we're all about solving business problems creatively
An Innovation team that gets creative
We're rooted in the barrier-breaking and problem-solving world of agencies and startups. We partner with owners, stakeholders, strategists, creatives, and and the rest of the team hell bent on changing reality. We produce work that makes a difference. We design to shift people's perception, experiment to make products better, and help clients wring every last drop of value out of our time together. Our goal isn't to win awards, it's to win wins.
We power the user experience capabilities behind some of the best-known national agencies and boutique shops. Whether we're white labeled or brought on as a trusted partner, we help agencies punch above their weight class with our arsenal of design and research skills, decades of experience, and stakeholder-satisfying approach that can lead the way through any design challenge.
Startups looking to disrupt and forge a new path need design teams that think like they do. We connect business goals to audience impact. We take a holistic approach that moves people. Our designs shift brand perception, shape how people feel about your products, and feel empowered to embrace change. We realize that doing things differently needs to be a through-line from your strategy to your look, so we design custom experiences that go beyond business-as-usual templates and best practices. We consider every aspect of your business and your audiences, ensuring that design is as much a differentiator as you are.
Good user experiences aren't good enough. Our clients need to solve problems that templates and tired heuristics just can't. They need us to create change. They need work that shifts brand perception. Work that makes audiences smarter. Work that makes audiences feel something enough to take action. That's the impact we create. We've got the mindset and tools to go beyond designs that work to creating designs that make a difference.
Our core services are built upon experimentation. We experiment to validate good ideas and understand bad ones. We move quickly together without losing our way. The AUX Lab is ground zero for it all, conducting design strategy experiments to illuminate a path superior to others. The AUX Studio is where the rubber meets the digital road as we link research and design together. In the end, our experiments tell us what path to follow and how our creative designs beat best practices and ultimately deliver the best products.
Mission To Guide
Mission To Guide
What began in the realm of HCI and library science now has deeper affinities with how people live, connect, and aspire. Design isn’t just about solving problems; it’s about building entirely new ways of thinking. And that, ultimately, changes who we become when we call it a wrap.
Kevin Jeong
Founder
Our Values Get Compliments
We respect you for your expertise and humanity. We're adaptable by decisively pursuing or leaving great ideas when conditions change. We're creative by pushing the work to where it needs to be.
We focus on quality by elevating work beyond best practices. Our hospitality approach supports and guides the team effortlessly. We collaborate by working as a team with a goal.
“Thoughtful, engaged, and invested are some of the immediate words I would use to describe the Agency UX team”
"I don't know how but you did it again. You made magic when we gave you practically nothing."
"This is so cool. I want this. I want all of it!"
"You thought of everything. This is perfect."
"They made our part of the work so easy even a monkey could do it."
"I love the way you run things [workshops]. It's way better than the traditional way of doing it. I feel like everybody gets a voice."
Moving Forward Together
Kevin Jeong
With over 30 years of experience on innovation teams and companies breaking the status quo, Kevin guides the team design practice.
Pooja Dang
Pooja brings a deep expertise in behavioral science, coaching, and organizational leadership that keeps our work grounded.
Amie Bliman
Whether it’s a project or operational function, Amie’s 20+ years of experience keeps everything running smoothly and clients happy.
James Allen
James is concept-focused and practically applied. With 20+ years in the branding agency world, he creates dynamic and purposeful visual identity systems that live in the service of business needs.
Jana Hasselbarth
With a talent for blending aesthetics and functionality, Jana brings a user-centric approach to every project.
Becky Bochatey
A resourceful UX/UI designer with 20+ years of experience addressing customer and business needs unique to startups, creative agencies, and consumer services.
Nhi Hua
With an academic background in sociology and information science, Nhi is a veteran researcher savvy with bringing human insights to light.
Pallas Riedler
With 6+ years of research and expertise in the behavioral impact of technology, Pallas has a passion for making creative connections and exploring new ways to reimagine the world.
Beth Crittenden
In 2008, Beth was surprised by a career pivot from mind/body connection teacher to small business accounting. As a lifelong dancer, Beth woke up to the rhythm and beauty of numbers and the stories they tell.
Dan Fields
After attending advertising school and running digital production at an agency for years, Dan pivoted his career to helping agencies and companies grow by expanding their new business offerings and growing sales.
Scott TItcomb
A Bay Area native with a long career in technology, Scott helps connect clients seeking design innovation with our team.
A.I. Statement
We take our stewardship of the design process and data privacy seriously. In the years before AI tools were available, we used three criteria to determine if our toolkit should change. One, is this new tool going to add value to this project? Second, what are the risks? Third, are clients excited to use it? If anything fails our criteria, we don't use it.
Today, Artificial intelligence (AI) is a part of our toolkit. We see the value it brings as long as it's managed responsibly. We know the risks and operate to mitigate them. We also see that most clients are excited by how we can get value from it. However, we are aware that not every client is comfortable with AI. If clients have reservations about AI, then we don't use it on their projects and execute the work just as well, though a bit slower. We manage our design process and quality checks equally rigorously, regardless of whether AI is in the toolkit or not.
We apply AI where it makes sense. We are aware of the pitfalls with AI bias, hallucinations, synthetic training data, and copyright. We follow the best practice of “human in the loop” and have a system to manage, spot check, and verify AI output. We build confidence with results, not copy-pasting from cheerleading systems.
We apply AI tools as "assistants" for low-stakes tasks demanding a lot of repetitive review and analysis. This includes things like synthesizing workshop insights, pulling out early themes from research data, and quick summaries.
We do not use AI for creative tasks unless it's filling in the spaces we've already defined. While some AI tools are aimed at the "give me some thought starters" case, even seeding creative territories is dangerous as it often primes us to think too narrowly or in directions that don't pan out.
We still do the "mission critical" parts of every project the traditional way–with our brains.
Prompt: What does a typical iPhone user look like?
Gen AI Response: "Polished, modern, and style-conscious, reflecting the iPhone's premium and design-forward aesthetic."
Seriously? Okay, this question may be a bit of a trap, but the response is ridiculous. There is no typical iPhone user "look," and any researcher pressed to answer would caveat it to death, saying how useless the answer (and question) is. So, why bring this up? Because AI bias is real. It's real in the response, and it's real in how it responds so confidently. If you let AI do all the thinking, you may end up in a place that isn't real. Just like a world where every iPhone user wears black turtlenecks.
HITL is the practice of keeping people involved in all the critical parts of what AI is doing. While we use AI as an "assistant", it's critical to ensure AI is following our orders without going off the rails, providing insights without hallucinating, and coming to the right conclusions. As the industry adopts AI "agents", it is essential for us to not only check the quality of the work but how and why it is getting done.
Prompt: Is it a good idea to design a website for dogs with a bark-to-speech interface?
Gen AI Response: That's a great idea! Here are some ways you can design it...
While this is a silly example, it shows how AI is wonderfully optimistic, and its inherent bias to support even the worst idea can spiral into places that lead nowhere. Despite the fact that AI might tell us our idea is brilliant and creative and that we can certainly break into the animal-web market, using actual research keeps us grounded.
(No animals were harmed in the making of this example.)