About
Designing for the hard problems.
I'm Chris Michalak, a Senior UX Designer and Researcher who specializes in enterprise complexity. My work lives in the space where business systems, human workflows, and organizational reality collide.
Over the past 7+ years, I've led research and design across Fortune 500 companies including T-Mobile and Union Pacific Railroad, and built products from zero at early-stage startups — most recently shipping First Step AI, an onboarding agent built on the Claude API.
Based in Salt Lake City. Available for UX research and product design roles at AI-native or AI-adjacent companies — especially where research depth is treated as a product lever, not a support function.
Experience
ShipDeez / Backhaul Direct
Lead Product Designer
2026
Contract
Union Pacific Railroad
UX Researcher & Design Strategist
2023–2025
Contract · 2 years
T-Mobile
UX Researcher, Enterprise Technology Solutions
2022–2023
Contract · 13 months
Earlier experience in service design, enterprise consulting, and digital strategy available on request.
Skills & Tools
Research
- Contextual Inquiry
- Usability Testing
- Journey Mapping
- Ethnographic Research
- Stakeholder Interviews
- Survey Design
Design
- UX Strategy
- Information Architecture
- Wireframing
- High-Fidelity UI
- Design Systems
- Component Libraries
Tools
- Figma
- FigJam
- UXPin
- Dovetail
- Webflow
- Quantum Metrics
- Miro
- Adobe XD
AI & Analytics
- Claude
- GPT
- Dovetail AI
- Google Analytics 4
- Microsoft Clarity
- Tableau
Platforms
- SAP Fiori
- SAP S/4HANA
- Adobe Experience Manager
- Ariba
- Icertis
- EasyPost
Let's work together.
I'm open to UX research and product design roles at AI-native or AI-adjacent companies — especially where research depth is treated as a product lever, not a support function.