15+ years designing digital products and leading the teams behind them.
A few things I believe
Process enables creativity
Constraints and structure don’t limit creativity. They focus it. The best teams build clear processes so creative thinking can move faster and produce better outcomes.
Design is a tool for alignment
Design is not just about interfaces. It helps teams align around problems, opportunities, and decisions. The strongest product teams use design to clarify thinking across product, engineering, and leadership.
Systems thinking beats feature thinking
Individual features matter less than how the system behaves as a whole. Designing durable product systems creates consistency, scalability, and better long-term outcomes.
Distributed teams can be exceptional teams
Remote and distributed organizations succeed when communication, ownership, and decision-making are intentional. With the right structure, distributed teams can outperform traditional ones.
AI is a multiplier, not a replacement
AI is accelerating how products are designed and built. The real advantage comes from teams that use these tools to deepen thinking, move faster, and explore better solutions.
If these principles resonate with how you think about product and design…
What I'm Great At
Bringing clarity to complex product problems
Complex platforms often struggle with unclear priorities and fragmented decisions. I help teams define the real problem, align stakeholders, and establish a clear direction for product and design.
Designing systems, not just features
Sustainable products require more than individual screens or flows. I focus on building scalable product systems that support consistency, speed, and long-term platform growth.
Building teams people want to stay on
Strong design organizations are built on trust, ownership, and clarity. I invest heavily in mentoring, feedback, and creating environments where designers can grow and do their best work.
Making distributed teams actually work
Distributed teams succeed when communication, expectations, and decision-making are intentional. I’ve led design organizations across North America, Latin America, and Europe, building structures that keep teams aligned and moving forward.
Balancing user needs with business reality
Great products succeed when user value and business outcomes reinforce each other. I help teams connect product decisions to measurable results without losing sight of the user experience.
Where I Am Most Effective
I tend to create the most impact in environments where product complexity and organizational scale require clear systems and strong design leadership.
Typical situations include:
- Platform modernization for products that have grown complex or fragmented
- Regulated environments where usability must coexist with compliance and operational risk
- Scaling organizations that need stronger design systems, governance, and cross-team alignment
- Distributed teams working across multiple regions and time zones
What Colleagues Say
"The expertise and leadership from A Stronger Idea Design have been instrumental in transforming how we approach UX at Flowbird. Their impact has gone beyond design—it has positively influenced our entire product development lifecycle."
Marek Juda, Digital Chief Operating Officer, Flowbird
"Eric brought a rare mix of big-picture thinking and meticulous detail. The design leadership work helped streamline complexity, and the collaborative style made them a trusted partner across the board."
Greg Bebenek, Chief Technology Officer, Euvic
Eric’s an extraordinary design leader and collaborator. He’s thoughtful, methodical, and thorough in his approach. He drove strategy, customer research, and interaction design to explore the virtual card viability for PayPal. Together, we created a new product for our company portfolio that proved to be an incredible revenue driver, opening up a new tier of customer loyalty.
Nick Gamino, Lead Content Designer, PayPal
Experience snapshot
Flowbird → Arrive
Head of UX Design,
Built and led distributed UX team across global mobility platforms; 25% faster delivery, 45% productivity gain.
Estate Guru
Fractional Chief Product Designer
Redesigned fintech platform managing 1.2M+ documents, improving task completion 35% and reducing errors 50%.
KIRU
Founding Designer
First design hire; launched payroll platform from zero to 9,000+ users and 400 companies in 24 months.
PayPal
Product Design Lead
Led platform redesign initiatives serving 10M+ global users, increasing feature adoption 40%.
Visualize Wealth
Founding Designer
Designed data visualization platform for wealth managers; Startupbootcamp Fintech 2016 accelerator.
Moxie → Publicis CRMOne
Design Director
Led digital strategy and UX for Fortune 500 brands including Verizon, L'Oréal, Google/YouTube, and BBC America.
How I Lead Product Design
Design leadership is less about individual decisions and more about building systems that allow teams to consistently make good decisions.
My approach typically focuses on three phases:
Diagnose
Understand the product ecosystem, constraints, and decision structure across product, engineering, and business leadership.
Structure
Establish the foundations that enable teams to move faster: design systems, governance, research cadence, and decision clarity.
Deliver
Ship meaningful improvements while building durable systems that support long-term product growth.
FAQ
Eric has over 20 years of experience in interactive design. For ~10 years, Eric worked with global advertising and marketing agencies like Publicis, RAPP, Ogilvy, and Moxie Interactive. For the last 15 years, Eric has been focused on UX and product design, including senior leadership roles at global organizations, startups and high-growth companies like PayPal, Flowbird (Arrive) and Estate Guru.
Eric has served as a Chief Product Designer, Head of Design, Product Design Lead, and UX leader—building and leading teams, establishing design systems, and guiding product strategy. Previous to Product Design/UX, Eric served as Art Director and Design Director
Eric’s experience spans fintech, estate planning, edtech, urban mobility, payroll, Saa, and enterprise platforms, with a focus on complex systems, cross-platform, compliance-driven environments, and large-scale products.
Eric approaches design as a strategic discipline—grounded in research, systems thinking, and collaboration with product, engineering, and executive leadership.
By combining clarity, experience, and transparency. Eric focuses on shared understanding, measurable outcomes, and practical execution rather than design theater.
Selected work
Flowbird: UX Maturity
Estate Guru: Modernizing Estate Planning
Kiru: A Payroll Startup
PayPal: Unified Card System
Viziphi: Visualizing Wealth
PayPal: Settings Redesign
RoleCall: A Platform for K-12 Staffing
