Strategy, design, and growth in one role. Measurable at every stage.
Design, product, and growth are typically three separate jobs. I've done all three, and I do my strongest work where they overlap.
Ryan Deverman
Growth PM · UX Design · Growth Marketing
Madison, WI
BFA Graphic Design, Ohio University
Charles Logan Smith Award for Excellence in Design, 2007
Works Where the Disciplines Converge
I work across design, product, and growth in B2B and B2C SaaS, focused on understanding user intent before applying frameworks. My career has moved from deep design execution to broader product and growth ownership, including design leadership for a platform serving 600+ institutions and product leadership on a self-serve subscription system that reached $10M+ ARR.
My work sits at the intersection of disciplines that are often separated in practice. Design brings precision and usability. Product adds accountability to outcomes and sequencing. Growth closes the loop between what gets built and whether it drives acquisition, conversion, and retention. I do my strongest work where these overlap, especially where both execution and systems thinking are required.
I prioritize building systems that compound over time, not just features. That includes scalable design systems, programmatic and data-driven surfaces, and PLG infrastructure that replaces manual motion with repeatable growth. I also invest in the operational layer, including documentation, team structure, and process scaffolding, so teams can move fast without creating fragility or dependency.
The throughline is building work that lasts past the release.
How I Think About Design and Product
These aren't borrowed frameworks. Each one reflects a decision I've had to make, a tradeoff I've navigated, or a failure I've learned from across nearly two decades of product and design work.
Outcomes Over Outputs
A feature that doesn't change user behavior or move a business metric isn't done, it's deferred. I define what success looks like before design starts and treat post-launch measurement as part of the work. Shipping is a checkpoint, not the finish line.
Design Is a Systems Problem
A screen is not a product. A system is. Every component, pattern, and interaction should belong to something larger that makes the next decision faster and the next hire's job easier. Design debt is usually a systems debt.
Measurement Is Not Optional
What does better look like, in behavioral or business terms? That question gets answered before design starts, not after it ships. Without it there's no basis for a decision, only opinions. Experimentation is how I keep that question honest.
Craft Earns Trust
The quality of execution is a signal about everything else. Teams and stakeholders extend strategic trust to people who are precise in their work because precision at the detail level implies rigor at the decision level. Craft is not a nicety. It's a credibility mechanism.
Constraints Are the Brief
Budget limits, technical constraints, and organizational friction aren't obstacles to good design. They're the conditions that make solutions real. An unconstrained brief produces an unconstrained solution that nobody can build. Working within what's actually true produces work that lasts.
The Gap Between Teams Is Where Revenue Leaks
Most product failures aren't design failures or engineering failures. They're coordination failures. The cost lives in the handoffs between product, design, marketing, and sales. Having worked in all four, I can see those gaps from both sides and know what it takes to close them before they become expensive.
Design and Delivery Practice
Shared understanding produces better work than polished documentation. Fast learning produces better outcomes than thorough planning. I work in the smallest units that can generate a real signal, keep fidelity low until the direction is confirmed, and treat a surfaced wrong assumption as progress, not failure.
See It in PracticeProblem Before Solution
Every project starts with a problem statement and a hypothesis about how solving it creates value for users and the business. User intent comes first. The design follows from that, and it's never the starting point.
Small Batches, Fast Cycles
Scope is the enemy of learning. The smaller the unit of work, the faster the feedback loop and the less expensive the course correction. I default to the minimum scope that can generate a real signal.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
Design doesn't happen in a lane. Engineers, product managers, and marketers are collaborators in the design process, not recipients of a finished artifact. Problems that are owned by one function and handed to another lose something in the transfer. Shared ownership produces different work.
Outcomes Define Done
Done isn't a shipping event. It's the moment the work measurably changed something for users or the business. Teams that share that definition make cleaner handoffs and spend less time arguing about whether something is finished.
Embracing the Product Operating Model
Strategy that doesn't translate into team priorities is just a deck. Execution that isn't connected to a business outcome is just activity. The Product Operating Model is how I think about the architecture that sits between them and keeps both honest.
View ServicesStrategy to Execution Alignment
Business strategy should translate into product bets, which translate into team priorities, which translate into sprint work. When that chain breaks, teams build the right things wrong or the wrong things entirely. Most execution problems are actually alignment problems upstream.
Empowered Product Teams
A team that owns the delivery but not the problem will optimize for shipping. Give a team the problem and the latitude to solve it their own way, and you get different work with different accountability.
OKRs as Operating Infrastructure
Objectives and Key Results are most valuable not as a reporting framework but as a way to make tradeoffs visible. When set correctly, they keep teams from optimizing in the wrong direction and give leadership a shared language for what actually matters.
Discovery as Continuous Practice
Discovery is not a phase. It is a weekly habit. Teams that keep talking to customers, testing assumptions, and updating their understanding make better bets and waste less in development.
Product and Design as Revenue Function
The most effective organizations treat design and product as revenue functions, not delivery functions. That means ownership of outcomes, not just features, and accountability for whether what shipped actually worked. I've seen the difference firsthand.
Feedback Loops Close the Loop
A product operating model without instrumentation is just a strategy document. Post-launch data, support signals, sales feedback, and behavioral analytics are what turn a model into something that actually improves.
Career Timeline
Nearly 20 years across design, product, and growth. Two industries. One consistent focus: building work that outlasts the release.
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2022 — Jan 2026
Growth Product Manager
ConstructConnect — Cincinnati, OH (Remote)
Owned product strategy and execution for a $10M+ ARR PLG self-serve subscription platform. Built and scaled a 1.7M-page programmatic content ecosystem. Led corporate web platform migration to a multilingual headless CMS. Drove cross-functional alignment across product, engineering, and marketing toward shared revenue goals.
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2016 — 2022
Senior Product Designer & Design Lead
ConstructConnect — Cincinnati, OH (Remote)
Grew the design organization from 2 to 12. Owned design systems, vendor management, and budget governance for design operations. Led UX across the contractor platform, BidClerk acquisition integration, and onboarding experience. Established WCAG 2.1 standards and Atomic Design practices across the product suite.
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May 2013 — 2016
Senior UX Designer
ConstructConnect — Cincinnati, OH (Remote)
Joined as Senior Designer to lead UX for a growing B2B SaaS construction data platform. Designed end-to-end product experiences for project intelligence, bid management, and pre-construction workflows. Built the initial design system and component library that scaled with the product suite.
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2018 — Present
Technology Director
Hill Farms Neighborhood Association — Madison, WI Volunteer
Led brand refresh and rebuilt the neighborhood association website on Google Cloud. Restructured navigation and content hierarchy to prioritize member actions, resulting in measurable increases in event registrations and newsletter sign-ups.
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Sep 2007 — May 2013
Senior Graphic and Web Designer
LiveText — La Grange, IL
Sole designer for an edtech SaaS platform deployed across 600+ colleges and universities. Owned product, marketing, and web design end-to-end. The audience was higher ed administrators and faculty with real domain expertise and institutional procurement authority. Designing for people who don't extend trust easily built habits around precision and clarity that carried through everything after.
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2003 — 2007
BFA, Graphic Design and Printmaking
Ohio University — Athens, OH
Charles Logan Smith Award for Excellence in Design, 2007. Built a foundation in visual systems, typography, and communication design that still informs how I approach product and interface problems today.
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2006 — 2007
Student Web Designer
Ohio University IT — Athens, OH
Designed and maintained internal web portals including the CatVision website alongside a small development team serving student and faculty services.
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Summer 2006
Graphic Design Intern
TenUnited — Columbus, OH
Supported senior designers with presentation design and print production for client deliverables at a Columbus advertising agency.
Let's Work Together.
If you're building something that needs someone who can work across design, product, and growth without losing precision at any layer, I'd like to hear about it.
Get in Touch View My Work