# Neil Holt > Director of Product Innovation Location: San Francisco, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/neilholt Experienced Director of Research, Design, and Product. I’ve spent over a decade crafting impactful, user-centered solutions in the logistics, advertising, and IoT industries. My career is defined by leading cross-functional teams, aligning stakeholders, and delivering innovative products that solve complex problems. I specialize in balancing strategic vision with hands-on execution to create meaningful, user-friendly experiences. Key Skills • Team Alignment: Facilitating personas, journey maps, conceptual models, and workshops to drive strategy and collaboration. Delivering high-impact presentations that inspire action. • Prototyping: Rapid, iterative prototyping using Axure RP, InVision, and HTML/CSS/JavaScript to bring ideas to life. • Wireframing: Designing low- and high-resolution wireframes with Sketch, Figma, Framer, and Axure to shape user interfaces. • Architecture Diagramming: Simplifying complex systems with clear interaction design and information architecture diagrams. • Interface and Visual Design: Creating polished designs with tools like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, and After Effects. • Research: Conducting stakeholder, user, and expert interviews; competitor and task analyses; field observations; and usability testing to guide decisions. I thrive at the intersection of strategy, design, and product development, bringing creativity and structure to every project. Outside of work, I draw inspiration from producing music, drawing comics, surfing, and exploring the world with my wife and our two dogs. Let’s connect—I’d love to discuss ideas and tackle big challenges together! ## Work Experience ### Director of Product Innovation @ Airspace Jan 2024 – Present | California, United States ### Director of Research & Product Design @ Airspace Jan 2022 – Jan 2024 | Carlsbad, California, United States ### UX Design Manager @ Airspace Jan 2020 – Jan 2022 | Carlsbad, CA Lead a team of talented designers and researchers working to drastically improve the user experience in Series C logistics startup. • Established team rituals including design sprint planning, critique, demo and retro for continuous process improvement, learning and mentorship. • Instituted team health metrics to gauge organizational impact and internal satisfaction. • Maintained demonstrable high levels of intra design team satisfaction and perceived impact from C-Suite stakeholders in evolving pandemic work environment. • Introduced custom research and design templates to empower product designers to understand complex business problems and demonstrate impact of solutions. • Grew team from 2-10 members while increasing core design team competencies across UX strategy, UX research, interaction design, and visual design. • Designed features enabled 150% YOY revenue growth in two year span. • Managed C-Suite and Engineering relationships to implement R&D Principles and an innovation process for business ideas. ### Senior UX Researcher @ Airspace Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 • Introduced scrappy design research and lean design methods to this 50 person, $200 million valuation logistics startup. • Attained organization wide buy-in within 3-months, as demonstrated by employee of the month recognition. • Developed close relationships with C-suite stakeholders to define top business needs around increasing operational efficiency. • Prioritized, designed, tested, and worked with developers to implement high impact features such as Views, Driver ETAs, and Manual Dispatch within the first 6 months on the job. • Demonstrated user satisfaction via end of year survey where features that came out of the design process were most loved by our operations team. • New features allowed team to maintain high service levels and minimal churn while doubling order volume and adding few new operational team members. ### User Experience Lead @ Zodiac Pool Systems Jan 2017 – Jan 2019 | Vista, California Established reproducible interaction design process for prioritization and development of best-in-class user experiences for IOT pool products at this historically hardware-focused manufacturer. • Introduced recurring two-week lean design process to for ideation, prototyping, usability testing with customers and data-driven iteration. • Created lofi design system to quickly communicate ideas with stakeholders and test lofi solutions. • Participated in ethnographic research and communication that drove product direction after compelling presentations to VPs and C-Suite. • Established and managed design request system to interface with 4 siloed hardware development teams. • Created Confluence wiki with full suite of user research, architecture diagrams and user flows utilized by team for product development over a year after leaving the company. ### Senior UX Designer @ AbelsonTaylor Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | Chicago, Illinois • Independently led the user experience design of over a dozen large-scale projects • Presented compelling UX documentation to customers on a near weekly basis • Established collaborative relationship with competing creative teams within the agency • Created optimized user experiences across a variety of of pharmaceutical audience tasks (ex. Registration, Education, Sales) and platforms (Web, Apps, Conference) • Rapidly built mid-fidelity, responsive Axure prototypes incorporating complex logic ### UX Designer @ AbelsonTaylor Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 | Greater Chicago Area ### UX Designer @ Indigo Interactive, Inc. Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 | Arlington Heights, IL • Systematically analyzed complex, data-heavy accreditation processes and translated workflows into user-friendly web applications. • Drove user-centered design process with rapid production of interactive prototypes. • Introduced architecture diagrams to streamline design and development processes . • Led initiative to research and design SaaS model minimum viable product. ### Graduate Fellow / Product Manager @ Northwestern Knight Lab Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 | Evanston, IL ### MSJ Candidate - Interactive Storytelling @ Northwestern University Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 | Chicago, IL • Lead team to design and develop interactive, audience-focused iPad magazine app, special attention to UX. • Developed site with automatically generated content using variety of API’s (ex. Google, Twitter and Mapbox). • Developed responsive, original Wordpress site using CSS media queries. ### MSJ Candidate - Reporting @ Northwestern University Jan 2013 – Jan 2013 | Chicago, IL • Lead team to produce news package covering the effects of governor’s proposed budget on northwest residents’ healthcare, transportation, law enforcement and more. Created logo and news graphics for all stories for maximum audience-focused impact. • Produced multimedia pieces under strict deadlines to enhance written stories or stand‑alone, including video, audio, audio slideshows and financial graphics. • Established contacts with influential transportation and scientific community members, successfully made new contacts for dozens of stories. ### Web Design / Development Intern @ CNN-IBN Jan 2013 – Jan 2013 • Designed unique interactive web stories with intense focus on user experience for variety of topics including sports, city and social issues. • Rapidly reported, designed and developed web features for presentation via Wordpress using JavaScript, HTML5, CSS and JQuery. This allowed me to produce stories that were the first of their kind in India. • Lead correspondence with tech department to develop template for more dynamic content presentation. • Conceptualized and produced successful social media campaigns to market content, leading to significant gains in exposure as compared to site’s typical stories. • Repackaged user-generated content into more compelling web features. ### Server / Bartender / Shift Manager @ Quarter Barrel Brewery Jan 2010 – Jan 2012 | Oxford, OH • Designed and implemented a successful customer rewards program which more than doubled morning business. • Managed four to five person staff two to three days per week, accounted for balanced workloads among servers while still bartending and acting as face of establishment. ## Education ### Master of Science (MS) in Communication, Journalism, and Related Programs Northwestern University Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 ### BS in Zoology/Animal Biology Miami University Jan 2006 – Jan 2010 ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/holtnt - Portfolio: https://www.neilholt.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/neilholt JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/neilholt/resume.json Last updated: 2026-03-25