Hi. I’m Ryan.

I’m a user experience designer and I like coffee. After observing how frequently the two go hand-in-hand, I adopted it as a moniker for my website, email, Twitter, and wherever else you may find me.

I used to have kind of a crazy beard!

If you’re here to take a gander at my resume, stop reading now and click here.

But a resume really isn’t who any of us really are, right? They’re a way of cramming as much about what we know and have accomplished professionally into a single, neatly-organized page that will be viewed for about six seconds by a hiring manager to scan for keywords, employment history, and education, before being sorted (hopefully) into a maybe pile and not a shredder.

Unless it is formal class or university, my resume doesn’t say anything about my insatiable appetite for learning and that at any given time I may be reading several books about design, product management, sociology, or entrepreneurship. It doesn’t tell you that I go to every discussion panel I can get to or that I continuously attend bootcamp and short-form classes in-person or online.

You won’t find out from my resume that I’ve played several different musical instruments since I was young, including trombone, saxophone, and guitar. The most fun and challenging instrument I’ve ever played is the banjo, but I’m finding as I try to learn piano that banjo may be sliding in the second most challenging slot.

That’s 225kg (496lbs) and an Illinois state record in 2015!

My passion for health and fitness is nowhere to be found on my resume. It won’t tell you that I began to develop that passion when I’d finally had enough of weighing over 330 pounds and made the lifestyle changes necessary to lose over 100 pounds and set a state powerlifting record along the way.

So yeah, there it is. Don’t get me wrong. I think my resume is jam-packed with some awesome work that I’ve done in the past sixteen years, some of which you can see in my portfolio. It’ll tell you I’m versatile and comfortable wearing many hats (except a trilby) in both small and large companies, working on both small and large digital properties, and that I’m a curious, collaborative, and committed.

But if you want to find out more about me and talk about design, technology, weightlifting, or work opportunities, hit up the contact form in the footer and let’s have some coffee.