Greg.app
Increased paid membership trial starts by 250%.We wanted to increase paid memberships to Greg and believed that improving the screens where users interact with data about their plants would help.Our hunch paid off! After multiple rounds of user interviews, and iterating through design ideas, we improved users' plant homes and brought in data that was both friendly and useful.
HeyKona.com
B2B SaaS app - Increased ARR by 41%. Pre-PMF startup: from $85k to $120k in 6 months.I worked with the founders as their first designer and helped improve on their initial product. I set up design processes, created a design system, and helped the founders untangle their vision for product features. With all that in place, we were able to focus on building a dashboard that gave managers insight into how their team was doing and how to keep everyone engaged.Projects included iterating on an app for employee engagement and mental wellness, as well as revamping the design for the website.
dwellapp.io
Mobile consumer app + b2b saas app.I worked with the co-founder of Dwell to improve their mobile consumer app. I created a design system to guarantee visual consistency throughout the product and overhauled the onboarding flow to make it more user-friendly and intuitive. Together, we brought ideas to life by moving them from sketches to wireframes and finally to high-fidelity designs that were ready for development.I also led the redesign of a B2B content management system for a mobile consumer app, which aimed to help churches manage user subscriptions. We established a new design language and thought through the the information hierarchy for managers, groups, and payments. We were able to account for different user types, and created a user-friendly experience for managing content.
Howdy!
I’m Joshua Wold, a designer from Post Falls, Idaho. I have 15+ years experience in consumer products, e-commerce, mobile, and B2B SaaS.Curiosity, creativity, and community, matter so much to me. I’m driven to learn, ask questions, and understand how things work. I love to read, write, and stay active. I’ve written 7 novels, and self-published three of them. When I’m not working I love to go on trail runs in the Idaho outdoors, and spend time with my family and friends.I’ve gone from trying to make things pretty in my early days to learning how to pull the right levers for user acquisition, activation, and retention. A team can only focus on one at a time, so understanding the business need is crucial to seeing where design and product fit in.With that said, I still love to create experiences that customers love, often starting with simple sketches to make sure the team can figure out the messy parts early on.I’ve got a passion for learning, story telling, and understanding why people do things. I’ve worked at companies of all sizes, including running my own company for several years, and can fit in almost anywhere.One time, a 10 minute sketched saved a company $5,000. I focus on bringing clarity to chaos, am eternally curious, and have a passion for connection and understanding.Below I’ve put together some things I’ve worked on. I’m happy to share more, including walking through case studies, but I figured this would be a great starting point. Thanks so much!
My process
Every designer has a process they take, and an approach to moving an idea to something ready for users. For the past 15+ years I’ve honed my process, improving from each mistake, and looking for every chance to help make things clear.
1. Write it down
The first thing I do when taking on a project is figure out, in writing, the job we’re trying to accomplish. As a product manager in a previous life I think about how a user would see the work, and write from that perspective. Sometimes this is done by others, but often I’ll write out the definition of success and capture the goal of the work. This helps clarify my thinking and figure out what they heck we’re all talking about.
2: Sketches and wireframes
I’ve created hundreds, maybe thousands, of sketches over the years. These are really simple scribbles, to figure out the flow of things, and see the holes in what I’ll design. If you work with me you’ll see some form of these. Once, a 10 minute sketch saved a team $5,000 in billable hours.These sketches don’t have to be right, but they do need to be quick. A wrong idea, shared early, beats the right idea shared too late.
3. Ship it
Anyone who has created knows you don’t go from A > Z in a perfect line. There’s a lot of messy back and forth, and sometimes you have to drop back to sketches or defining the work, and other times you can jump ahead to higher fidelity designs.After the sketches are done I may go wireframes, then high-fidelity prototypes. Or I may not, it all depends on the project and what’s needed to ship the work. If we need a clickable prototype I’ll do that, if a developer just needs to see a sketch to go live, then I won’t waste anyone’s time.
Testimonials
Joshua is one of the best designers and all-around teammates I’ve worked with. He brought a valuable sense of optimism and curiosity to every project he worked on, and the whole team appreciated his positive energy. He was crucial in wire-framing new ideas for our app during a period of high-throughput feature building. I loved his questions and desire to learn. His process of taking a product idea, working through rapid iterations, and asking the right questions helped us to move quickly from idea to engineering-ready designs.— Alex Ross, Greg.app founder
Joshua has a keen eye for design and user experience. He is phenomenal at focusing on the big picture, and long term results. His passion for the work he does is apparent in every step, and extremely valued by his peers and clients.Over my years working with Joshua the word I would use to describe him is crusader. Whether it is crusading to close a gap in a delivery process, crusading for the best approach to a project to derive at a favorable user-focused outcome or crusading for the WordPress community he is successful in each, and every, endeavor.— Mackenzie Hartung, XWP.co Chief Delivery Officer
Josh was a remarkable asset to our team, bringing both exceptional design skills and extensive experience as a product thinker. From the earliest iterations of Chestr, Josh was invaluable in helping us not only meet our immediate needs, but also envision how our product could evolve in the long term. I highly recommend working with Josh for anyone looking to elevate their product and design work.— Besart Çopa, Chestr.com founder
Joshua worked with us as a fractional designer for some early-stage concepts at our startup. I can’t say enough good things about him – Joshua is an async magician who managed to deeply understand our customers and business to produce stellar designs with just the right level of back and forth. Joshua spent the right level of effort in early-stage explorations before building fully-fledged designs that our users loved. Would heartily recommend Joshua for work with early stage startups like ours.— Stefan Mai, HelloInterview.com founder
One of Joshua’s greatest strengths is his excellent communication skills. He kept me informed throughout the projects with regular updates via loom videos and Figma files, which made it easy for me to follow his progress and provide feedback.Overall, I cannot recommend Joshua highly enough. He is an all-around great guy who is easy to get along with and a ton of fun to work with. If you’re looking for a product designer who can deliver high-quality work and excellent communication, Joshua is your guy.— Evan King, Co-founder @ hellointerview.com
I’ve had the pleasure to work with Joshua on many different projects over the years and have always been impressed with his abilities. He understands the wants and needs of users and how to visually express them in a way that brilliantly intersect with the technology to create something truly amazing. I would highly recommend Joshua for UI/UX product work and so much more. He’s a big talent with an even bigger heart.— Derek Herman, Yoast CTO
Bonus Illustrations
Oh hey! You're still here?This is a personal note to me that I want to add some additional projects to my portfolio, namely my work with HelloInterview.com, Benchmark.design (had an exit!), AgentWP (had an exit), Angel.com, Chestr.com, 7sage.com, and more.For all the other designers out there just know you're not alone, we all have portfolios we hope to update. Here's my personal commitment to get these in here soon.