I help enterprise teams decide what to build, and why it matters.
Brought in by stakeholders at Fortune 500 and regulated enterprises when the path isn't clear, teams disagree, data exists but isn't actionable, or momentum exists without shared direction.
Clients include Microsoft · Lenovo · PepsiCo · Philips · Biogen · Novartis · Unilever · Zebra Technologies
What I Do
I bring structure to decisions that feel too big, too political, or too undefined to move on: workshops, frameworks, and systems that make the path forward clear.
Frame the problem
Define the decision before design begins
Align stakeholders
Product, data, engineering, and leadership
Reduce noise
Surface the right signal for the right person
Build decision systems
Frameworks that scale beyond the engagement
Keep humans accountable
Especially in regulated, high-stakes environments
Make tradeoffs explicit
So decisions are intentional, not discovered late
The stated problem is rarely the real one.
I start most engagements with a reframing session. Usually there's a decision nobody has made yet sitting underneath the brief.
I find where people stopped understanding each other.
When teams are stuck, I map back to the last point of real agreement. That's almost always where the work needs to start.
Simpler isn't always the answer.
Some problems are just complicated. I'd rather build something that holds up in the real environment than hand over a clean framework that doesn't.
Tradeoffs need to be named early.
I start by mapping pain points and gaps in the current process, before anyone has named them as tradeoffs.
Decisions need an owner and a paper trail.
Especially in regulated environments. I structure outputs so there's a clear owner and traceable rationale.
"James didn't just design a better dashboard. He got twelve stakeholders to agree on what the dashboard was for."- VP of Product, Fortune 100 technology company
Three decisions worth making.
Click any project to expand the full case study in place.
Problem
A Competitive Intelligence team had lost credibility with clients. Internal AI solutions existed, but the team couldn't answer basic questions: who they were building for, which problems mattered most, and what was worth building vs. discarding. They had been stuck for 6-7 months.
Decision
Which AI-enabled CI capabilities should we prioritize first, based on real CI workflows and what already exists internally, and where are the true gaps?
What Changed
I reframed the effort from generating AI ideas to creating a shared way to decide. Instead of starting with solutions, the work forced alignment around real CI user workflows, then mapped those workflows to existing internal AI capabilities and visible gaps.
Visual Walkthrough
Outcome
The team started with AI features and worked backward. No shared filter for what to build or discard.
Real workflows became the decision filter, prioritizing a small set of meaningful use cases and discarding the rest.
Why This Matters
This gave the CI team a repeatable way to decide what to build, and just as importantly, what not to build. AI moved from a vague expectation to a set of clear, defensible priorities.
Problem
District and regional leaders were expected to make decisions across ~1,400 KPIs spread across disconnected dashboards, spreadsheets, and reports. The data existed. The structure to make sense of it didn't. A leadership change increased urgency to modernize how decisions were made, not just how data was stored.
Decision
How do we turn a data-heavy environment into a single place where leaders can understand what matters, coordinate with their teams, and take action; without removing human judgment in regulated decisions?
What Changed
I defined the information architecture and UX structure of a persona-based digital workplace. Rather than exposing all data, I grouped and surfaced related KPIs together so the view was cohesive, navigable, and aligned to how leaders actually thought about their work. I helped implement my leadership's 3I model (information, inference, interaction) in the design, so the raw number, the "so what," and the action leaders could take all lived in one place instead of three.
I pushed to keep humans in the loop for final decisions, even where automation was possible, because adoption and accountability mattered more than theoretical efficiency in a regulated environment.
Visual Walkthrough
Outcome
Leaders navigated spreadsheets, dashboards, and emails to piece together decisions. 1,321 KPIs across 400+ reports with no coherent structure.
A focused, scored view of performance, grouped by dimension so leaders could see where attention was needed.
Why This Matters
This shifted the organization from reviewing data to making coordinated, accountable decisions at scale, without losing trust or adoption in a regulated environment. The platform story was later pitched to EMEA and LATAM leadership teams.
Problem
Inventory planners and category managers were making daily replenishment decisions without a shared source of truth. A single Power BI report was exported to Excel and manually filtered by each user, so everyone ended up working from a different version of the same data. Alignment happened through bi-daily meetings, Teams messages, and email chains with no audit trail.
Decision
How do we replace the coordination layer held together by spreadsheets and meetings, without asking a team with years of Excel muscle memory to change everything at once?
What Changed
I ran a discovery workshop using SIPOC to map process inputs, outputs, and handoffs across five roles, then conducted 11 to 12 stakeholder interviews to identify where the process broke down between teams. From there, I built a high-fidelity Figma prototype covering the full daily workflow across multiple personas, reviewed weekly with users and subject matter experts.
Rather than replacing Excel, the design added the coordination layer it was missing: a unified view of all inventory items, structured action logging against line items, and a contextual insight layer that surfaces the "so what" behind the raw data.
Visual Walkthrough
Outcome
Each user maintained their own filtered version of a shared report. Decisions were coordinated through meetings and email with no shared record or status visibility.
A single connected workspace with unified inventory view, structured action logging, and approval flow built in. The coordination meeting becomes a review.
Why This Matters
This shifted the team from managing coordination overhead to making actual decisions. The dual-mode design made adoption possible: it met users where they were, with familiar structure, and it gave them a concrete vision of where the process could go.
Also designed a range of visual work outside these case studies →
Decisions are the actual product. Design is how you make them well.
I'm a design strategy lead who works at the point where product, data, and leadership disagree about what to build next. Most of that work isn't visual. It's diagnosing why a team is stuck, then building the framework that lets them decide and keep deciding.
Fifteen years across e-commerce and enterprise consulting, mostly in regulated or high-stakes environments where a bad decision is expensive and a slow one is worse. I started in market intelligence at Flipkart, one of Asia's largest e-commerce platforms, before moving into UX. Since 2015 I've been at C5i, moving through three phases: doing the data-to-insight translation myself, leading and mentoring a 12-person UX team that does it at scale, and now operating as an Experience Strategy Consultant brought in early to shape direction for Fortune 500 clients across healthcare, pharma, CPG, and enterprise technology. I hold an MBA from St. Joseph's Institute of Management and design thinking certifications from IBM and Google.
Based in Moncton, NB, Canada, working with clients across North America and Europe.
Working on something complex and unclear? That's usually where I'm most useful.