Hi, I'm Fred.

I'm a product and UX designer with 15+ years of experience designing complex digital products from the ground up — structuring flows, making the calls on hierarchy and interaction, and taking things all the way to shipped. I'm a systems thinker and a collaborator — a strategist who stays hands-on by choice.

My work spans government, public health, and enterprise — websites, mobile apps, data tools, and AI-powered interfaces that reach millions of people. Some of it has won awards. More importantly, most of it has genuinely made people's lives a little easier, which is the whole point.

I'm originally from Belgium, with a Master's in Communication Studies from Vrije Universiteit Brussel. I met my wife on a visit to NYC in 2005, moved to the US in 2007, and after a few years in New York and then Vermont we settled in Massachusetts, about halfway between. Our middle-schooler doesn't want to leave, so we'll be here a while.

Dutch is my first language and English a close second; I'm rusty in French and German and picking up a little Italian. Growing up between cultures probably shapes how I design more than I realize — understanding that people come at the same problem from different languages, mental models, and contexts feels natural to me, and makes me better at the work.

In 1998, I made a website for a college class and was hooked immediately. I was studying Communication at Vrije Universiteit Brussel when the web went mainstream, and it felt like the most exciting thing in the world. I kept building sites on the side — full-stack, before anyone called it that — until I stopped pretending it was a side project and made digital product design my focus. That was 2011, and I haven't looked back.

Coming up through the web as a medium rather than through design school means I think about design and development as one continuous process. The seams between strategy, design, and implementation are where I'm most comfortable working.

When the web emerged there was real optimism about it — Marshall McLuhan's "global village" felt possible. Parts of the internet have since become a toxic wasteland, but I still believe digital products can be a force for good, and that belief is what gets me to open my laptop. The best outcome I can imagine is that something I helped build makes someone's life a little easier, clearer, or less frustrating — which is exactly what the public health and civic work I'm proudest of does, for people who really need it to work.

Temperamentally, I'm an introvert who genuinely likes people; a skeptic who's also an optimist. I stay calm when things get complicated and get energized by problems without obvious answers — and I can usually hold two contradictory ideas in mind long enough to find the path that reconciles them, which turns out to be useful in design.

I also have high-functioning ADHD, which I've come to see as an asset: I notice things others miss, make unexpected connections, and go deep when a problem grabs me. Managing it well has shaped how I think about structure and process.

I've spent 15+ years at the intersection of strategy, design, and delivery — mostly in agencies and studios, with clients who have complex problems and real stakes.

Vermont Information Consortium (2011–2017)

My first dedicated product design role. I led creative direction and UX for Vermont.gov — a network of 100+ official state sites — and built the Drupal design system behind all of them. It's where I learned to design at scale, for real people, within real constraints. The platform won a 2015 StateScoop 50 Award for State IT Program of the Year.

CommunicateHealth (2017–2026)

I joined as a Senior UX Designer and grew into a UX Design Strategist — strategic, but hands-on. Over nearly nine years I led UX for dozens of high-impact clients in public health, government, and healthcare; built the company's UX/UI best-practices library (50+ patterns, used by 80+ colleagues); mentored designers; and shipped award-winning work across web, mobile, and data visualization.

CommunicateHealth was acquired by Lumina Corps in January 2026; it wasn't the right fit, and we parted ways that March. I'm currently available for the right project or role.

A few highlights from federal agencies, public health nonprofits, and state government:

Office of Disease Prevention & Health Promotion

Long-term UX lead across their portfolio, including Healthy People 2030 and MyHealthFinder — from IA and content strategy through data visualization and design systems. Healthy People 2030 grew from about 500,000 to over 3.5 million quarterly pageviews; MyHealthFinder won a 2023 ClearMark Award.

Les Turner ALS Foundation

A suite of interactive decision-aid tools helping ALS patients and caregivers navigate hard, emotional choices — designed closely with patients, clinicians, and researchers. Won the 2022 ClearMark Award for best app.

National Eye Institute

Among other work, an interactive 3D eye tool explaining how conditions affect vision, and a VR app (HTC Vive and Google Cardboard) that lets people experience vision impairment firsthand — it's reached more than 360,000 people at events. The NEI website won a 2020 ClearMark Award.

Show Me for Emergencies

A redesign of a multilingual app used by public health and emergency workers to communicate across language and accessibility barriers. I merged two apps into one and rebuilt the IA around a taxonomy-driven poly-hierarchy. Won the 2025 ClearMark Award for best mobile app.

UX is the core, but I work across the whole product design lifecycle:

• UX, UI & interaction design — the day-to-day craft of screens, flows, and the decisions that shape them.
• Information architecture & content strategy — the underrated work that can make or break a product.
• Design systems — components, tokens, documentation, and adoption, at scale.
• Data visualization — making complex, multi-dimensional data understandable; a real area of depth.
• Research & usability testing — concept tests, usability tests, card sorts, and synthesis into real improvements.
• Accessibility & inclusive design — WCAG and Section 508, a default rather than a checkbox.

I also work in service design and, increasingly, designing for AI-powered interfaces.

Tools I use

Figma for almost everything. AI-assisted workflows are now a real part of how I work — the Claude suite (Code, Chat, Cowork, Design), Figma Make, and MCP integrations to compress the time between a problem and a testable idea. Adobe Creative Suite when I have to (sigh 😉). I'm comfortable in HTML / CSS / JS — not a developer, but enough to collaborate well with engineers and build my own prototypes (like this one). And I'm comfortable with Agile processes.

A few things that don't fit neatly on a resume:

I'm a genuine listener — I pay attention, ask follow-ups, and change my mind when I hear something that shifts my understanding. In design that matters, because the people you're designing for almost always know something you don't.

I'm patient with complexity. Ambiguous problems, conflicting requirements, messy data — these don't stress me out; they're the interesting part, and where I do my best work.

And I believe strongly in DEIB and inclusive design — not as a program, but as a way of working. Making products that work for more people, especially people who are often overlooked, is the goal, not an add-on.

Human-centered, inclusive, and accessible design — that part isn't negotiable. If a product doesn't work for a wide range of people, with different abilities, contexts, and prior knowledge, then it doesn't fully work. Inclusion is the starting point, not a feature.

Beyond that, good design solves a real problem and solves it in a way that's beautiful, usable, sustainable, and ethical. Beautiful as in coherent and satisfying, not decorative. Usable for real people in real conditions, not the idealized user in a quiet room with great WiFi. Sustainable means it holds up over time, doesn't depend on one person's memory, and isn't wasteful — environmentally included.

And ethical: I'd add it as a fourth pillar to the usual "useful, viable, feasible." Is the product honest? Does it respect the people using it, or just extract their attention? So yes, that means I won't help you build something deliberately addictive. (I didn't coin the fourth pillar — Meld Studios did.)

I take a beat before jumping to solutions — there's always pressure to skip to answers, and I've learned to resist it. I want a clear picture of the actual problem first, then ideate as a team (everyone has ideas, not just the designers), test early and cheap with sketches and rough prototypes, and (ideally) keep improving after launch. Kaizen, basically.

I think of designers as curators of ideas more than sole inventors. The best decisions I've been part of happened in conversations — with PMs, engineers, researchers, writers, and clients — not alone in a design file. So I work alongside people rather than handing things over a fence.

I've also spent a lot of time mentoring, which is just part of how I work: it sharpens my own thinking and makes the whole team better. Mostly I try to be the person who's calm when things are complicated, direct when something needs saying, and genuinely interested in what everyone else brings.

My primary focus is strategic experience design — helping teams get clear on what they're building, who it's for, and how to get from concept to something that actually works. That said, I'm happy to be hands-on at any level:

• Leading product design end-to-end, from discovery through delivery
• UX strategy, research synthesis, and roadmaps
• IA, content strategy, wireframes, prototypes, and interaction design
• Visual design and design systems — or a one-time consultation or audit

I'm most useful on complex products with real stakes — public health, civic services, healthcare, education, and mission-driven work, where I have deep experience and genuine investment.

That said, if you want to bring this human-touch and level of thoughtfulness to a commercial product, I'd be happy to help. Send me a message, I'd love to talk it through.

Right now I'm mostly doing freelance and contract work — project-based or ongoing, whatever fits. If the right full-time role came along (the right mission, team, and kind of work), I'd seriously consider it. Either way, I'd rather talk through what actually makes sense for your situation than force-fit either of us into a rigid structure — sometimes that's a few hours of strategic input, sometimes it's months embedded with your team.

However we work, I show up prepared, ask a lot of questions up front, and communicate clearly throughout — I don't disappear between check-ins. I'm honest when something isn't right, but constructive about it; I'd rather flag a concern early than fix a problem later. I treat the work as a collaboration: I bring design expertise, you bring context and domain knowledge, and together we usually find the right path — then we check it with your actual audience.

I'd love to hear about what you're working on. The first conversation is always exploratory — no pressure, no pitch.