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Kansas City, KS, USA

Tyler L.

Transformative Product Design Leader: Building Scalable Solutions for Startups and SaaS

With over 15 years of experience at the nexus of UX, product strategy, and positive business outcomes, Tyler Lagaly excels in simplifying complexity and enhancing usability across diverse industries, including B2B and B2C SaaS, fintech, and AI. Specializing in designing for technical audiences, Tyler shapes intuitive experiences that perfectly align user needs with business goals. At the helm of Focal Plane, a UX consulting practice, he delivers actionable insights for startups, optimizing their product design and strategic UX decisions. Whether spearheading initiatives at companies like Zapier and Indeed or guiding early-stage startups, Tyler's pragmatic approach to product design fosters innovation and market success. Passionate about bridging vision with execution, he is the go-to partner for founders and design leaders seeking transformative product design and scalable solutions.

www.tylerlagaly.com

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Tyler L.

Testimonials

Tyler is an outstanding product and interface designer, a great communicator, and a friendly, warm person to interface with. He excels at holistic design, understanding the user, and creating an experience that delivers the business goals while delighting the user. I highly recommend Tyler for all sorts of design projects, both as a leader and as an IC.
JR
Jacob ReiffCo-founder, CEO, Outcome
Tyler joined Hifive at our Head of Design-He set up a design process with user research and rapid prototyping, validating our product direction. His Chrome extension and web app work boosted metrics, and his flexible design system kept us agile. He managed our rebrand and marketing site while owning product design. Loved his straight talk and practical vibe—offered solutions, mentored our junior designer, and synced with engineering. Tyler gets business and users, delivering clean results
PR
Pete RyanCo-founder, Hifive

Work

Outcome - Reimagining Goal-Setting

getoutcome.io
Outcome - Reimagining Goal-Setting

As the lead product designer for Outcome, I'm proud of the hypothesis-driven goal-setting platform we've created to transform how teams track progress and articulate reasoning. Outcome moves beyond rigid OKR structures to reflect how teams actually think and work.

Working with our cross-functional team of product managers and engineers over four months, I helped shape this AI-powered solution from concept to implementation, creating an experience that resonates with how teams naturally operate.

Our design focuses on:

  • Enabling teams to document their thinking through a hypothesis framework rather than arbitrary metrics
  • Leveraging AI to simplify updates and integrate relevant documents automatically
  • Creating flexible workflows that adapt to team language instead of forcing rigid terminology
  • Providing richer context around goals for improved stakeholder communication
  • Reducing documentation burden while increasing meaningful engagement

Our user testing validated our approach with remarkable results: 91% of users preferred our solution over traditional OKR platforms, with 83% expressing willingness to switch from existing tools. Users reported a 78% improvement in clarity for team alignment and stakeholder communication.

The platform represents a fundamental shift in goal-setting, moving away from rigid documentation toward a system that captures how teams actually think and work—ultimately helping organizations track meaningful progress while learning from their experiments in a natural, engaging way.

Zapier Canvas - Visual Workflow Builder

zapier.com
Zapier Canvas - Visual Workflow Builder

As the lead product designer for Zapier Canvas, I'm excited about the innovative visual automation experience we've created for users across all technical skill levels. Zapier Canvas (https://zapier.com/blog/announcing-zapier-canvas/) represents a significant evolution in how people design and understand their workflow automations.

Working closely with our product and engineering teams, I helped transform this concept from wireframes to reality, creating an intuitive drag-and-drop interface that makes automation building more accessible and powerful.

Our design focuses on:

  • Providing a visual canvas where users can see and manipulate their entire workflow
  • Enabling complex conditional logic through an intuitive branching system
  • Offering real-time workflow testing and debugging
  • Simplifying the connection between different apps and services
  • Making automation design collaborative with team sharing capabilities

The initial launch has generated tremendous excitement, with thousands of users creating workflows that would have been challenging to build in a traditional linear interface. This strong market validation confirms we're addressing key friction points in the automation ecosystem.

Our user-centered approach has created a system that accommodates both beginners who need simplicity and power users who demand flexibility, ultimately making sophisticated workflow automation accessible to everyone regardless of their technical background.

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Indeed Central - Franchise Hiring Solutions

indeed.com
Indeed Central - Franchise Hiring Solutions

As the lead product designer for Indeed Central, I'm proud of the innovative solution we've created for franchise businesses. Indeed Central (https://www.indeed.com/employers/indeed-central) addresses the unique challenges franchises face in maintaining hiring consistency and workforce visibility across multiple locations.

Working within Indeed's incubator, I helped transform this concept from idea to reality, creating a platform that gives franchise headquarters unprecedented oversight into their franchise owners' hiring practices and retention metrics.

Our design focuses on:

  • Standardizing hiring processes across all franchise locations
  • Providing headquarters with real-time visibility into location-specific hiring metrics
  • Enabling performance comparisons between franchise owners
  • Surfacing retention insights to identify successful practices
  • Centralizing recruitment resources while allowing for location-specific customization

The first year exceeded our expectations, with over 200 franchise activations and $1.2M in funding secured for continued development. This strong market validation confirms we're addressing a critical need in the franchise ecosystem.

Our user-centered approach has created a system that balances franchise owner autonomy with the headquarters' need for consistency and visibility, ultimately strengthening the entire franchise network through improved hiring outcomes.

Fiserv - Online Community Banking

fiserv.com
Fiserv - Online Community Banking

As the lead product designer for Fiserv's community bank mobile application, I spearheaded the comprehensive redesign of legacy systems to create a modern, intuitive experience for community bank customers.

Working closely with our cross-functional team, I helped transform outdated banking infrastructure into a responsive mobile-first web application that brings enterprise-level functionality to local financial institutions.

Our design focuses on:

  • Reimagining legacy systems with a clean, intuitive interface optimized for mobile devices
  • Introducing powerful new features like automatic bill pay with smart scheduling capabilities
  • Creating a seamless peer-to-peer wire transfer experience with enhanced security protocols
  • Ensuring fully responsive design that adapts perfectly across all device types
  • Simplifying complex banking workflows while maintaining comprehensive functionality

The redesigned platform has significantly improved user engagement metrics while allowing community banks to compete with larger financial institutions through a modern digital experience.

Our user-centered approach created a system that balances powerful banking functionality with accessibility for customers of all technical abilities, ultimately strengthening the relationship between community banks and their account holders through improved digital touchpoints.

Experience

Dec 2024 — Present
Focal Plane

Focal Plane

Partner

Focal Plane positions itself as a fractional leadership firm merging product and design expertise to empower seed to Series B SaaS companies, aiming for superior product development with cost-efficient strategies.

  • Led comprehensive redesigns for early-stage startups, establishing scalable design systems to support their growth.
  • Conducted in-depth user research sessions to uncover insights, informing product strategy and market fit enhancements.
  • Developed strategic product roadmaps aligning business objectives with user needs, ensuring coherent and targeted product development.
  • Implemented streamlined design processes that notably reduced time-to-market while upholding quality standards.
Jun 2024 — Present
Outcome

Outcome

Chief Design Officer

Outcome builds the modern OKR platform, emphasizing accountability at scale to drive outcomes.

  • Spearheaded the reimagining of the OKR platform, leading from discovery through to strategic design implementation, enhancing user experience and engagement.
  • Incorporated AI and language model technologies to create an intelligent OKR assistant, enabling actionable insights and automating routine task management.
  • Developed and applied prompt engineering frameworks to deliver contextually relevant AI guidance, improving the decision-making process for users.
  • Designed and established a user-informed design system, simplifying complex goal-tracking processes and making them more intuitive and actionable.
Aug 2022 — Jun 2024
Hifive

Hifive

Lead Product Designer

At Hifive, users can access over 500 influential connectors to unlock direct introductions to their targets, transforming the way startups and professionals network across industries.

  • Designed and developed a Chrome extension that increased successful warm introductions by 42% for early users
  • Spearheaded complete company rebrand, creating a cohesive visual identity that resonated with the startup ecosystem
  • Built and maintained a comprehensive design system that accelerated development cycles and ensured consistency
  • Conducted user interviews with 50+ startup founders to identify networking pain points and validate solutions
Nov 2021 — Jun 2022
Harmonic Labs

Harmonic Labs

Senior Product Designer

Harmonic is the complete startup database, utilized by leading investors and GTM teams to discover the best startups and founders.

  • Spearheaded the branding and UX design of a networking web app in the Web3 space, fostering a collaborative environment for users.
  • Implemented structured feedback processes and guidance for junior designers, enhancing the overall team skill set and productivity.
  • Collaborated closely with engineering and product teams to ensure high-fidelity implementation of designs, significantly improving user engagement.
  • Created design guidelines and component library that streamlined development workflow and maintained brand consistency across projects.
Nov 2019 — Nov 2021
Zapier

Zapier

Senior Product Designer

Zapier empowers you to automate your work across 5,000+ apps—so you can move forward, faster.

  • Led discovery and design initiatives for Teams & Companies features, enhancing collaboration for multi-user accounts.
  • Designed and launched Zapier's 'Draft and Publishing' system, significantly improving Zap uptime and reducing user anxiety around workflow stability.
  • Spearheaded comprehensive research effort identifying core editor pain points, directly informing product roadmap priorities.
  • Created Zapier's Canvas Builder, a visual interface for building, documenting, and sharing automated workflows that increased user comprehension by 47%.
Jan 2018 — Nov 2019
Indeed.com

Indeed.com

User Experience Designer

Indeed.com is a global job search engine that helps millions of job seekers find employment opportunities and assists employers in finding the right candidates.

  • Created a review collection system garnering over 300,000 employee reviews, enhancing talent branding and ratings by 24%.
  • Led the design of franchise hiring solutions contributing to the acquisition of Indeed Central, ensuring brand consistency throughout the product.
  • Collaborated closely with cross-functional teams to validate new product ideas rapidly, focusing on improving the employer-candidate matching quality.
  • Conducted extensive user research, including interviews and usability tests, to inform and validate product design decisions.
Nov 2013 — Aug 2014
ShipCompliant by Sovos

ShipCompliant by Sovos

UX/UI Designer

Sovos ShipCompliant provides a full suite of web-based software tools to ensure compliance with all federal and state laws for direct and wholesale distribution of wine, beer, and spirits.

  • - Reduced user error rates and improved task completion times by simplifying complex regulatory compliance workflows for the beverage alcohol industry.
  • - Collaborated with subject matter experts to translate complex compliance requirements into intuitive user interfaces, enhancing user experience.
  • - Led the redesign of key reporting interfaces, significantly aiding alcohol producers in maintaining regulatory compliance across state lines.
  • - Contributed to the development of consistent UI patterns, improving learnability and usability across multiple product lines.