# Dave Young > Service Design and Business Strategy. (ex Google, Uber, HTC, Myfitnesspal, cofounder) Location: Berkeley, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/daveyoung davesyoung.com Socially focused capitalism is my form of activism. I help teams improve the lives of others through products and services. I joined Homebound because we have a housing shortage in America. I joined Hover because property data should be more transparent, approachable, and collaborative. I joined Uber because cars are a vehicle of debt, with a poor ROI, and high carbon costs. I joined MyFitnessPal because I want to help people live healthier, happier, and longer lives with their families. I joined Zoodles because I want all children to benefit from the fun of self-led learning. I co-founded Fitnio because I wanted to get people out of their gyms and into the streets to make healthy habits more accessible and urban development more friendly to runners and cyclists. I joined Google because I wanted to build software that was free and accessible to people all over the world. ## Work Experience ### Advisor @ Cali's Books Jan 2022 – Present | Los Angeles Metropolitan Area Working with the CEO, CTO, Design and Content teams on bringing to market an exciting new product line, service, and business strategy that is currently being produced, manufactured, and patented. (Early Childhood Education) ### Advising Startups @ Self Employed Jan 2021 – Present | Berkeley, California, United States I coach co-founders, CEOs, and VPs of Design to help them better articulate a narrative of purpose and vision for maximum impact. This is achieved through stakeholder interviews and fun workshops (remote or in-person) to help cross-functional teams break down silos and learn how to leverage each other, service design, and customer obsession. These engagements help your teams work together to identify and prioritize the right incremental roadmap to accomplish your new business strategy. davesyoung.com ### Head of Design @ Homebound Jan 2023 – Jan 2024 | San Francisco Bay Area Homebound is a high-growth Series-C startup (backed by Khosla, Fifth Wall, Google, Thrive) solving housing challenges with a new way of homebuilding. ### Sr Director of Design @ HOVER Inc. Jan 2020 – Jan 2022 | Berkeley, California, United States We bring people and data together to imagine, understand, and realize the full potential of every property. If you enjoy AR, architecture, browsing real estate listings, watching house flipping shows, feeling empowered by DIY culture, swooning over interior design Pinterest boards, and daydreaming about home improvement projects... you're gonna love working at Hover. Homeownership shouldn't be as hard as it is, Hover's changing that. ### Relaxing and Building things @ Self-Employed Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 Helping folks find their next job, being a full time dad, participating in collaborative and parallel play with my 2yo daughter, cooking three meals a day, working on home improvements and backyard projects. While geeking out on horticulture, landscaping, woodworking, sewing, plumbing, electrical, and in general just appreciating the sweat and creative craft of manual labor. ♥️ ### Service Design, Business Strategy, and Workshops. @ Uber Jan 2017 – Jan 2019 | San Francisco Bay Area I partnered with executives, leadership, and ICs across all lines of business and functions to improve Uber's service design, business strategy, brand reputation, and vision. #OneUber #oneCustomer I led org-agnostic workshops and projects to help diverse groups of people come together across teams, departments, and disciplines to develop a deeper understanding of our end-to-end customer experience and needs. I traveled to our Customer Service COEs (Centers Of Excellence) and BPOs (Business Process Offshoring) in India, Manila, and Mexico to develop personal relationships and collaborative playbooks to bridge the inevitable gap that forms between product teams and their customers in high growth companies. The workshops I led involved as many as 60 people, across as many as 12 teams breaking down the silos and politics of our org structure, and the hierarchy of people's roles/levels/pay/backgrounds to focus on what matters most, a broader understanding of our customer issues in multi-sided markets OR a very deep understanding of all the things that contribute to a specific end-to-end customer experience. "[Dara] believes [Zero Defects] is a good metric to use because it can be improved only if operations, technology, and customer service work together. "It’s a unifier,” he said. At Expedia, he worked on reducing a similar complaint metric, and the experience cemented his belief: As the measure improved, so did sales." - Wired 4.19.2018 ### Head of Design, Uber for Business. @ Uber Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | San Francisco Bay Area Working in partnership with the Head of Product, and Head of Engineering to develop our vision, strategy, and roadmap. (As our own line of business and cost center through three massive reorgs of U4B's executive ownership) Launching products and features for people to use Uber's services on behalf of their business or employer. (eg. Business Profiles, Payment flows, Direct billing, Expense Report integration, Marketing Website Redesign, Organic growth through employee acquisition, Business On-boarding flows, Sales assisted onboarding flows, Marketing campaigns, Business Dashboard for businesses to manage access and policies for a variety of services across rides and eats, the creation of Uber Central / Guest Services and Vouchers to let businesses order rides for others, completing a redesign and rebrand of U4B that became the first cornerstone in an Uber wide design pattern library across web and mobile, and more) Building up an amazingly talented and caring team of product designers, communication designers, design writing, and research during the worst possible hiring period. (#deleteuber / 2017) ### Adventures @ Self-Employed Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 Three week whitewater rafting trip down the Grand Canyon, travel with friends/family, relaxing in Kauai, visiting parks, hiking Half Dome, attending music festivals, and enjoying life. ### Director of Product Design @ MyFitnessPal, Under Armour Jan 2014 – Jan 2016 | San Francisco, CA Helping people eat better, lose weight, and live longer. MyFitnessPal was acquired by Under Armour in Feb 2015. ### Sabbatical @ Self-Employed Jan 2014 – Jan 2014 Three month honeymoon, world travel, domestic travel, backpacking, white water rafting, camping, visiting with friends, advising startups, and thinking about what I want to do next. ### Director of Product Design @ Zoodles Jan 2009 – Jan 2013 | Mountain View, CA Zoodles was acquired by HTC in November 2011 Millions of parents use Zoodles on "Kid Mode®" Phones, Tablets and Computers to give their child access to fun and educational games, without worrying about in-app purchases or other accidental mischief. ( http://goo.gl/0Lbj3Y ) Our success on Android quickly became the focus of our company but before that pivot we also built apps on iOS, Chrome, Firefox and Adobe Air. I worked closely with the executive team on early stage concept exploration, preliminary user research, refining product market fit, team process, team brainstorms, and preparing investor facing materials. I worked with the leads of Product Management and Engineering Management to manage a consolidated and prioritized list of product complaints, feature requests, and ideas coming in from users, user research, customer support, our teams, qa testing, bug reports, technical debt, data analysis and internal tools. I managed all user research for the company, conducting hundreds of studies and interviews online and in person. We tested early concepts, new features, user flows, our current product and competing products. I managed a creative team of 10 illustrators who helped our company author a library of children's books, coloring pages, stickers and drawing lessons. I worked closely with PMs to establish clear problem definition, and success metrics that we could measure before and after to see if our designs were able to move the needle. I worked closely with Eng to anticipate tech challenges, get early feedback, provide clear specs and deliver assets. My design contributions helped improve user metrics in the… Sign up flow, first run experience, scaffolding of product, feature discovery, retention, conversion, upsell marketing, billing completion, user incentives (gamification), SEO, fragments of users, email communications, native notifications, inbound support requests, and other strategic company goals. ### Founder @ Fitnio Jan 2008 – Jan 2010 Myself and two engineering friends from Google started up Fitnio LLC to give us the freedom to build a few iPhone apps together on the side for fun. "Fitnio" app One of the first iPhone "health & fitness" apps. A simple realtime workout interface with a focus on recording time, distance, calories, and speed. Each walk, run, or ride was saved to an online journal of all your activity with more detailed information, insightful analysis, and a map of your route. "Please Find It" app Before Apple released their "Find my iPhone" app, we provided a similar service that allowed you to locate your misplaced phone using GPS. It was popular both before (and after) Apple's launch of a similar service. "Lympic" app In the lead up to the 2010 Winter Olympics we decided to build a simple companion app for the Olympics. We provided a countdown to the start of the games, a medals counter for your country, a way to browse all medals, and the option to set up notifications for specific countries or sports. ### UX Design Lead @ Google Jan 2006 – Jan 2009 UXD Lead for Google Maps UXD Contributor to Docs UXD Lead for Google Presentations UXD Contributor to Social UXD Lead for Sharing UXD Lead for Gmail Contacts UXD Contributor to AdWords 20% projects that launched: Google Moderator (UX/PM) Google Trends (UX) ### User Experience Designer @ Office of Naval Research Jan 2005 – Jan 2005 | Pittsburgh, Pa As a grad student, I worked on the research and design of natural-language multimodal interfaces for wearable and heads-up-display maintenance documentation systems. The work of our team helped secure a $25 million grant for Carnegie Mellon University to do further research in this area for the ONR. ### Teachers Assistant @ Cyert Center for Early Education Jan 2002 – Jan 2004 Teachers Assistant for Kindergarten, Pre-K, and Preschool at a Reggio Emilia™ school. (Full-time Summer 2003) ### UX Design Intern @ Scholastic Jan 2004 – Jan 2004 Developed and Authored a new Style Guide to unify the company’s offerings online and strengthen the user experience through common standards, theology and language. ### Web Designer, Front End Developer @ Burlington Coat Factory Jan 1996 – Jan 2002 Worked part-time through High School and full-time in the summers as a Web Designer, Front End Developer and founding member of BCF's first E-commerce Web Team. ## Education ### MHCI in Master of Human Computer Interaction, School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University ### BFA in Communication Design, School of Design Carnegie Mellon University ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/davesyoung - Website: https://www.davesyoung.com/ --- Source: https://flows.cv/daveyoung JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/daveyoung/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-08