vault

A collection of artifacts and observations from designer Chris Courtney, spanning across tech, education, and media

recent projects

Talent Marketplace

A dramatic expansion of Shift’s proof-of-concept amounted to rebuilding the plane midflight with paying customers aboard. Multiple rounds of user research led to several enhancements credited with positively impacting client renewals.

Content Strategy & Development

The Shift brand and site were on a good path, but needed to address a broader audience. To do so, we had to rethink how we reached our current audience and determine who new audience was and what would motivate them.

Education Program Overhaul

Purchasing decisions are driven by emotion, but those highs and lows are amplified when a potential career change is involved. While Bloc started with a dysfunctional educational product, the end result would generate millions in sales for the company.

Organizations

Shift

Design ✶ 2021-present

What started out as a consulting role, expanded to design and strategy for a Department of Defense contractor. With a ’small but mighty’ product team, we’ve managed to build three integrated products while leveraging a common design system (Mission). In addition to my product work, I’ve expanded our use of Mission to support sales and marketing assets as well.

New Pragmatic

Founder ✶ 2019-2023

Having written design curriculum multiple times for different organizations over the years, I wanted to finally have a version that was free for people to access. Coupled with a full suite of video tutorials and Figma community assets, thousands of people have leveraged the resources over the past four years. Project launched into the teeth of the COVID pandemic. Unfortunate timing.

company overview coming soon

Bloc

Design Program Director ✶ 2014-2019

Hundreds of successful design graduates from a remote program seemed unthinkable when I started. Having taught for years in-person, how would we possibly teach design online? The hurdles we cleared seemed trivial now, but the tools improved (Zoom, Figma) and I had an amazing remote team of designers to manage. Our design program was profitable and ready to soar higher when the company was acquired in 2018.

Tribune Company

Various roles, 13 years ✶ 2001-2014

What began as a trip to the big city as a print designer would see me transition onto a new project launch team within 12 months. I became a design-focused intrapreneur and was included on virtually every launch team. New technology releases (iPhone, Android, tablets, responsive websites) determined what I worked on for my final six years with the company.