved, we wanted to better understand how it could fit into designers' existing creative workflows.I helped organize usability testing, developed the test form, and worked with our design team to recruit designers to participate. The goal was to test our assumptions about the experience and identify where Perception could provide the most value within the creative process.The study was still underway when my time with the company came to an end so I wasn't part of the final analysis.


Designing for Growth

As Perception gained capabilities, our original single-surface experience became increasingly complex. More functionality gave designers more ways to work with color, but it also made the experience harder to understand.Rather than continuing to add controls to the same interface, we began organizing capabilities into more focused tools and reusable interaction patterns.Perception started evolving from one increasingly complicated interface into a connected suite of tools giving the product more room to grow as new capabilities emerged.


Extending Beyond the Standalone Product

We also partnered with Playbook as part of an effort to reach a broader creative audience.Playbook was building a space for teams to store, collaborate on, and share creative assets. We worked directly with their designers, developers, and leadership to explore how Perception could fit within their product and adjusted parts of our experience for that context.The partnership pushed my thinking beyond the standalone product toward how an experience could adapt within a broader creative ecosystem.


Outcome

Perception launched in beta in June 2023 and reached 10,000 users within six months.The product grew beyond its initial palette concept into a collection of AI-assisted color tools while the Playbook partnership gave us an opportunity to explore how Perception could extend into an established creative platform.


How This Shaped My Approach

Perception changed how I thought about designing for emerging technology. The interesting challenge wasn't just what AI could generate, but how people could understand, direct, and trust what it produced.It also pushed me to think beyond individual features toward systems that could evolve with both the technology and the people using it. Those lessons around product strategy, explainability, and systems thinking continue to influence how I approach product design.


Designing for Global Scale, Accessibility, and Localization

Meta Family Center is a global platform designed to help families manage digital well-being through accessible, culturally inclusive, and multilingual resources.

Leadership Scope

  1. Led key interaction design workstreams within a large cross-functional effort

  2. Defined scalable patterns for accessibility and localization

  3. Influenced content structure and migration strategy

  4. Coordinated closely with engineering and external partners



Opportunity

How might we deliver clear, accessible digital safety guidance for a global audience with varying literacy levels and cultural needs?


Approach

  1. Translated research into clear design principles by focusing on clarity, progressive disclosure, and accessibility for users with varying levels of digital literacy.

  2. Designed modular, scalable content patterns by including step-by-step guidance and structured layouts that made complex information easier to understand and navigate.

  3. Planned for localization early by creating templates and systems that supported multilingual content and reduced rework during global rollout.

  4. Navigated migration constraints by working with engineering and vendors to maintain UX quality while transitioning platforms and systems.

  5. Supported long-term governance by helping define patterns that allowed content to scale and evolve without constant redesign.


Key Decisions

  1. Prioritized progressive disclosure for complex topics

  2. Built localization into the system from the start

  3. Used modular components to support migration and scale


Outcome


Scaling Impact

Created localization-ready UX patterns and modular systems that enabled global expansion without compromising usability or consistency.


Empowering Financial Wellness Through Scalable Financial Management

Personal Finances is a financial management tool for Experian Consumer Services designed to help users seamlessly manage accounts, categorize spending, and receive contextual insights by bringing clarity and confidence to everyday financial decisions.

Leadership Scope

  1. Led interaction and visual design across web platforms

  2. Owned experience direction for core financial management workflows

  3. Contributed to design system development and scalable UI patterns

  4. Partnered closely with Product, Engineering, and external data providers (Plaid)



Opportunity

How might we help users manage their finances in a unified, intuitive way while building confidence and understanding over time?


Approach

  1. Framed the experience around user needs by grounding the product in three core pillars—organization, financial understanding, and empowerment—based on research insights into fragmented tools and limited user confidence.

  2. Defined a unified, cross-platform experience by ensuring users could manage accounts, view transactions, and track spending consistently across desktop and mobile environments.

  3. Designed contextual support into the core experience by integrating guidance and educational touch-points directly into workflows rather than separating learning from action.

  4. Iterated on core financial workflows by refining account linking, transaction categorization, and alert systems to reduce friction and improve usability across scenarios.

  5. Addressed data quality challenges head-on by introducing user feedback mechanisms for incorrect transaction categorization and partnering with Plaid to improve accuracy and responsiveness.


Key Decisions

  1. Prioritized unification across platforms to reduce fragmentation in financial management

  2. Embedded education within workflows to build user confidence over time

  3. Introduced user feedback loops to improve data quality and system reliability


Outcome

  1. ~400,000 users acquired during beta

  2. ~950,000 financial accounts connected

  3. Strong early engagement across account tracking and transaction visibility


Scaling Impact

This work required setting direction across a new product space, aligning user needs with technical constraints, and building systems that balanced usability, data complexity, and scalability.


Balancing Performance, Storytelling, and Conversion at Scale

A global redesign of the Facebook Portal site focused on modernizing product storytelling while improving navigation and media performance to drive engagement and conversion.

Leadership Scope

  1. Led visual and system-level design work across key product surfaces

  2. Aligned marketing, product, and engineering priorities

  3. Defined performance-aware design patterns and modular systems



Opportunity

How might we modernize the Portal experience to improve storytelling and usability while supporting performance and conversion goals?


Approach

  1. Focused on high-impact areas by using analytics and research to prioritize improvements in storytelling, navigation, and performance.

  2. Balanced brand expression with performance by designing responsive and optimized media systems that maintained quality while improving load times.

  3. Built modular systems for flexibility by creating reusable components that supported ongoing marketing updates without redesign.

  4. Enabled clean implementation by partnering with engineering to define specs, ensure consistency, and support rollout.


Key Decisions

  1. Prioritized comparison-driven content to support decision-making

  2. Introduced performance-first media strategies

  3. Built modular systems to support evolving marketing needs


Outcome

  1. Global launch in September 2021

  2. Improved engagement and conversion (internal metrics)


Scaling Impact

Established reusable patterns for media, layout, and promotional components that allowed the site to evolve with changing business needs.


Hi, I’m Elliot.

I’m a Lead Product Designer based in Southern California. I enjoy taking complex, sometimes messy problems and turning them into experiences that feel clear, thoughtful, and built to last at industry-leading companies.

My background spans personalization, AI-driven tools, and large-scale digital products. I’ve worked across industries and alongside Product, Engineering, Research, Marketing, and other partners to figure out not only what we should build, but why it matters and how it fits into the bigger picture.Over time, I’ve become especially interested in the space between design and strategy: bringing people together around a direction, making sense of ambiguity, and creating systems that teams can continue building on.


Capabilities

Product strategy · Interaction design · Visual systems · Design systems · Prototyping · Research synthesis · Cross-functional collaboration

Tools & Technology

Figma · Adobe Creative Cloud · AI tools · HTML/CSS


Partnerships

I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with some great external teams along the way. These partnerships have brought new perspectives and expertise into the products I’ve helped shape.


My path into design hasn’t exactly been a straight line and I think that’s made me a better designer.Outside of work, I’ve run full marathons, traveled extensively, and spent time living abroad. Those experiences have made me more curious, adaptable, and comfortable navigating the unknown. These are qualities that tend to show up in how I approach design too.These days, I’m interested in growing beyond designing individual experiences and spending more time shaping direction, mentoring others, and helping teams solve bigger problems together.


A few kind words

Annette Rodriguez Chang
Cox Automotive,
Principal Product Manager

"Elliot has a great eye for design and paying close attention to detail. Dedicated and passionate about his work and listening to users. Always collaborates with stakeholders, circles back to research insights, asks questions, and seeks clarification.”


Jennifer Mansdorf
Kelley Blue Book,
User Experience Design Manager

"Elliot is one of those rare well-rounded folks... His strong work ethic, dependability, and attention to detail make him an asset to any team.”


Warren TsangExperian Consumer Services,
Lead Product Designer

"If you're looking for a really experienced, professional and dependable designer… He learns new things easily, takes initiative, provides thought leadership and is a consummate professional. Plus he's an enjoyable, positive person to interact with that can really raise a team's culture with his example.”


Thanks for taking the time to explore my portfolio.

If you're interested in collaboration or have questions, feel free to reach out. I look forward to connecting with you.

How I Work

I like bringing clarity to messy problems.My process changes depending on the challenge, but I generally start by understanding what we're trying to solve, align people around a direction, and design with the bigger system in mind. The goal isn't just to ship something that works today. It's to create something the team can continue building on.


Research & Discovery

Before jumping into solutions, I try to understand the problem from different angles.That means aligning with partners on what we're trying to accomplish, looking at what we already know from research and data, and identifying the questions we still need to answer. Sometimes that leads to research. Sometimes the evidence is already there.The important part is making sure we're solving the right problem before getting too attached to a solution.


Conceptualization

Once the problem is clear enough, I start exploring how the experience could work.I collaborate closely with Product, Engineering, and other partners to understand constraints, pressure-test ideas, and find a direction we believe can scale.I'm less interested in producing dozens of concepts than finding the few that help us learn something and move the conversation forward.


Iterative Design

I rarely think of a design as finished after the first pass.Feedback, research, technical discoveries, edge cases, and sometimes simply seeing something built can change the direction. I use those moments to refine the experience while looking for patterns we can reuse elsewhere.The result is often bigger than an individual screen or flow. It's a stronger system for whatever comes next.


Delivery & Scaling

Shipping is part of the design process.I stay involved as ideas move into development working through behaviors, edge cases, documentation, and the inevitable questions that surface once something becomes real.I'm always thinking about what happens after launch too: what we learn, what needs refinement, and what can become a reusable pattern rather than a one-off solution.


Perspective & Influence

Some of how I work has less to do with design.I've run full marathons, traveled extensively, and lived abroad. Those experiences taught me quite a bit about patience, curiosity, adapting when things don't go according to plan, and becoming comfortable with not having all the answers.I bring a lot of that same perspective to design: stay curious, listen closely, keep moving, and be willing to change course when you learn something new.