Process — how I work
Eight years of shipping distilled into five phases. No mystery, no black box — you'll always know where we are, what happens next, and what you're getting.
The philosophy
Process
The same spine on every project — scaled up or down to fit, never skipped.
Start with the problem, not the interface. Stakeholder interviews, user research, and an audit of where the current experience breaks down — ranked by how often it hurts and how much.
Strategy gets written down before anything gets drawn. Information architecture, user flows, and the priorities we'll design against — so every later decision traces back to something we agreed on, not taste.
Flows become wireframes, wireframes become high-fidelity UI, and repeated patterns become a component system the engineering team can build against. Everything is validated with prototypes and real users — progress shows up in weekly demos, never a big reveal.
This is the phase most designers hand off. I build — in Framer, in Webflow, or in the codebase alongside the engineering team. QA and accessibility are part of the build, not a pass afterwards, because the person who set the focus order is the person writing the markup.
Launch is the starting line. Watch the metrics defined in phase 01, refine what the data disagrees with, keep shipping. A design that stopped changing the day it shipped is a design nobody measured.
Working with me
01
The person in the research is the person in the Figma file and the person in the pull request. Nothing is lost in the handoff because there isn't one — and when there is a handoff, I write the half an engineer has to pick up.
02
No mystery weeks and no big reveal at the end. Working screens go in front of the team every week, which is how anyone catches a wrong turn while it is still cheap to fix.
03
Design debates end fast when the success metrics were agreed before anything was drawn. When we still disagree, we test — the data votes last.
04
The judgment that shipped work for Salesforce, Coin Metrics, and Fidelity Payment Services is the judgment I bring to focus order and a 4px gap. Seniority shows up in the small decisions, where nobody is watching.
Accelerants — never the author
Phases 03 and 04 move faster than they used to. Claude accelerates systems thinking and production code, Midjourney widens visual exploration, and HeyGen handles video — which means fewer billable hours for the same senior-quality output. The savings are yours, not a shortcut of mine.
The rules never change: research before pixels, accessibility always, human review on every output — no vibe-coding, no shipping what a model guessed. I have the skills to do all of it without AI, which is exactly why I can use it safely. I also train frontier models on design and frontend engineering for one of the country's top AI companies — work that's under NDA, and offered only to proven industry experts.
The proof
In their words
Great to work with — eager to help, an excellent communicator, and a quick learner. I would certainly welcome another opportunity to work with her.
Incredibly creative and skilled in her craft, with an eye for both aesthetics and functionality — always one step ahead of marketing asks.
Ashley communicates clearly, sets realistic goals, and always makes sure everyone has what they need to succeed. She's the kind of person who raises the standard for everyone around her.
Ashley was fantastic to work with. Communication was excellent from start to finish, she kept me updated throughout the project, set clear expectations, and turned revisions around incredibly quickly.
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