About Me
HI! I'm Jeffrey Pohlmann, but I go by "JP". I've been developing web sites since the very begining in 1995. I love modern CSS and all the things it can do. At times, I even enjoy JavaScript. I also love dogs, electronic music, and 3D printing.
I'm pretty easy to talk to. Choose your favorite method:
Yourscientistsdevelopers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should
The whole point of UX is to make it easier for the user to accomplish their task, not the developer. If a user gets frustrated, they will leave.
Experience
Recruited to spearhead the development of a comprehensive design system across all public and internal software products and websites. Originally brought on as a contractor for a one-year term, I was fast-tracked to a full-time role within seven months and subsequently promoted to Team Lead. During my tenure, I pioneered the P-M methodology to streamline development workflows and resolve complex integration challenges with external frameworks.
I was brought in to lead the creation of a design system used across all our internal tools and public-facing products. What started as a one-year contract turned into a full-time role within seven months, and I was later promoted to Team Lead. While I was there, I also introduced the P-M methodology, which helped simplify our development process and made it easier to deal with tricky integrations with outside frameworks.
Accomplishments
- Created internal websites for marketing and promotions.
- Worked closely with design teams to bridge the gap between design and development.
- Managed a small engineering team to build the STUDS design system from scratch.
- Maintained Telerik themes to align with STUDS designs.
- Partnered with designers to help figure out what was technically possible, while also exploring new CSS and browser capabilities to push things forward.
- Acted as the go-between for design and engineering, helping keep communication clear and projects moving smoothly.
- Coordinated work between teams in the US and Vietnam to keep projects aligned.
- Worked with design system architects to create accessible, scalable interactions.
- Developed the P-M methodology and style guide.
- Spearheaded the development of high-impact internal web platforms to drive marketing and promotional excellence.
- Partnered cross-functionally with design teams, bridging the gap between creative vision and technical execution by evangelizing the latest browser capabilities and cutting-edge technologies.
- Led a high-performing engineering squad, architecting the STUDS design system from the ground up and scaling its component library.
- Championed design consistency by meticulously maintaining Telerik themes to mirror STUDS brand standards.
- Acted as a strategic consultant for designers, providing expert technical feasibility assessments while pushing the boundaries of modern CSS and browser features to foster innovation.
- Served as the primary liaison between engineering and design, streamlining communication and workflow efficiency.
- Orchestrated global collaboration across US and Vietnam-based teams to ensure seamless project alignment and delivery.
- Collaborated with design system architects to build accessible, future-proof interactions that balanced technical feasibility with aggressive delivery timelines.
- Authored and implemented the P-M methodology and comprehensive style guides to standardize excellence.
Brought on as a short-term contractor to help with user experience and interaction issues introduced by a recent website upgrade. Worked with marketing and developers to change the website from a strict breakpoint structure to a componentized and responsive system which created a more fluid experience and a cleaner layout. Also, created new designs for legacy pages to better fit the design and direction of the new website.
Hired as a strategic UX/UI Consultant to spearhead the resolution of complex interaction challenges following a major platform overhaul. Collaborated cross-functionally with Engineering and Marketing teams to transition the site architecture from rigid breakpoints to a scalable, component-driven design system. This initiative optimized responsiveness and delivered a seamless, fluid user experience across all viewports. Furthermore, I led the visual redesign of legacy assets to ensure brand consistency and alignment with the company’s new digital direction.
Accomplishments
- Worked closely with marketing to make sure pages stay on-message and on-brand.
- Worked with front-end developers to make sure they understand requirements.
- Created prototypes as needed to demonstrate animations and interactions. Prototypes were created in HTML, Javascript, and CSS, making handoff to development faster and smoother.
- Collaborated cross-functionally with marketing stakeholders to ensure brand consistency and strategic messaging across all digital touchpoints.
- Partnered with front-end engineering teams to bridge the gap between design and implementation, ensuring full alignment on technical requirements.
- Developed high-fidelity interactive prototypes using HTML, JavaScript, and CSS (Sass) to define motion design and user interactions, streamlining the handoff process for seamless integration into production environments.
Worked as a UI/UX and Interaction Designer, contributing to a wide range of projects. THis included improving legacy systems as well as helping launch brand-new products from scratch. Used data from user testing to improve the designs and solve customer pain points. Partnered closely with Marketing, Engineering, and other stakeholders to deliver thoughtful, user-focused design solutions.
Served as UI/UX and Interaction Designer, driving design excellence across a diverse portfolio ranging from legacy systems to zero-to-one product launches. Leveraged data-driven insights and oversaw comprehensive user testing to identify strategic optimization opportunities and resolve critical customer pain points. Collaborated cross-functionally with Marketing, Engineering, and key stakeholders to architect and deliver high-impact, user-centric design solutions.
Accomplishments
Owned the full workflow, design, animations, and interactions for the user-facing control software on Illumina’s iSeq 100 gene sequencer.
- Helped connect the dots between backend, frontend, and hardware teams, while working closely with marketing and using their user testing insights to improve the overall experience.
- Built functional prototypes that helped find pain-points early in the development process.
- Led ongoing improvements to the DesignStudio assay designer app, simplifying the selection process and updating the UI to match Illumina’s design standards.
- Played a key role in updating Illumina’s UI Library, including leading the move from Bootstrap 3 to Bootstrap 4 and creating clear documentation to help designers navigate the changes.
Spearheaded the end-to-end workflow, design, animations, and interactions for the user-facing control software on Illumina’s iSeq 100 gene sequencer.
- Drove design iteration by bridging the gap between backend, frontend, and hardware engineering teams, while collaborating closely with marketing and leveraging user testing insights to deliver a seamless experience.
- eveloped high-fidelity functional mocks that identified critical pain points early in the SDLC, saving significant development time and resources.
- Led the iterative evolution of the DesignStudio assay designer application. Successfully introduced a streamlined selection workflow and modernized the UI to align with Illumina’s global design standards.
- Championed the overhaul of Illumina’s UI Library—the go-to reference for all internal and external web applications. Managed the complex migration from Bootstrap 3 to Bootstrap 4 and authored comprehensive documentation to guide fellow designers through breaking changes and best practices.
Led UI/UX design and development for Business.com, working with a stack that included PHP, HTML5, CSS, Sass, JavaScript, and jQuery. Acted as a go-to resource for cross-platform projects, offering practical guidance and helping shape new design directions. Owned the full process for new sections of the site—from early wireframes through to production. Worked closely with backend teams to improve existing features with modern styles, animations, and interactions, while staying on top of new tools and approaches to keep the experience fresh and up to date.
Spearheaded UI/UX design and development for business.com, leveraging a robust tech stack including PHP, HTML5, CSS, Sass, JavaScript, and jQuery. Acted as a strategic consultant, delivering expert insights and practical solutions for cross-platform projects and innovative design directions. Owned the full lifecycle of new website sections—from initial wireframing to production-ready deployment. Drove the evolution of existing platforms by collaborating with backend teams to implement cutting-edge styles, animations, and user interactions. Constantly researching emerging methodologies and technologies to modernize legacy systems and optimize the user experience.
Accomplishments
- Served as driving force leading Business.com to create a more modern, usable website.
- Played a key role creating site’s user experience.
- Converted legacy Business.com website from using the Blueprint CSS framework to a custom, php-driven solution. The increased organization and customization options of the new system helped both backend and frontend developers be more efficient, reduced the number of support files needed, and helped reduce production server overload. All leading to a better user experience.
- Devised and implemented solution that accelerated load time for web pages.
- Built a scalable CSS/JS system from scratch, cutting out unnecessary third-party dependencies and creating a faster, more maintainable codebase.
- Decreased website render times on mobile and desktop devices.
- Created a flexible template system that let Marketing make updates on their own, while giving Engineering more time to focus on bigger initiatives.
- Driving force behind Business.com’s digital transformation, spearheading the launch of a modern, high-performance website that scaled reach across multiple platforms.
- Orchestrated a complete UX overhaul, pivotally transitioning the business from an arbitrage model to a high-value, content-centric lead generation powerhouse.
- ngineered a seamless migration from legacy Blueprint CSS to a bespoke, PHP-driven architecture. This strategic move empowered dev teams, slashed technical debt, and optimized server performance—delivering a world-class user experience.
- Performance-obsessed: Architected solutions that drastically accelerated page load speeds and streamlined site-wide navigation systems.
- Built a scalable CSS/JS ecosystem from the ground up, eliminating reliance on third-party bloat. Result: Faster load times, reduced HTTP requests, and a consistent, maintainable codebase that saved hundreds of development hours.
- Future-proofed the platform by implementing HTML5 Picture elements, ensuring lightning-fast render times and crisp, high-res visuals across all mobile and desktop devices.
- Empowered cross-functional teams by building a flexible template system, allowing Marketing to execute design pivots independently while freeing up Engineering to focus on high-impact innovation.
- CSUPERB [2009 - 2010]
- Web Developer
- San Diego State University — Field Stations Program[2005 - 2010]
- Web Developer
- JP Arts [2002 - 2005]
- Graphic Designer | Web Developer
- Promotional Broadcasting Network, Inc. [2000 - 2002]
- Art Director | Lead Programmer
Achievements
- Awarded 3 U.S. Patents for Interaction Design 1 2 3
- Adept at both creating new applications and updating existing ones.
- Liaison between marketing, designers, and developers, guiding large bi-costal and multi-country teams in the US, Vietnam, and Brazil.
- Focus on User Experience and Interaction Design.
- Prototyping complex applications in HTML, CSS and vanilla JS to quickly visualize interactions, usability, and flow
- Excellent at breaking down large tasks into smaller, manageable elements. This includes everything from smaller atomic components to larger organisms and even templates for layout.
- Experience working with user research and focus groups to guide the development and design process, ultimately resolving user pain points.
- Created new CSS methodology to make code lighter, more flexible and robust.
- Helped in the creation of the STUDS design system, working with designers to help them understand technical possibilities and limitations of modern browsers
Projects
Strongtie.io
Internal website for education, marketing, and visibility of upcoming products and policy shifts.
The website was created by a UX designer in our department, and then I took over the coding. I collaborated with the designer throughout the design and coding stages, offering ideas for how users could interact with the site and what animations would be best.
Due to NDA, I have "sanitized" most of the text.
view project…STUDS
STUDS (Strong-Tie Unified Design System) was a long-term project aimed at consolidating and unifying all the diverse software applications and websites at Simpson Strong-Tie.
P-M Methodology
One constant will always remain true: designs change. Whether it's the whims of fashion, the needs of users, or the desire for design to just be "new", change is constant.
The P-M methodology understands this, and is based around naming components and elements based on their function and purpose, instead of how they look.
documentation and github link coming soon
PuppySpot templating
I created a template system for PuppySpot that helped to drastically speed up web page design, development, and deployment.
The system I created uses a series of section templates that can be stitched together in arbitrary order to create a new page. Not only did this greatly decrease the time to design or update pages, but development time was also drastically reduced from a couple days down to about an hour.
This is from 2020, so some of the code and techniques are a bit… dated.
Interface for the iSeq 100 gene sequencer
The project was to make an interface that was more colorful and less clinical for the Illumina iSeq 100 gene sequencer. The instrument was originally intended for a less scientific audience. Whereas the usual audience for these instruments are large universities and labs, this instrument was going to be marketed towards doctors, veterinarians, and other smaller, non-research oriented places.
Creating a streamlined and simple-to-follow interface for genetic testing was the primary task.
Code examples
Take a look at my github and my CodePen for code examples.
Did you know? This website is also available as a public repo on github.