Product & Experience Design Executive

Building the future of AI-driven platforms, ecosystems, and experiences.

20+ years leading design across B2B platforms, AI infrastructure, and developer ecosystems at Intuit, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. I build the organizations, strategies, and systems that turn complex technical products into competitive advantages.

Taurean Jones
100M+
Customers impacted across platform ecosystems
8 Patents
US patents in data systems & visualization
$60B
Total addressable market secured via platform design
40%
Faster software delivery across the enterprise
400+
Professionals enabled through AI design programs
About

Background

Design executive scaling AI-native products and design organizations across enterprise platforms. From building AWS's first conversational AI platform to leading design for Google Cloud's core compute products to driving 93% AI tool adoption across 400+ designers at Intuit, I've spent 20+ years at the intersection of design leadership, platform strategy, and emerging technology.

I believe the next era of design leadership isn't about making things — it's about orchestrating AI, systems, and cross-functional teams to ship at velocity to meet unmet human needs.

Outside of work, I serve on advisory boards at the University of Washington Information School and The Ohio State University Department of Design. I'm a main-stage conference speaker, an artist, and a travel enthusiast.

Intuit
Director, Product Design & Research
Developer Ecosystem • 2022–2026
Google
Head of UX Design
Google Cloud Platform • 2018–2022
Amazon (AWS)
Senior UX Lead, AI
AI/ML Solutions • 2016–2018
Microsoft
UX Lead
BI & Data Science Tools • 2011–2016

Advisory Boards

University of Washington Information School • The Ohio State University, Department of Design

Speaking

BFUTR 2025 Main Stage — "Your Job Title Won't Save You" • Google UX Managers Summit • Ohio State Design + AI Panel

Patents

8 US patents in data visualization, semantic navigation, and machine learning interfaces (Microsoft)

Featured In

Ohio State Alumni Magazine — "Why 5 Artists Love Work" • LinkedIn — "Your Moment to Lead: Design's Pivotal Role in the AI Revolution"

Selected Work

Leading through complexity

These case studies focus on leadership decisions, organizational impact, and business outcomes. Detailed walkthroughs of specific initiatives are available upon request.

Intuit
Transforming a Development Platform from the Inside Out
Director, Product Design & Research • 2022–2026

Joined as the first design executive embedded in a deeply technical organization. Inherited a fragmented internal developer portal with negative satisfaction scores, inconsistent information architecture, and no unified design function. Built the team, the process, and the strategic vision that transformed it into a modern platform serving thousands of engineers across four major product lines.

The Challenge

  • Fragmented platform with inconsistent navigation and dated UI — NPS at -5
  • No design representation in a technical org of thousands of engineers
  • Monthly active users had plateaued with no clear path to growth
  • Multiple product lines operating with no shared design standards

What I Built

  • Stood up a scalable design function from zero — hiring, process, intake frameworks
  • Created a tiered engagement model (Gold/Silver/Bronze) to prioritize design investment across initiatives
  • Led a complete information architecture overhaul to unify discovery, creation, and monitoring workflows
  • Drove the design strategy for AI-assisted developer workflows, securing executive sponsorship for future-state vision

Outcomes

250% growth Platform adoption, enabling 18K+ monthly active users
40% acceleration Software development lifecycle velocity company-wide
93% adoption AI tool willingness after enablement programs
DevX Award Recognized for strategic leadership & alignment
Intuit
Designing the Externalization of a Fintech Ecosystem
Director, Product Design & Research • 2022–2026

Led the design strategy for opening the company's internal development capabilities to third-party developers — turning an internal platform into an external ecosystem powering fintech innovation. This required aligning multiple business units, defining a new developer experience from first API call to production, and establishing "speed to value" as the north-star metric.

Platform strategy: Internal stability enables external scale

The Challenge

  • Existing external portal wasn't designed for modern API consumption patterns
  • Organizational misalignment across business units on external strategy
  • Ambitious timeline with constrained resources
  • Broken first-time user experience — high drop-off before first API call

What I Led

  • Drove cross-functional alignment across product, engineering, and business leadership to define the externalization roadmap
  • Designed a scalable multi-product architecture supporting workspace management, guided onboarding, and API exploration
  • Commissioned and led competitive benchmarking research to identify critical experience gaps
  • Established "time to first API call" as the primary experience metric, restructuring the entire onboarding flow around it

Outcomes

$1B TAM Addressable market for external ecosystem
80% Experience Score On platform benchmark study
NPS 40 On redesigned platform experience
75% faster Client onboarding through improved auth flows
Google
Defining the Design Vision for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure
Head of UX Design, Google Cloud Platform • 2018–2022

Owned the UX design vision for next-generation multi-cloud and hybrid infrastructure products. Led design across compute, container orchestration, Kubernetes, and enterprise migration tooling — managing designers, UX program managers, and content strategists across Poland, Canada, and five US sites. Partnered directly with product and engineering leadership to simplify deeply technical workflows and drive platform adoption at enterprise scale.

The Challenge

  • Enterprise customers struggled with complex multi-step provisioning and configuration workflows
  • Hybrid and multi-cloud products required a unified experience across console, CLI, and infrastructure-as-code tooling
  • Customer onboarding for managed platforms took weeks, creating adoption friction

What I Led

  • Spearheaded design initiatives influencing approximately 60% of Google Cloud Platform revenue
  • Drove end-to-end design and launch of a flagship hybrid cloud solution — securing $60B in total addressable market
  • Built a unified cluster and feature lifecycle management experience that became the standard for enterprise platform tooling
  • Redesigned the customer onboarding journey, compressing setup time from weeks to minutes

Outcomes

$60B TAM Secured through hybrid cloud solution launch
60% of revenue Influenced through design-led initiatives
Weeks → Minutes Customer onboarding time reduced
Looking for deeper detail? I maintain comprehensive case study walkthroughs covering design process, research methodology, and system-level decisions. These are shared in interviews and upon request to protect proprietary information.
What Others Say

From people I've worked with

"His ability to connect vision to execution has had a meaningful impact on how we serve developers across the Intuit ecosystem. He brings a powerful combination of strategic thinking, deep user empathy, and operational excellence."
Deepa Soundararajan
VP of Engineering, Intuit
"Taurean has the ability to step into teams and forge trusting relationships with his stakeholders, partners and his team. I have seen him use this superpower to work through the most gnarly, complicated and ambiguous areas and deliver business impact and long term vision."
Nafisa Bhojawala
UX Executive, Google Cloud Platform
"Taurean is a people-first design leader who deeply understands how to motivate designers and draw the best design work out of a design organization. He can translate very technical concepts into deeply human experiences people enjoy using."
Sam Anderson
Director of Design, Intuit
Perspective

What I'm thinking about

Writing and speaking on design leadership, AI strategy, and what it takes to build at the intersection of technology and human experience.

Taurean Jones on panel at BFUTR 2025
Featured Article

Your Moment to Lead: Design's Pivotal Role in the AI Revolution

A deep dive into why this moment mirrors the dot-com boom for designers — and why empathy, not prompting skills, is the real differentiator. On owning the full stack of experience, becoming AI power users, and safeguarding humanity in an algorithm-driven world.

Read the full article on LinkedIn AI + Design Leadership

Your Job Title Won't Save You

On adaptability, the blurring boundaries between roles, and why deep empathy — not prompting skills — is the real differentiator in the age of AI.

Read on LinkedIn Platform Governance

When AI Code Fails, Who's Responsible?

Vibe coding isn't going away. The real question isn't who gets to build — it's why platforms let broken things ship. On governance, guardrails, and customer trust.

Read on LinkedIn AI Workflow

From Conversation to Product in 2 Hours

A phone call with a domain expert, a transcript, and AI tools — no Figma, no code, no requirements doc from scratch. On how the barrier to entry has fundamentally shifted.

Read on LinkedIn Productivity + AI

The Most Expensive Decision I Make Every Day

How I use AI to scan my calendar, tasks, and email each morning — returning a prioritized list based on intention, not just urgency. On starting the day with clarity.

Read on LinkedIn
Get in Touch

Let's talk

Always open to connecting with fellow builders, leaders, and anyone passionate about design and technology.

Email Me LinkedIn