How I shaped design & improved collaboration @Buildforce

Every new project sparked scope debates with speed taking priority over quality, leading to bandaids that didn't always solve actual user problems

Made accountability part of the culture, improved quality without slowing down, & helped the team grow by working better together

Role & Scope

Staff Product Designer

Brand

Code

Design Systems

Growth

Interaction Design

Management

Mobile App

Prototyping

Product Strategy

Research

Web App

Duration

1 year · 2023-24

Team

[I.A]

Outcome: Accountability & Trust

Our culture became more accountable, more candid, & more objective once we realized we all wanted the same thing.

I helped the team move from reactive shipping to a more intentional and accountable process by starting with honest, one-on-one conversations. From there, we introduced a more hypothesis-driven approach to shipping work, clearly defining the problem, the proposed change, and how we would measure impact. We also adopted Shape Up, which gave us space to shape ideas when problems were vague or complex, and build features that weren’t just “quick fixes”.

Strategic initiatives planned & led

Across growth, product, and brand

Pair design/prototyping hrs per initiative

Instead of siloed design time

0 → 1

Hypothesis-driven accountability

Inspired by strong inference

Worker time recording on Trades app in construction scene

“

Michael Orcutt

CTO

Buhr greatly impacted design, design processes, how product operated & evolved, & overall team dynamics. When he joined, things were a bit chaotic, & he brought balance & much-needed structure to our team. He did this all while elevating our design, brand, & overall experience of Buildforce.

Contractor onboarding flow with worker count selection

Worker time submission flow for Buildforce web app

[I.B]

Outcome: Speed & Quality

While the brand refresh helped us better communicate Buildforce’s mission, it also gave us a way to improve product quality while keeping up dev speed.

Refreshing Buildforce’s visual identity became the launchpad for a more collaborative and scalable design system, with better accessibility, clearer hierarchy, and consistent patterns. I led and produced a majority of the work (and even wrote code for the Contractor web app). Because everyone stayed in the loop and contributed, both engineers and designers felt real ownership over maintaining the design system. It made the team faster, and pulled collaboration much closer.

20+

Pull requests merged

0 → 1

Brand refresh & design system shipped

300+

Design system tokens & components created

“

Colin Harman

Staff Software Engineer

When encountering technical hurdles, Buhr is quick to collaborate. We often came up with creative design alterations, keeping engineering pace high. We loved having Buhr in the room because it meant our scoping, critiquing, or ideating would result in a higher quality feature in less time.

[I.C]

Outcome: Empowerment & Growth

Engineers felt empowered to move work through the design process, & a designer grew into her role with more confidence & clarity.

Through shared crit, stronger design system coverage, and clearer project context, engineers were able to ship thoughtful features without waiting on a designer. At the same time, I mentored our other designer through weekly pair sessions and regular feedback in and out of meetings. I got to know what she enjoyed, where she wanted to grow, and shaped her projects to reflect both. Over time, she brought more rigor to her process, communicated design decisions more clearly, and shipped work that felt noticeably stronger.

50+

Adhoc pair-design sessions

Across design & eng

Skills benchmarked, measured, & improved

Used Figma's levels framework

Average directional explorations per project

Up from 1, more rigor & practice

“

Melysia Cha

Product Designer

Buhr acts as a skilled mediator, fostering open communication & bridging gaps between teams with his genuine curiosity & collaborative spirit. He wasn't just my manager; he was a mentor who generously shared his knowledge & helped shape my professional journey.