# Michel M. > Co-founder & VP of Product/UX at ThoriumData Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/michel Product designer. Design architect. UX strategist. • Strategic, conceptual, and creative problem solver. • Product and business focused. • Big picture thinker, hands-on practitioner. • Design leader. • Creator of product visions and a comprehensive user experience driven by Design that synthesizes user needs, business goals, and technical capabilities. • Experience as owner, adviser, and mentor on multiple simultaneous projects with cross-disciplinary teams and product stakeholders. Both internal and customer-facing roles. • Strong technical understanding and experience. • Thrives on variety and challenges. Domain expertise: • Data science/machine learning, and the democratization of • Big data • Analytics • Enterprise teamwork collaboration • IT management • Software development teamwork Specialties: enterprise applications & their ecosystems, design strategy, holistic product vision, empirical discovery, conceptual design, interaction design, user requirements, UxD process (with Agile), SAAS/hybrid. ## Work Experience ### Co-founder & VP of Product/UX @ ThoriumData Jan 2020 – Present | Oakland, California, United States Building the next generation Data Catalog. ### Independent Design Work @ Self Employed Jan 2017 – Present Independent product design work and development into new ideas centered on data collaboration, machine-learning operationalization, and data science monitoring. ### Director of Product Design and User Experience @ Alpine Data (acquired by Tibco) Jan 2014 – Jan 2016 | San Francisco, CA Director of Product Design and UX for the Alpine Chorus data analytics, machine learning, and collaboration platform. Defined and institutionalized strategic vision for the product platform. • Design-driven • Decomposed holistic vision into pragmatic steps for incremental release. Product design of the Touchpoints product. • A code-free environment that extends the accessibility of machine learning/data science. • Expanded the range of enterprise data science usage by an order of magnitude. • Performed UX research, discovery, design from start to finish, and customer/partner iteration. • Patent-pending. Unified separate products into a single coherent product platform with transformation to a new intuitive consumer-grade interface. Created vision and product design for enterprise-grade data visibility, roles, and permissions features. Manager, UX/Product Documentation. ### Product Design Director @ CA Technologies Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 Creative lead, team leader, design evangelist, and mentor for the Enterprise Product Design organization. Director for concept development, strategy, interaction design, and hands-on execution of strategic initiatives and strategic projects. Coordinated design across multiple product lines for end-user needs, consistency, and design quality. • Application performance management (APM) • APM mobile concept • IT/Business Intelligence • Network and infrastructure monitoring • Access and identity compliance • Service catalog/management Discovery and design of Executive Insight • Created new design-driven product enabling IT & business communication by translating IT metrics into the language of business, with visualization. • Created product vision and delivered holistic application design. • Led subsequent work to build and iterate product releases, the first organically-grown product within the company. Agile process throughout. • Patent-pending. Mentor, adviser, and manager on simultaneous team projects. Shepherd for the principles, guidelines, shared behaviors, and styles that established the Experience Brand for CA products, both web/desktop and mobile. Produced and propagated the framework for the enterprise Mobile Design Language. ### Manager, Product Design @ CA Technologies Jan 2010 – Jan 2012 Design Manager for West Coast team of the CA Product Design group, reporting to SVP of Product Design. Directly managed team, including review process and goal settings for organizational development and personal growth. ### User Experience Architect @ CA Technologies Jan 2009 – Jan 2012 Design Architect for Service Assurance business unit. Initiated and directed redesign project for Application Performance Management product line to transform and internally disrupt the existing market-leading tools. ### Consultant @ User Experience Consulting Jan 2008 – Jan 2011 Independent user experience designer. Clients/projects included • Evernote; social sharing • Mobile payments (self-funded) • Essentia Software; collaboration (startup) • Social e-commerce (startup) ### Senior UI Designer @ PayPal Jan 2007 – Jan 2008 Team lead in Merchant Experience / Partner Experience business line. Owner of UX for business merchant accounts. Led local design team for stand-alone payment products while working with international cross-functional teams Distilled business requirements into design specifications for merchant platform. Pioneered Agile Scrum software processes for use within PayPal’s User Experience group. Planned and managed user experience team deliverables and release schedule across multiple simultaneous sprints. Built & iterated rapid interactive wireframes to communicate final designs to all stakeholders while also evangelizing for prototypes in the design process (a perspective hitherto not part of the organization's mindset). ### Lead Gardener @ Home Jan 2007 – Jan 2007 Nurtured cruciferous and root crops. ### Lead Interaction Architect @ CollabNet Jan 2003 – Jan 2007 Design leader for the user experience of the CollabNet software suite, spanning nine applications delivered as an enterprise software development/ALM SaaS product. Changed issue tracker into a modern application with comprehensive UX overhaul. Designed Project Metrics, new application for team and project analytics. Set UX principles, patterns, and visual interface across the application suite for a cohesive, coherent user experience. Coordinator for cross-application usability and functionality improvements with multiple teams (product management, engineering, marketing, QA, and documentation), both on-site and across continents, and through multiple, parallel product cycles (both domestic and international releases). ### Senior Interaction Designer @ Intraspect (acquired by Vignette) Jan 2000 – Jan 2002 Lead interaction designer of Knowledge Management and collaboration platform. Worked across entire product organization to design the feature set and UX of both the core enterprise application – Intraspect Collaboration Server – and vertical applications for specific domains. Developed, iterated, and worked with teams to implement user experience specifications, product flows, and customer-critical usability improvements. ### Senior Designer @ Verso Design / Metrius Jan 1997 – Jan 2000 Lead designer/information architect for design studio Verso; acquired by KPMG Consulting and reorganized into Metrius. User experience engagement lead on strategy and web projects for Fortune 500 companies, primarily B2C, B2B, and extranets. Design advocate and resource to other business units for best practices in user experience solutions and web development issues (creative and technical). Clients/projects included • Office Depot, e-commerce • Ingram Micro, b-to-b • Ingram Books, b-to-b • E.piphany; data-mining • Xircom; consumer portal and extranet • Family Education Network; consumer extranet ### Designer @ Art Technology Group Jan 1996 – Jan 1997 | Greater Boston Area Designer of web-based applications and interactive, large-scale online environments. Clients/projects included • Sony Station • Harvard Business School; on-line courseware ### Designer/Developer @ Planet Interactive Jan 1993 – Jan 1996 Lead designer and developer. ## Education ### Graphic Design in Typography. Additional: Animation, Mathematics, C.S., Russian, Philosophy University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ### Design Oxford Polytechnic ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/michelmilano - Website: http://www.stochasticnotions.com/ - Website: https://github.com/mmilano - Website: https://gitlab.com/mmilano --- Source: https://flows.cv/michel JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/michel/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-05