jcruss@gmail.com    |    (650) 255-9443    |    LinkedIn    |    Resume PDF

A highly successful design leader, astute at crafting from the conceptual in order to deliver simple and intuitive user experiences that continuously delight customers. An accomplished team leader with a proven ability to establish strong partnerships with engineering, product, and marketing to evolve cohesive experiences that deliver on company strategy and feed brand vision.

  • Architect of high-performing teams, able to inspire and lead an array of talents and personalities

  • Domestic and global responsibilities for product design

  • Multi-platform and device design

  • Member of senior management as well as a hands-on ‘roll up the sleeves’ designer

  • Astute at hearing the customer via qualitative research as well as with A/B testing and quantitative measurements

  • Ground-breaking designs; co-author of 5 patents; additional 3 pending

Experience

Head of Design

Chegg
Santa Clara, CA
2/11 – 7/14

Built and led a multi-national product design team to drive ecommerce business from an $80M to a $200M+ annually. Successfully led product design efforts through 10 acquisitions and IPO.

  • Partnered with product, engineering and marketing teams in taking the company from a single offering ecommerce site (textbook rentals) to a multi-offering, multi-platform company (eTextbooks, college search, scholarship match, homework study, career match, learning marketplace). Integration included several brand acquisitions into one brand voice.
  • Drove user experience and multi-device product design strategy for desktop, iOS and Android
  • Implemented A/B tests for design optimization to drive acquisition, conversion and engagement success.  
  • Key participant in qualitative research design and implementation aimed to keep the consumer at the heart of the product design process
  • Drove brand evolution including change of brand message, voice, look and feel.
  • Established and drove partnership with engineering to create front-end technology frameworks and open-API layers in support of world-class product experiences.
  • Continuously recruited, managed and developed a world class product design team.

VP of User Experience

CBS Interactive
San Francisco, CA
1/08 – 2/11

Led user experience design, visual design, sponsorship and branding for CBS Interactive's Entertainment division, including CBS.com, TV.com, TheInsider.com, Chow.com, UrbanBaby.com and the CBS Audience Network. 

  • Decision-driving member of senior management team, closely aligning design strategy to overall business goals
  • Through effective user experience design, achieved #1 ranking for CBS.com among TV network websites in video streams, minutes streamed and unique viewers.
  • Built and managed a team of Creative Directors, Product Designers, Visual Designers, Flash Designers and Front-end Developers.
  • Led strategic user experience design for all television content and video based destinations and applications.
  • Conceived of and lead design for unique, high-revenue sales initiatives.
  • Enhanced revenue opportunities by weaving effective advertising into the user experience.

Senior Experience Designer

Adobe Systems
San Jose, CA 
7/04 – 1/08

Conceived and established the user experience design for some of Adobe’s largest revenue producing product families, including Acrobat and Photoshop.

  • Drove user experience vision for the Creative Suite.
  • Developed the design strategy for Dreamweaver CS3 during the product definition phase.
  • Oversaw all user experience design for Photoshop CS3 Extended and Dreamweaver CS3.
  • Credited designer for Photoshop CS4, Photoshop CS3, Dreamweaver CS4, Dreamweaver CS3, Acrobat Professional 8.0, Acrobat Reader 8.0, Acrobat 3D.
  • Experience continued

Senior Interaction Designer

Ariba Inc.
Sunnyvale, CA  
7/02 – 7/04

Drove interaction and interface design for Ariba Buyer, a product that allows large enterprise companies to comprehensively automate, manage and track their goods and services spending.

o Worked closely with Product Management and Ariba customers to define feature requirements.
o Devised product flow and feature functionality and prototyped all new features.
o Drove the iteration of designs with Product Management and Development teams as well as Ariba customers.
o Extended Ariba’s user interface standards in support of new features.
o Worked in partnership with usability engineers to test the product, analyze usability results and deliver feature redesigns to the development team.
o Worked side-by-side with UI engineers during product development cycles.
o Worked closely with the Creative Director in devising all new page layouts, interface elements and iconography

Director of Usability and Design

FileFish Inc.
Mountain View, CA  
07/01 – 07/02

Directed interaction design, graphic design and usability to produce a suite of products enabling enterprise employees to access their company’s network resources from any web browser.

  • Established the company’s product design process around iterative, user-driven design
  • Designed and produced interactions and interfaces for office, mobile and administrative users
  • Planned and conducted all usability testing and analysis
  • Produced and delivered production ready xHTML, CSS, JavaScript and wireless HTML to engineering.
  • Conceived, designed and produced company’s corporate identity system. 

Director of Design

DoDots
Mountain View, CA  
11/99 – 1/01

Performed a leading management role in a digital infrastructure company that enabled its customers to deliver web content outside the browser and directly to both desktop and wireless devices.

  • Recruited and managed a department of 12 designers and developers.
  • Established company’s interaction design process as well as interface and content design guidelines.
  • Managed the design and development of over 60 shipped projects for clients such as ABC.com, ZDNet, CNET, Bluelight.com, and MySimon.
  • Led the design, development and editorial management of the DoDots Customer SDK, development tools, documentation and training. 
  • Education

 

Education

Stanford University
1997

Master of Fine Arts, Product Design

New York University
1991

Bachelor of Science, Studio Art 

  • Graduated Magna cum Laude
  • Dean’s List
  • University Scholar
  • Received Ida Bodman Service award for leadership.

Other Professional Activities

 
  • Invited panel member for John Maeda KPCB’s ProductWorks
  • Member, BayCHI, the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the ACM SIGCHI