Harrison Wheeler

Product design leader defining experiences and the teams behind them.

Hello from San Francisco 🇺🇸

What I'm about

Designer, builder, and community maker. Across a decade leading design at LinkedIn and Zendesk, I've turned quality into a business strategy — shipping experiences used by more than a billion people, growing designers into leaders, and following curiosity into products, writing, and a podcast of my own.

Select work

A few case studies in design leadership and the products I've built — the problems, the bets, and what shipped.

Case studies

Leadership

Building a Surface for Growth

A self-serve mandate became the business case for a new Campaign Manager surface.

Pods Over Silos: Restructuring to Build Faster

99+ quarterly requests and morale at a low — restructured into pods to ship the AI roadmap.

B2B Events: Reviving a Venture Bet Through Storytelling

A low-trust events bet, reframed as a B2B marketplace — and funded off a $100M+ pilot.

Base CRM → Zendesk

Base CRM: Building the Design Organization

One of four designers in Chicago to the only one who moved — building the org, system, and culture.

Projects

0 → 1 / iOS app

Dual Creator Cam — One Tap, Two Finished Videos

A vertical and a horizontal cut from a single take, no reshoot.

0 → 1 / Built product

How Holiday Got Built — A Process Case Study

A trip-planning platform for travel agents, built solo in a couple of months.

Podcast

Technically Speaking — candid conversations with designers, builders, and leaders on craft, careers, and the human side of building products and teams.

Listen now

Community

I speak at conferences around the world about facilitation, design leadership, building teams through change, and AI readiness. My talks draw from real stories — the messy, imperfect, human side of leading design organizations.

Smashing Conference in Freiburg, Germany

Talks

Figma Config 2022 — "The Design MC: Facilitating Safe and Inclusive Environments for Feedback"

Design Matters Tokyo 2025 — "How AI is Reshaping Design Leadership and Culture"

Events

SmashingConf New York 2022

SmashingConf Freiburg 2023

ConveyUX 2025

Writing

Leadership habits that work for ICs and managers

Green flags over red flags: navigating today's brutal job market

Issue 17: Transparency is a multiplier

Issue 16: From Tokyo — life update, lessons, and what's next

Press & Podcasts

Amplitude Product 50: The Most Innovative People in Product

The Object-Oriented UX — Introducing object-oriented thinking to LinkedIn

Awkward Silences — How Storytelling Can Make User Research More Impactful

Let's work together

I'm available for speaking engagements, leadership coaching, and advisory work with product and design teams.

Get in touch Connect on LinkedIn