# nicholas owens > Connecting Design, Business and Technology Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/nicholasowens Design is a method for us to communicate ideas and transform the world around us. I'm a UX Leader & Product Thinker, currently building and running a distributed design & research team across multiple GEOs for Autodesk. ## Work Experience ### Product Design Manager @ Autodesk Jan 2020 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area Hired to raise the bar for the user experience of internal tools. I’ve helped grow a data & research-driven design team, formalized our ops, and shipped a portfolio of employee-facing products—from an IT Service Hub to an interactive new-hire journey site—that now set the standard for how Autodesk serves its 15k+ people. Impact at a glance ----> Built the design engine – Stood up a design and research methodology, project-tracking workflow, research repository, weekly design reviews, and a yearly Design Report™; increased design delivery speed and high-quality discovery and prototyping. Re-energized two legacy news & info platforms – Reframed product purpose through stakeholder alignment and fresh user research. Launched core employee 'centers' –> - IT Service Hub - Vendor/Supplier Hub → unified onboarding & compliance for global partners. - Employee Center → customizable to-dos, team info, and “best local coffee” tips. - Meeting Coach (pandemic era) – Lightweight tool that visualizes Zoom load and suggests calendar fixes—credited with reducing meeting hours for pilot teams. - Design ops for data insight – Developed data-driven employee personas and a service blueprint for IT⁄HR case creation; both now guide comms and roadmaps enterprise-wide. ### Senior UX Designer @ Autodesk Jan 2018 – Jan 2020 | San Francisco Bay Area ### Senior Experience Designer @ BBVA Jan 2014 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco Bay Area Embedded on cross-functional squads inside BBVA’s new digital business unit, I designed end-to-end flows for four venture-style products—two shipped to market and two funded for incubation. My role was deeply hands-on: partnering in research, mapping journeys, sketching ideas, prototyping in code, and pairing with engineers to get the details right. While leadership steered the bank-wide transformation of a 160 year old bank, I helped transform a few of the domains and our work was featured in The Economist. Impact snapshots... Denizen (launched 2017) – Helped ideate and create the space for a bold concept in cross-border finance: BBVA’s borderless account, initially conceived as a consumer product and subsequently transformed into a white-label platform for multinationals whose employees live abroad. Built personas, journeymaps that led to brainstorms, and high-fidelity prototypes which unlocked internal funding and a public debut for Denizen. Azlo (launched 2018) – Led UX and UI for the small-business bank built for expats operating in the U.S.; shaped the product vision from personas and close collaboration with business stakeholders and research. Initially conceived for small business banking but expanding to serve expats operating in the U.S. Garanti Bank SMB(launched 2019) cash-flow tool (Istanbul) – Helped redesign mobile + desktop dashboards that turn raw transaction data into easy-to-read spending forecasts, giving small businesses instant clarity on cash-flow health. First Data mobile-banking and PFM engagement study – Partnered with research on in-field ethnography and behavioral mapping that revealed new “stickiness” levers; Wrote a blog essay distilling the insights that fed into the product design. From in-depth infield research to nimble ‘rocket’ research - talking with customers and fighting for their needs has been at the core of my best work at BBVA, and the design thinking model has acted as a great guide. ### UX Lead, Contract @ ATTIK Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 | San Francisco Bay Area A complete UX overhaul of the Scion site. Provided UX expertise, delivered wireframes and prototypes of the over-all vision & concept to take into research. ### Senior UX Designer @ Mortar Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | San Francisco Bay Area Mortar is a Strategy and Planning Advertising Agency. I was a part of all Digital and Interactive work to exit the agency. My day to day deliverables included Wireframes, UI Designs, & creative concept work. Clients included Disney, Eat24, Battery Ventures, Bain Capital, Polaris Ventures, Avinger, and Opscode. ### UX Designer @ Gershoni Creative Agency Jan 2010 – Jan 2012 | San Francisco Bay Area Gershoni is an agency specializing in Web, Video, Print and Brand Strategy. Deliverables included IA, UX, and UI design. ### Graphic Designer / Motion Designer 2D & 3D @ Current TV Jan 2009 – Jan 2009 | San Francisco Bay Area At Current TV my responsibilities included developing Show Menus, commercial graphics and motion design for Shows, and Complete Show Packages. A typical day might have me working in ActionScript-Flash, Javascript, Cinema4D, Photoshop and always After Effects. ### Principal @ Booksmuggler Jan 2004 – Jan 2008 Between 2004 and the end of 2008 I was a freelance graphic designer, animator, and web designer. ## Education ### BA New Media Design in New Media University of North Carolina Asheville ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nicholas-owens-b7488217 - Portfolio: http://nicholasowens.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/nicholasowens JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/nicholasowens/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13