# Travis Gregory > Principal Product Designer at Epic! Creations Inc. Location: Morgan Hill, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/travisgregory Principal Product Designer with over 20 years of experience creating engaging and impactful digital products and user interfaces, with a focus on educational and gaming experiences. Founding designer of Epic!, a wildly successful kids reading platform. Skilled problem-solver and collaborator, excelling in hands-on design as an IC and in leadership roles such as Head of Design and Art Director. Crafting intuitive, user-centric design systems, thriving in ambiguous environments, and harnessing the power of gamification to drive engagement and retention. ## Work Experience ### Principal Product Designer @ Epic for Kids Jan 2022 – Jan 2024 | San Francisco Bay Area - Founding designer - Worked across all aspects of the product including: Core Product, Growth, Engagement, Content, Discovery, Gamification, Marketing, and the Classroom Experience, ensuring experiences catered to the specific needs of Educators, Parents, and Children. - Contributed to Epic’s growth from inception to a mature product used by 75M+ kids worldwide and adopted in 80%+ of US elementary schools. - Collaborated with cross-functional teams to ideate, design, A/B test, and launch features that promote reading habits, resulting in over 3 billion books read and 60% of paid users hitting daily reading goals. - Key contributor to revenue growth, increasing from 0 to $60 million in ARR. - Effectively communicated design rationale to stakeholders to ensure better alignment resulting in faster decision-making, more efficient resource allocation, and confidence in our team’s decision-making process. - Led the development of our large-scale design system, ensuring consistency across platforms, which streamlined development, reduced costs, and improved user experience. - Improved Week 1 activation by over 30% and expanded the top of the gamification funnel from ~40% to ~80% of sessions by utilizing several gamification strategies, including: a vision for a reading buddy system that leveraged habit-forming and delightful mechanics, increasing reach through a Daily Star reward, and by adding variability to rewards to increase surprise and unpredictability. Conducted A/B testing to validate the effectiveness of these features. - Incorporated principles from children's learning, psychology, and reading science to help design magical, age-appropriate interfaces that promoted reading enjoyment and literacy development, leading to better learning outcomes and user satisfaction. - Built a custom GPT model, to use as a creative, research, engineering, and product partner in the exploratory phase of design. ### Senior Product Designer @ Epic for Kids Jan 2019 – Jan 2022 ### Head Of Design @ Epic for Kids Jan 2017 – Jan 2019 | San Francisco Bay Area Led the Product Design team at Epic for over two years, collaborating with management to define strategy, share big-picture vision, and align product/business goals. Additionally providing performance feedback, managing priorities, and actively hiring, laying the foundation for what would become a team of 7 designers. ### Product Designer @ Epic for Kids Jan 2013 – Jan 2017 | Palo Alto, California ### Senior UI Artist @ Crowdstar Jan 2011 – Jan 2013 | Burlingame, CA - Led interface design and art creation for a diverse range of top-performing social and mobile games on iOS, Android, and Facebook platforms, including titles such as Wasteland Empires, Mighty Pirates, and Mermaid World. - Successfully launched multiple games, including titles that achieved over a million Daily Active Users. - Collaborated closely with a talented team of artists, developers, producers, and QA in a fast-paced environment to deliver high-quality games that consistently ranked among the top titles on the Facebook mobile gaming platform. - Conducted player testing and gathered valuable feedback to iteratively improve UI designs, ensuring an optimal player experience. - Created a wide array of art assets, including icons, HUD elements, 3D icon art, and other creatives for Facebook feeds, maintaining a cohesive visual style across the game. - Developed engaging UI animations and interactive elements, incorporating particles and other visual effects to create more immersive user experiences. - Utilized wireframing and prototyping techniques to explore and refine UI concepts, prioritizing intuitive navigation and usability to maximize player engagement and retention. ### UI Artist @ Crowdstar Jan 2010 – Jan 2011 ### ABC Animal Pop @ Independent Designer Jan 2011 – Jan 2011 | San Jose, CA Independently designed, developed and launched my own mobile toddler app which can be purchased for the iOS, Android and Amazon platforms. The app teaches 2-3 year olds the ABC’s through sight, auditory and touch learning on a mobile device. - Successfully navigated and learned from the app development and marketing process. - Over 1500 apps sold since launched on the iOS platform. - Built using the Corona SDK and LUA programming language. - Art direction, product design, development and marketing. ### Art Director, Web Presence @ Sony Online Entertainment Jan 2008 – Jan 2010 - Collaborate with and art direct SOE's team of extremely talented artists to design high quality, visually stunning game websites and interfaces. - Promoted from Web Artist to Senior Web Artist to Associate Art Director to Art Director all within a 5 year time frame which is a testament to the ethic and quality of my work at Sony. - Researched and implemented new tools to better aid in the design communication process within Sony Online. - Encourage and nurture the creativity of those I lead through example. - Participated in and helped conduct usability lab tests. - Designed, directed and collaborated on over a dozen successful website launches. - Collaborate with all departments, external contractors and the various studios within Sony Online to create the most brand consistent and visually compelling final products. - Strive to make sure all creative coming from my team exceeds the clients expectations through close communication and a clear understanding of the projects objectives. - As a creative lead, make sure all medium to large sized projects get a rigorous postmortem in which the team can identify and learn from our successes and failures. - Brainstorming, planning and designing interfaces that evoke a particular and unique ambiance which helps the customer take away what the essence of the brand is. - Lead and work directly alongside a team of talented artists and producers. - Thrive in a tight, deadline driven environment. - Keep up to date on current design trends, game and web interfaces and usability studies. - Conduct hiring interviews and semi-annual reviews of other web artists. - Budget needs including new hires, purchasing and off-site events. ### Associate Art Director @ Sony Online Entertainment LLC Jan 2007 – Jan 2008 - Performed many of the duties I currently do as Art Director - Work with marketing, producers, web developers and web artists to make sure our web sites follow the brand's unique identity and are engaging to the end user - Always keeping in the front of my mind how my teams (and my own) design/artistic decisions can positively impact Sony Online's financial goals for the brand - Flash ActionScript 2 development, design and animation - Web site wireframing and conceptual development ### Senior Web Artist @ Sony Online Entertainment LLC Jan 2006 – Jan 2007 - Conceptualize, design and implement high quality game web sites - HTML/CSS development - 3D content generation using Maya - Utilize video and motion graphics software such as Premiere, After Effects and Particle Illusion to generate additional effects for flash and video projects - Design various forms of online collateral including: banner ads, feature graphics and email blasts - Pitch website concepts and prototypes to the various project stakeholders - Flash animation, ActionScript 2 and design - Lead and work alongside other web artists to meet our deadlines - Organize monthly artist meetups to discuss website postmortems, design trends and disect competitor's websites - Optimizing graphics and video for online consumption ### Web Designer @ Webative Inc. Jan 2000 – Jan 2008 - Web design and art direction for a variety of clients website needs. - HTML, Javascript, CSS, Flash development and content creation. - Meet with clients and discuss the brand and the vision for how the brand is viewed by the public and what the client’s overall goals for the project are. ### Bartender @ Left at Albuquerque Jan 1997 – Jan 2001 Drink slinger! Acquired great social and customer service relations experience of which I still use to this day. ## Education ### BA in Digital Art and Animation University of Silicon Valley ### West Valley College ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/travisgregory - Portfolio: http://www.getepic.com - Portfolio: http://undeadui.tumblr.com/ - Dribbble: https://dribbble.com/travisgregory --- Source: https://flows.cv/travisgregory JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/travisgregory/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13