Systems made legible
Use research, information architecture, and interaction models to turn opaque rules, permissions, data states, and edge cases into interfaces people can predict and trust.
CV PDFRyan Bollenbach
Senior Product Designer
I make difficult product systems easier to understand. My best work sits where UX research, product strategy, design systems, and hands-on front-end craft help teams reduce cognitive load, clarify decisions, and build interfaces people can trust.
Profile
I work best on products where the interface has to make an underlying system understandable: AI configuration, operational tooling, publishing workflows, commerce platforms, CMS products, and design systems.
I use research to map mental models, identify failure modes and cognitive biases, and translate that into flows, defaults, feedback loops, and controls that help people make better decisions.
Selected Impact
Bias-aware AI UX
Shape AI workflows around evaluation, feedback, confidence, and user control so teams can notice uncertainty instead of over-trusting automation.
Lower cognitive load
Convert recurring decisions into durable design systems, defaults, and patterns that reduce memory burden and keep high-volume work consistent.
Prototypes that teach
Build in React and Next.js to test assumptions quickly, expose edge cases, and give product and engineering a shared artifact to reason from.
Experience
Upfeat
Product Design Manager
Leads product design across SaaS tools and consumer commerce services, working with product, sales, and engineering to clarify complex systems and ship usable interfaces.
- Redesigned B2B affiliate and CMS workflows so editorial, commerce, and operations teams could move through complex tasks with less friction.
- Designed AI-assisted commerce tooling for configuring, evaluating, and refining LLM-driven image and data workflows.
- Built and evolved a design system across major publisher and commerce properties, including Forbes, Reuters, Globe and Mail, and Lifehacker Australia.
- Mentored designers and researchers through critique, research planning, product framing, and clearer performance goals.
- Prototypes and ships front-end work in React and Next.js, using AI tools to move from idea to working interface quickly.
ePublishing
Senior User Experience Designer
Designed publishing tools for content creation, email marketing, printing, and site management across a large Ruby on Rails platform.
- Created reusable interface patterns that made publishing workflows more consistent across products.
- Introduced a faster design and prototyping workflow with Sketch and InVision.
- Worked directly in Ruby on Rails views to improve front-end quality and responsiveness.
Enventys Partners
Senior User Experience Designer
Led UX for Edison Nation's SaaS product-development platform, improving how inventors moved ideas through evaluation and commercialization workflows.
FBS, creators of Flexmls
User Experience Designer
Improved listing research, creation flows, and MLS widgets for a real estate platform used by agents and brokers.
Dynamo
User Experience Designer
Designed ecommerce experiences for agency clients including Reitmans and Blue Bottle Coffee, contributing product thinking to a custom commerce backend.
OBOX
User Experience Designer
Designed advertising campaigns and publisher websites across content and social platforms.
Tungle Corporation
User Experience Designer
Designed UX, UI, and early design-system foundations for a SaaS calendar product later acquired by BlackBerry.
Capabilities
Product craft
Systems UXAI UXDesign systemsInteraction design
Research and strategy
UX researchWorkflow mappingDesign strategyTeam mentorship
Build stack
FigmaReactNext.jsWordPressRuby on RailsAI prototyping
Education
Digital Multimedia Technology Diploma
Red River College Polytechnic, Manitoba
Specialized in web design, building a foundation across web development, motion graphics, typography, graphic design, and 3D modeling.