Micah Horvat
Product design leader with over 10 years of experience leading and managing design teams in delivering intuitive, user-centered experiences. Skilled in people management, team building, and facilitation, with a passion for driving outcome-oriented design operations from discovery to delivery.
Understanding Users
To make a real impact on people’s lives, we need to understand their stories.
I develop a deep, shared understanding of the end user and apply it to every part of my design practice. Constant communication with our users ensures that we are designing with real people’s needs and behaviors in mind, and that our designs resonate with them.
Mapping Problems and Solutions
Solving big, complex problems requires bringing ideas together and making sense of them in a shared context.
I make extensive use of mapping techniques such as story maps, affinity diagrams, user journeys, and service blueprints. I involve a diverse set of stakeholders in creating and updating these artifacts so we can carry a shared understanding of our solution with us through the entire product life cycle.
Sketching
In a visual world, the ability to communicate ideas visually is essential. It’s also essential to iterate on ideas quickly and cheaply, and to include non designers in visual communication. That’s why I’m a firm believer in the power of sketching.
I live sketch, facilitate group sketching, and promote a culture of visual communication so that all stakeholders can contribute visual ideas, and so that we can evaluate many ideas quickly.
Interactive Prototyping
To truly understand whether a tool is effective, we need to observe people using it. Prototypes allow us to cheaply test risky ideas, giving us the confidence we need to commit.
I’m experienced in many forms of prototyping from the latest digital tools, to paper, slide-ware, and coded proofs of concept. I can improvise and I know how to fit the right method to the current problem.
Validating Designs
Real-world outcomes matter more than just shipping features. We need to understand our real impact.
I design studies with specific goals and hypotheses, and test my product designs for usability, desirability, and value. With measurement and validation we can create designs that make a difference.
Design Systems
A consistent visual language is essential for a growing product. More so for a growing portfolio of products. That consistency streamlines our delivery cycle and increases our customer’s confidence in us.
I’ve created design systems from scratch and I contribute to team owned systems. I work with developers to maintain and test UI components and migrate UI’s to use them, keeping the design language in step with the actual product and allowing front end developers to benefit from the efficiency of the design system.
