ryan spohn

Résumé

Overview

Product designer and UX design manager with 20+ years building products and teams at Google, Salesforce, and startups. I design, and I build: I prototype in code and ship alongside my team. Co-created the Lightning Design System at Salesforce. 100+ shipped launches. Three acquisitions. One company co-founded. Currently leading design strategy for Google Drive's AI transformation, defining interaction models for capabilities that don't have established conventions yet.

Work Experience

Google · Boulder, CO10/2021 — Present

Design Manager, Google Drive

Design strategy lead for Drive’s AI investments, defining AI-native interaction models for a billion-user platform.

  • Authored the foundational UX brief for AI Mode that framed the vision and guiding principles. Took the MVP from pitch to internal testing in under two months, securing SVP-level buy-in for a unified, conversational analysis experience that connects finding to understanding.
  • Led UX strategy and hands-on design across Drives AI transformation: AI Mode, AI Overviews, PDF and video summaries, and early-stage agentic capabilities. Ran cross-functional design sprints shaping the 20242026 AI roadmaps.
  • Drove a 17% increase in AI 28-day MAU through Homepage Inline Summaries. Directed Help Me Organize to Alpha with a 96% user helpfulness rating. Shipped Mobile Homepage redesign (40% hit rate increase, 2.5x engagement), file selection improvements (~80% CTR, 3x time reduction), Mobile Scanner improvements (20% scan increase, Pixel 8 feature), and the Drive video player serving 8M views/day.
  • Assumed Director-level responsibilities in 2024, scaling from 6 to 14 direct reports across 6 product areas. Oversaw 26 GA launches in 2023 and 85+ in 2024. Teams accessibility remediation helped win back a $17M enterprise contract renewal.
  • Built functional prototypes in code to validate direction before committing engineering resources, including a Chrome extension emulating AI Mode pre-launch and responsive Gemini-in-Workspace typography behavior. Maintained 100+ design critique reviews annually. Team owns the Drive Figma component library used by 100+ teams across Google.
  • Supported 3 direct report promotions in 2024 and 5 additional promotions since 2018. Manager survey scores consistently among the highest at Google. Currently implementing a team-wide AI literacy program covering LLM fundamentals, non-deterministic design, agentic patterns, and eval integration.
Google · Boulder, CO08/2019 — 10/2021

Staff Designer, Google Drive

Information Governance UX lead for Drive’s highest-priority enterprise initiatives.

  • Co-founded and co-authored the charter for the Drive Advisory Board, a quarterly forum with enterprise customers and regional technology leaders that directly informed product investment and roadmap decisions.
  • Led UX for Drive Labels, an enterprise classification system spanning Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides, from Beta through GA. Delivered specs, full-fidelity prototypes, and UX approvals that unblocked a 9-figure multi-year enterprise contract.
  • Labels grew to thousands of customers, classifying millions of items in year one, with DLP integration scanning billions of items. Featured in Google Cloud Next keynote. Co-presented work to Forrester analysts.
  • Led InfoGov design strategy across Client-Side Encryption, Labels, Counter-abuse, and Data Loss Prevention (6+ designers).
Google · Boulder, CO07/2016 — 08/2019

Lead Designer & Manager, Google Drive

Led an 8-person UX team while maintaining hands-on IC design leadership.

  • Authored UX strategy for Drives overlapping desktop sync products (Backup & Sync and Drive File Stream, 30M+ users) that drove a clearer near-term distinction between them and argued for their eventual convergence on a single file-streaming approach, validated years later when the products merged into Drive for Desktop.
  • Stepped in as interim PM for Backup & Sync when the PM departed pre-launch, managing cross-product-area negotiations and resolving 97 technical and UX issues to ship on time.
  • Established team critique culture, design review processes, and quality standards that became the operational foundation for Drive UX. Hands-on design system contributions included tokenization of the Drive typography system.
Salesforce · San Francisco, CA10/2013 — 07/2016

Principal Product Designer

Led Salesforce1 mobile design across iOS, Android, Windows, and web (1M+ MAU). Co-created the Lightning Design System, now adopted across Salesforce’s product portfolio.

  • Built Salesforces first dedicated mobile UX team (35 reports) and defined the cross-product roadmap, closing functionality gaps between desktop and mobile.
  • Co-created the Lightning Design System and led its extension from mobile into the desktop platform, working across every first-party product team (Sales, Service, Platform, Community, Data Cloud, etc.).
  • Initiated and led the design track of Adapt (20+ designers), the largest coordinated UX effort in Salesforces history at that time: a pattern-by-pattern modernization of the legacy UI into the Lightning Experience.
  • Presented UX strategy directly to CEO Marc Benioff on three occasions. Provided daily design updates to co-founder Parker Harris and orchestrated the Product Experience section of monthly executive sprint reviews.
  • Co-presented “Salesforce1: Developing at Enterprise Scale” at JSConf US 2014.
Salesforce · San Francisco, CA10/2011 — 09/2013

Lead Product Designer

Designed and launched Salesforce1 mobile and co-created one of the first code-based design systems.

  • Defined the global record layout primitives and IA structure for Salesforce1 mobile, used across 40+ scrum teams. Participated in daily standups with co-founder Parker Harris from the initial war room through launch. Work resulted in two US design patents: USD743999S1, USD744000S1.
  • Co-created the Salesforce1 Living Style Guide, a code-based design system built before the practice was standardized across the industry. Precursor to the Lightning Design System.
  • Took over leadership of the design systems UX team (~7 reports) after being nominated by the departing team lead. First management role.

Earlier Roles

Startups2003 — 2011

Eight years across five startups, three acquisitions

The era that taught me to do whatever it takes — design, code, write, win, lose, and ship products.

Lead UX Designer

SafetyWeb

Denver, CO08/2010 — 10/2011

Acquired by Experian

Led design for cloud-based online safety platform across web and mobile apps (iOS & Android). Directed the work of a junior designer. Managed a contractor.

UX Designer

FamilyLink

Provo, UT04/2009 — 08/2010

Designed web, iPhone, and Facebook apps for a family social platform with 80M+ users and 20M MAU.

UX Designer

HiveLive

Boulder, CO09/2007 — 04/2009

Acquired by RightNow Technologies

Sole UX designer on enterprise social software platform. Embedded with engineering. Learned agile development methodology.

Co-founder

ProtectMyPhotos

Boulder, CO01/2005 — 08/2007

Co-founded an automated photo backup service. Sole designer and front-end developer. Secured deals with ArcSoft and Best Buy.

Design & Front-end Generalist

Pearl Street Software

Boulder, CO04/2003 — 08/2007

Acquired by MyHeritage

First professional design role. Graphic, packaging, web, and Windows native app UX design, plus front-end development, technical documentation writer, customer support, and administrative assistant for family history software.

View my work