Ashley Phillips

I came to design from the other side of the screen. Sixteen years in operations, e‑commerce, and publishing.

It taught me to start with questions. It taught me to start with questions.

Most of what I know started with watching people use tools that were meant to make their work faster and clearer. That taught me to research first, share early, and design alongside the users, builders, and stakeholders who each see a different part of the problem. The best products I have worked on came from asking questions, gathering perspectives, and separating what is expected from what actually serves the person using it.

  • UX Research
  • Product Design
  • Design Systems
  • Accessibility
  • Usability Testing
  • Traditional Workflows
  • CLI Native Workflows
  • Service Strategy

Case studies ↓

Pony Trading Post branded packaging and glassware

Heritage-Driven Brand

A resale shop with a loyal following and a mark that had not caught up to it. I redrew the logomark in Illustrator from the owner’s sketch, then built the system around it.

  • Brand identity
  • Luxury resale
  • Built on an 8-point grid
Prismatic champion selection screen

Prismatic Design System

The spec asked for one character select screen. I built the system that produces all of them. The first archetype took most of the time; the four after it took under ten minutes combined.

  • Design system
  • Game UI
  • Fifteen-hour build
ROV telemetry navigation interface

Pilot-First Telemetry

The generated screen looked like an ROV cockpit but could not be flown. I found four failures, each one costing a pilot time in a darkened cabin, and rebuilt it into an interface I would hand to the person flying the vehicle.

  • ROV interface
  • Technical user
  • Eight-hour audit
Essence beekeeping app interface

Artisanal Design System

Essence started as a randomized AI prompt for an urban beekeeping app. Three failures drove the redesign: fragmented navigation, contrast that failed accessibility, and a tone pitched at the wrong audience.

  • Honeycomb design system
  • Urban beekeepers
  • Four-hour sprint

AI Native Design

A working credit monitoring prototype built entirely through Claude Code’s terminal. No canvas and no Figma file, so the design system had to live in writing. Every session scoped to one area, every token logged.

  • Terminal workflow
  • Usage logs
  • Three indexed files
Vantage credit monitoring app