# Peter Stahl

> Interaction design & strategy

Location: Mountain View, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/peterstahl

- Accomplished leader of teams designing critical applications for major brands
- Innovative thought leader in standards and patterns, interaction design, and UI methodologies
- Designer of elegant consumer sites, enterprise, and system management applications
- Highly rated, inspiring speaker at design and technology conferences internatonally
- Professor guiding the next generation of designers in a ground-breaking college program

I'm currently pursuing part-time or short-term opportunities in UX Design in the following areas:
- Creating and optimizing design systems, patterns and standards
- Implementing and evangelizing best practices in design thinking, Lean UX, and true collaboration
- Guiding product design teams to produce effective, elegant, and efficient solutions

[portrait by Sarah Ellzey, 2025]

## Work Experience
### Senior Adjunct Professor, Interaction Design @ California College of the Arts
Jan 2016 – Present
Professor of Interaction Design. I teach courses "Systems Thinking" and "Time Studio: Behavior" to second- and third-year students in the California College of the Arts's ground-breaking Interaction Design BFA program.

### Principal @ Peter Stahl Consulting, LLC
Jan 2008 – Jan 2022
- Strategic and tactical design services, enabling elegant solutions that satisfy both business and user needs
- Specialties include interaction design, information architecture, usability strategy, and design patterns
- Clients include SurveyMonkey, Akamai Technologies, and Tangible UX

### Technical Editor @ Wiley
Jan 2022 – Jan 2022
Edited sixth edition of "Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction" by Sharp, Preece & Rogers.

### Senior Designer @ VMware
Jan 2020 – Jan 2020
- Research, strategy, and design for management tools for Greenplum massively parallel database system
- User experience research, synthesis, validation, and design for MADlib AI / machine learning open-source library

### Staff Designer @ Pivotal Software, Inc.
Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | Palo Alto & San Francisco
- Product and design strategy for cloud-native database products
- User experience research, synthesis, validation, and design for advanced analytics/AI tools
- Pivotal was acquired by VMware; role continues above.

### Lead User Experience Designer @ Cisco
Jan 2010 – Jan 2014
- Led a design team developing a deep library of more than 100 design standards and components underpinning Cisco’s $8 billion Services business
- Led a team of five on research and design of a major suite of managed services applications
- Oversaw visual design refresh. Evangelized Agile and Lean UX best practices. Mentored designers; led cross-functional team building

### Senior Product Designer @ Citrix Systems
Jan 2009 – Jan 2010
Led cross-product design standards initiative, creating a coherent family from several acquired products, and simplifying the user experience throughout. Suite includes application delivery, virtualization, and remote collaboration. Consultant prior to 10/09.

### User Experience Consultant @ HumanConcepts
Jan 2009 – Jan 2009
Created interaction designs for the next version of OrgPlus, HumanConcepts' flagship org charting product. Delivered personas, use cases, functional deconstruction, wireframes, and specifications for reusable modules.

### User Experience Consultant @ Hot Studio
Jan 2009 – Jan 2009
Mapped out a design strategy for major functional extensions to a new software platform for a leading networking company.

### Lead User Experience Designer @ eBay
Jan 2005 – Jan 2008
- Led eBay's design pattern initiative, resulting in increased site consistency and simplicity for eBay's 135 million users worldwide, improved tools for designers on three continents, and millions of dollars in implementation costs saved through reuse of code modules.
- Produced product specifications, mockups, flow charts, prototypes, usability tests, and strategy documents. Site areas include selling tools, site security, Feedback, and eBay Motors Europe.
- Led interaction design for a major revision of eBay's look and feel, enhancing support of key brand values and improving the clarity of the interface.
- Developed Interaction Audit methodology for assessing user interface consistency.

### Principal Technologist @ Business Signatures (acquired by Entrust)
Jan 2004 – Jan 2005
- Provided customers easy access to powerful functionality in new business process management applications. Led information architecture, interaction design, graphic design, and usability.
- Ensured coherent user experience by developing reusable design patterns. 
- Produced detailed specifications covering layout, navigation, dynamic behavior, and data access.

### User Experience Consultant @ There Inc.
Jan 2003 – Jan 2003
Enabled new applications, such as anti-terror training, by developing designs and interaction standards for 3D online environment. Produced user and task analyses, usage scenarios, wire-frame mock-ups and design specifications.  (Company is now Forterra Systems)

### User Experience Consultant @ Clearsight Networks (acquired by Fluke Networks)
Jan 2003 – Jan 2003
Led strategic redesign of company’s flagship network analyzer. Lowered the product’s learning curve, allowing the company to reach non-specialists and widen its potential user base.

### Senior UI Designer @ AOL
Jan 2000 – Jan 2002
- As Design Architecture & Process lead for AOL Web Properites, supervised design reviews for online products such as instant messaging, e-mail, radio, search, and network registration, ensuring a coherent user experience across products. 
 - Fostered the implementation of professional-quality designs by developing and promoting design standards for performance, internationalization, accessibility, and rebranding. 
 - Improved stickiness of major online services through compelling designs for Radio@AOL, AOL Music Search, Netscape Search, Open Directory Project, and Time Warner Digital Properties “hat.” 
 - Performed usability testing, product management, and HTML/Javascript coding when needed.

### Senior UI Designer @ AOL
Jan 1998 – Jan 2000
- iPlanet (Sun|Netscape Alliance): Extended the user experiences for iPlanet Xpert Series e-commerce products. Ported UI from Java to HTML; integrated multi-currency support. 
- Increased visual simplicity and appeal of SellerXpert consumer interface by hiring and managing external designers to provide a snappy new look.

### Senior Engineer @ PlaceWare (acquired by Microsoft)
Jan 1996 – Jan 1998
- Created innovative and highly usable UI for award-winning online conferencing system, the first commercially successful application of this Xerox PARC spin-off. (PlaceWare is now Microsoft Office Live Meeting.) 
- Led all aspects of user experience development, including concept testing, interaction design, HTML coding, and usability testing. 
- Managed external visual design team. 
- Fast Company magazine, Oct. 1997: “[PlaceWare’s] real virtue is its easy-to-understand interface. By embracing the metaphor of an auditorium, the software lets virtual meetings occur in a familiar place.” 
- InfoWorld, Jun. 8, 1998: “[PlaceWare is] easy for both presenters and participants to use. . . During a live conference, the Java interfaces for presenters and audience members are quite effective.”

### Consultant @ PowerTV (division of Scientific Atlanta)
Jan 1996 – Jan 1996
Designed and implemented interactive television program guide. Developed architecture for retargetable, object-oriented network data manager module.

### Consultant @ SGI
Jan 1993 – Jan 1995
Designed and coded Channel 95 for the Time Warner Full Service Network (interactive television). Included were settings, preferences, and VCR controls. Devised, ran and analyzed user research tests on fundamental interaction issues.

### Senior Software Engineer @ Go Corporation
Jan 1989 – Jan 1993
Designed and coded handwriting and pen gesture training applications for Go's revolutionary PenPoint operating system for tablet computers. Coded the Application Framework, Notebook, and other system applications; performed Japanese internationalization.

### Member of Software Technical Staff @ Ashton-Tate
Jan 1985 – Jan 1989
Designed and coded enhancements to Framework business productivity suite.  Internationalized codebase; managed localizations.  Created splash animation for Framework and dBASE product lines.

### Programmer @ Nestar Systems, Inc.
Jan 1982 – Jan 1985


## Education
### BA in Music
Harvard University


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/pstahl
- Portfolio: http://www.peterates.com

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Source: https://flows.cv/peterstahl
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/peterstahl/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-04-13