Hello!

Photo of Corey Stone

I'm Corey, dad of 4 (got a bogo twin) + 4 🐕 (long story) and Lead Product Designer & Strategist with 27 years' experience simplifying complexity and streamlining inefficiency. I'm action-biased and flexible with process, but in general, I:


  • Empathize
    via user
    research.

  • Ideate
    with sketches & prototypes.

  • Evaluate
    by A-B or usability testing.

  • Iterate
    until it's awesome.

I'm also a zero-to-1 thinker with experience at 3 startups plus founding ~10 apps. See more below, or grab my résumé if you need it. Thanks!

↓80%

ACT test reg time

↑8%

student success

10

products founded

3

startup jobs

27

years experience

14

years EdTech

4

years HealthTech

3

years managing

Screenshots of the clinician UI and responsive patient UI for a mental health-tracking SaaS application.

Lead Designer at Mental Health B2B SaaS Startup

At Owl.health, I designed new features, analytics dashboards, and high-fi interactive mockups of future concepts that helped secure $15M in Series B funding.

View Owl Case Study
Screenshots from design and vision work for Chegg Skills' adult learning experience.

Reenvisioning Chegg Skills' Adult Learning UX

On a team of 2, I designed future visions, internal tooling, and the current responsive web app, including 3 AI-powered features and an updated left nav that increased student success 8%.

(Case study in-progress – sorry!)
Personas, user flows, and task / user analysis from ACT Test Registration project.

Reinvented ACT Test Registration & B2C Portal

MyACT is ACT.org's responsive e-Commerce portal where ~3 million students/year register ACT tests, view scores, and explore careers, colleges, and majors. The result? Task time decreased from 30 to 7 minutes, great user feedback, and revenue-per-registrant expected to increase.

View ACT Case Study

Related: ACT Design System

A screenshot, flow map, and persona from my work at SchooLinks.

Fast-paced EdTech B2B SaaS Startup

As the senior-most designer on a team of 3 at SchooLinks, I quickly designed new features, improved existing ones, and helped increase their UX maturity.

View SchooLinks Case Study
Soccer training app concept updates.

Improving Engagement in Training App

For the soccer training app that my kid's ODP team uses, I had some behavioral design ideas on how to increase player motivation and engagement through goal-setting, self-assessment, plan authoring, tracking, and reminders, so I mocked them up and presented them to the app owner. She loved the designs and added some of the functionality.

View Figma Prototype
Enterprise dashboard concept.

User Research & Redesign of Enterprise SaaS & Dashboard

As the UX Specialist for a global multi-office civil engineering firm from 2013-2016, I researched and designed internal enterprise SaaS web apps, native tablet apps, and legacy systems that increased efficiency, productivity, and profits.

View Kleinfelder Case Study
HERO Keyboard for iOS.

Founded HERO Keyboard

HERO is an iOS app that I conceived, designed, marketed, and managed contract developers to build. In English, just 9 letters are used 80% of the time, so my patented design makes them bigger and centered where your thumb likes to be. The result? Finger travel is reduced by 35%, or "3 feet per tweet."

View HERO Case Study
MixPlay iOS app.

Founded MixPlay App

Another 'scratch my own itch' iOS app that I founded, designed, marketed, and managed the contract development. Built in 2015, it's still used and loved by many coaches, making steady sales with no advertising.

View MixPlay Case Study
KU.edu web presence.

Leading the KU.edu Web Presence

I led the 2012 redesign of the million-page KU.edu web presence into a new responsive CMS, plus designing the home page, top-level pages, unit templates, and award-winning Admissions site.

View KU.edu Case Study
Medication-prescribing mockup

Medical SaaS Navigation & Med-Prescribing Flow

From 2004-2006, I designed various UI's for a major medical software company, solving complex interaction and data-display problems for use in environments that demand efficient error-free workflow.

View Healthcare Case Study
Stop the Groomer screenshot

Co-founded an Abuse-prevention App

My kids' gymnastics gym owner wanted to educate kids on reducing their risk of being sexually abused. We got written content from a family therapist, which I gamified, designed, and art directed into a free kid-friendly game-like app.

View Marketing Site

Created an iOS/Android game

In 2016, I created "Cheer Fury," which was sort of a cheer-themed Fists of Fury / Fruit Ninja mashup. I built it in GameSalad (with a little help on the trickier parts), illustrated all the background graphics and character animations (except for the cover art, contracted on Fiverr along with music creation), and recorded sound effects.

It ended up being quite a bit more work than I expected – and in hindsight I think the game was too hard, thus new users gave up on it too soon. Another lesson. 🤨

Screenshot of Kleinfelder's internal Health and Safety apps.

Redesigning internal Health & Safety-Tracking SaaS

For Kleinfelder, with a visual designer, I redesigned and reimagined the old legacy system into a modern, intuitive, efficient SaaS that made the multi-week process easier and faster for staff, increasing completion rates.

View Health & Safety Tracker
Screenshots of FullOut on various devices.

Founding FullOut, a B2C hybrid app

For my current pre-launch side project (with a dev partner), I do all the product vision, strategy, and design for the hybrid React-based SaaS that streamlines the messy multi-person process of creating, collaborating on, and teaching a cheer or dance routine. It'll also include a 3-sided marketplace and other helpful tools.

Photo of Todd

“Corey is super creative, thoughtful, innovative, responsible, ethical and an all-around decent, good egg.”

- Todd Cohen, former Director at KU

Photo of Andrea

“Corey is very collaborative, creative, and super fun to work with. He has a knack for solving tricky problems. I was always impressed by his ability to describe ideas, and willingness to brainstorm.

- Andrea Baker, VP at CannonDesign

Photo of Mark

“Corey is an excellent designer with strong technical chops. He is able to proactively move projects forward with minimal guidance and oversight. He is not afraid to tackle complex problems and always brings a fresh point of view. He can think big and enjoys brainstorming big ideas, but he can also patiently navigate his way through the weeds. His humor and style help to diffuse hectic, tense, and dynamic situations. Bottom line — he's a craftsman, he's fun to work with, and he gets stuff done.”

- Mark Kopulos, Staff Product Designer at Sofar Sounds

Photo of Mark

“I cannot recommend Corey highly enough. His approach to design is not only creative but also deeply intelligent and understanding of a product’s users. Corey consistently brings out innovative ideas that not only address past challenges but also pave the way for future advancements. In addition to his design prowess, he is a fantastic collaborator and team player. He effectively communicates his ideas, actively seeks feedback, and readily incorporates suggestions from stakeholders.

- John Norwood, Construction Tech & Innovation National Manager at Terracon

Photo of Paul

“At Chegg, Corey provided exceptional mentorship that significantly enhanced my growth as a UX designer. His ability to listen and teach created a supportive environment, and his constructive feedback encouraged critical thinking ultimately allowing me to produce effective designs. His patience, knowledge, and engaging personality made him a pleasure to work with, and I am incredibly grateful for his guidance. Corey is an invaluable asset to any team or designer looking to learn and grow.”

- Paul Williams, UX/UI/Web Designer

Photo of Kaitlynn

“Corey has a way of bringing an idea to life by turning the brainstorming of a concept team into a clear product design. He understands the customer and is always creating great solutions that both delight the customer and save money and time for the company. He is also a great team member, always bringing ideas to the table along with a sense of humor.”

- Kaitlynn Griffith, VP at College Board

Photo of Ben

“Corey continually raised the bar in intelligent UX design, prototyping, A/B testing, and maximizing conversions. He has an impressive depth of knowledge in UX research and a rich understanding of marketing, customer funnels, and value laddering. Corey is a fantastic team player, always sharing knowledge.

- Ben Mossman, Lead Solutions Architect at ACT

Photo of Rebekah

“As his manager at Kleinfelder, I appreciated Corey's willingness to learn new things and take on challenging projects. He is a very talented UX Designer with a good eye for incorporating what is really important into his design. He does not hesitate to ask questions. Corey is responsible and reliable – I never had any concerns that he would complete a project on time or produce a quality product.”

- Rebekah Stevens, BA Manager at Kleinfelder

Photo of Derek

“Corey’s always looking for the best ways to enhance a design, jumped right in when learning new research and collaboration tools, has a thorough understanding of the user-centered design process, and was able to thrive in very challenging circumstances. I’d highly recommend Corey for any senior or leadership position within user experience or product design.”

- Derek Darby, former UX Director at ACT

Photo of Sri

“Corey is always user focused in his designs! His designs take into account the constraints and business goals and still are very user friendly. I have always found him to be super friendly and a great team player. His communication skills are amazing and he can easily express what his designs are trying to achieve. Super fun to work with as well!”

- Sri Rao, Sr. BA at ACT

Art, Animation, & Illustration

I've recently learned to create interactive vector animations in Rive.app (which DuoLingo uses) for Chegg and my Fullout side project. Here's a Chat loading animation and "SkillMate" AI-powered chatbot icon for Chegg Skills, which has an onLoad animation, a persistent calming slow breathing effect, a hover state, and an onClick outro animation.

For my CheerKeys iOS app, I created these frame-by-frame PNG animations for use in chat apps:

Yeah animation. Yaaasss animation. Fail animation. OMW animation. LOL animation. Popcorn animation. Sick animation. Tired animation.

A couple illustrations I did as contract work:

Illustration
Illustration

Everyone paints floor-to-ceiling murals on their kids' rooms, right? No? Hmmm. Since we moved a couple times, I ended up free-hand painting 4 rooms – here are the last two (click for zoom-able versions).

Eli's Nemo painted mural room. Christopher's Tarzan/Jungle Book painted mural room.

Continuous Learning

Even though I've been doing this a long time, I always strive to improve my design skills and design-adjacent knowledge. Some courses I've taken include:


And my weekly news/pod diet:

Our old pal Seth Godin.