Mike MacDonald

Product designer engineering clarity.

Principal product designer, design engineer and 4-time founding designer. Two decades taking products from 0-to-1. Currently building Herding Cats, an AI-native startup live on web, iOS and Android. Previously designed the agentic surfaces at Contio AI.

Herding Cats Live on iOS and Android · demo data
Travel day

Your travel day, all in one place.

Flight, hotel, roommate, confirmation number: one screen. Tap “I’ve landed” and your event manager knows.

TravelLoad-inShowHome
JudgeEvent managerStage manager

Selected work

Herding Cats

An agentic operating system for touring dance competitions: staffing, travel, hotels, merch and finance in one place. Founded and solo-built, live on web, iOS and Android.

3 apps
web, iOS & Android
6
unique add-on modules
1,100+
staff profiles and counting
17 hours
average bug fix turnaround time
Herding Cats web app: an AI staffing plan for a two-city weekend, with a suggested person, flight and fare for each position
Herding Cats on iPhone: a judge’s travel day

Agent surfaces for Contio

An AI-native platform that makes meetings more meaningful, before, during and after the call with no bots in the room.

70+
production PRs shipped
+20%
engineering output
4 apps
web, desktop, iOS, Android
10,000+
AI-captured meetings
Contio desktop app: week view with the agent chat open
Contio on iPhone capturing a meeting

Sell your house for cash in 72 hours

A novel online-only real estate platform. Sell your home as-is for cash. Zero to launch on web and iOS.

Kribbz web app: a property page with the current high bid

Gut health app patients actually use

A brand refresh, a web and iOS app redesign, and a pitch deck that led to a six-figure investment from Nestlé.

MyGiHealth: the pitch deck cover, the iPhone app and the marketing site

Experience

  1. Apr 2026 – Present

    Herding Cats

    Founder

    Founded and solo-built an agentic operating system for touring dance competitions using frontier AI tooling. Live on web, iOS and Android, with active design partners.

  2. Mar 2025 – Nov 2026

    Contio

    Principal Product Designer

    Founding and sole designer for an AI platform that built institutional knowledge from meetings. Designed every agent surface, moved the team from Figma handoffs to designing in code, shipped 70+ PRs.

  3. Jan 2024 – Mar 2025

    Markmonitor

    Senior UI/UX Designer

    Ground-up redesign of an enterprise domain-management and brand-protection platform used by 70% of the world’s 50 most-trafficked websites.

  4. Feb 2022 – Mar 2023

    Ventive

    Product Designer & Product Owner

    Owned discovery and roadmaps for client web and mobile products; $1.3M in concurrent annual budgets.

  5. 2019

    Kribbz

    Director of User Experience

    Founding designer; led design, front-end engineering and launch of an online real estate platform.

  6. 2018 – 2019

    gap intelligence

    Head of UX & Design

    gap’s first designer; a web app overhaul saved analysts about 500 hours a year; surveyed enterprise customers including Apple and Samsung.

  7. 2017 – 2018

    MD Revolution

    UX Manager

    Led a large-scale user research campaign; designed the first version of the RevUp iOS app.

  8. 2015 – 2017

    MyTotalHealth

    Product Designer

    Brand revamp, web and iOS app redesign; a 35-point NPS lift and a six-figure Nestlé investment.

  9. 2013 – 2015

    App’d Mobile

    Lead UX Designer & UX Coach

    Sole UX designer and mentor for 24 program participants’ iOS and Android apps.

  10. 2002 – Present

    EmpireNine

    Founder

    Design and development studio: web, UX/UI, CRO, SEO and branding for dozens of clients.

Herding CatsContioMarkmonitorNTSStrike TaxKribbzgap intelligenceMD RevolutionGiHealth90 Day App ChallengeSemaACTIVE NetworkEasyAskGateway PartnersCramer Group

Expertise

0→1, as the founding designer

Four founding-designer runs and one bootstrapped company. Comfortable being the whole design org from the first commit to the app store.

AI-native and agent UX

Multi-turn agents, human-in-the-loop review, generative UI and probabilistic systems, woven into the product instead of bolted on.

Design engineering

I design in code: React, TypeScript, Storybook. 70+ production PRs at Contio; every view at Herding Cats.

Mobile and B2B SaaS

Native iOS and Android, enterprise portals, and the design systems that keep them consistent as they grow.

Off the clock

Wildfire smoke at sunset over a reservoir Lightning over San Diego Temple A couple expecting a baby, face to face under an oak with the sun low behind them A red-haired woman smiling over her shoulder on a sunlit city street A marquee-light letter J glowing in blue and pink smoke Surfer Navy flyover Rattlesnake A couple forehead to forehead, rim-lit by the sun in front of an arcaded building An open-water swimmer mid-stroke, seen from the water line with the sun low behind An insect perched on a flower bud, macro Solana Beach triathlon An iridescent green fly on wood, Costa Rica, macro
Mike MacDonald with a camera, an atom tattoo on his forearm

So, who’s Mike?

I’ve been building web and mobile products for twenty-plus years, usually as the first or only designer in the room. Four founding-designer runs taught me to care about the business as much as the pixels. Shipping 70+ PRs at Contio and a whole company at Herding Cats taught me that the fastest route to a good design is a working one. I’m based in Meridian, Idaho, and I’m open to principal product design roles at startups and AI companies.

Get in touch.

mike@mike.fyi LinkedIn Resume