Mark Hobbs — Principal Designer
mark@hobbs.design

Design Clarifies.
Good Design Connects.
Exceptional Design Resonates.

Design is more than just usability, it's also emotional. A product can be fast, clean, and frictionless, but still feel cold and distant. That's because connection doesn't come from efficiency; it comes from empathy.

I design for how something feels as much as how it functions. That might mean adding a moment of surprise, a sense of rhythm, or simply clarity that makes someone exhale in relief. The goal isn't just to be used—it's to be remembered.

Thoughtful & premium design built with quality, clarity, and care.

Design is rooted in empathy, especially in complex or high-stakes product environments. I love the living in the Venn diagram overlap area of user needs, human behavior, technical realities, and business priorities. I'm the most effective when translating messy constraints into elegant, scalable solutions. In short, I make things happen.

Define and refine

Delivering product experiences where my work directly impacts usability and trust.

Design Accessibility Focused

Accessibility standards are treated as a design accelerator; not an afterthought.

Translate constraints

Take deeply complex product, business, and technical constraints and iteratively make it happen.

Design and evolve

Build refined, elegant, usable, and scalable systems without sacrificing craft or cohesion.

Find your north star

Bring a refined focus and clarity to products that have grown complicated over time.

Let's talk about process.

No two projects are the same, and I don't believe you need to strictly adhere to any pre-defined process(es) to be effective. My process is purposefully flexible, though my principles are always consistent. Clarity, empathy, craft, and systemic thinking all the way from Zero to One. Uncover the real problem to find the truth, reduce the noise, and shape an experience that feels purposeful and personalized.

Start with the problem

I invest early in trying to understand what the real problem actually is before committing to solutions.

Design for Clarity

Clarity drives every decision. I prioritize structure, hierarchy, and meaning so products are easy to understand, use, and trust.

Fundamentals as leverage

Strong fundamentals in typography, spacing, color, and restraint create momentum and enable faster, more confident execution.

Let constraints guide decisions

Constraints provide focus. I use them to shape practical, accessible solutions that scale without unnecessary complexity.

Execute with purpose

From Zero to One, I design with intent by reducing noise, maintaining craft, and delivering work that feels durable and considered.

Work I've done.

A curated selection of product design work across enterprise platforms, SaaS products, and consumer experiences—each balancing craft, systems thinking, and real-world constraints.

Terafina, Inc.
White-Label SaaS Financial Onboarding that People Can Trust

Elevated onboarding flows and visual fundamentals to improve client adoption, reduce cognitive load, and deliver a premium, adaptable white-label product experience.

Increase Adoption

Create a customizable feature within the platform that helps drive sales & adoptions

Reduce Abandonment

Improve and optimize current flows in order to reduce applicant abandonment

Build Trust

Transform the Platform into a Premium User Experience Reinforced with Trust

McGraw Hill Education
Simplifying Content Discovery for Educators

Fundamentally improving how educators, administrators, and state educational decision makers find and access instructional materials to be more intuitive and transparent.

Secure State Review Revenue

Certain usability enhancements needed to be made in order to ensure state adoptions

Simplify Navigation

Content structure complexities made it very difficult for teachers to locate individual resources

Systematically Implemented

A very wide array of educational curriculum and content structures needed to be considered

Union Home Mortgage
A Scalable System for Internal Mortgage Lending Applications

Create a baseline foundation for engineers to quickly, and efficiently spin up custom applications for internal business partners.

Increase Productivity

Empower the in-house engineering team with presentation layer education to expand their skill sets to relieve roadblocks.

Standardize Common Elements

Create a scalable atomic foundation to build upon so that components can truly become reuseable.

Advocate Good Design

Maximize the opportunity to provide some reasoning behind "the why?" in many design decisions with a foundational review of UX best practices.

About me.

I'm a full-stack product designer by practice and a true generalist at heart. With nearly two decades of experience, I've worked across internal tools, B2B platforms, and consumer-facing products in industries ranging from media and publishing to highly regulated financial services. I'm driven by curiosity, continuous learning, and the humility to admit being wrong and drive to be better because of it.

In the before times

I spent several years in hospitality, learning to read people, anticipate needs, and create frictionless, emotional experiences—lessons I carry into every design decision.

A new beginning

At 25, I returned to school to pursue design, building a career centered on creativity, problem-solving, and impact. Like great hospitality, the best design feels effortless.

Design that connects. Experiences that feel human.

Present Day

Nearly two decades later, I've worked across product, UX/UI, web, and marketing—connecting concepts to execution and creating solutions that balance user needs with business goals.

The Details Matter

Good Design will always comes back to nuance, attention, and human behavior. Having command of these transforms ordinary and mundane interactions into experiences that feel natural, and more human.

Get in touch.

Let's Have an 8-bit coffee. Reach out and say hey, we can discuss design principles, fundamentals, why the details matter, and how we can bring humanity back to the practice of design.