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Profile

Bruce Abbott, a Software Designer advocating for the human element in product design, creating value with innovative and user-centric solutions. Elevated design thinking and product excellence at Instacart, Disney, and Google.

Highlights

  • Spearheaded the development of Disney's Streaming Insights Platform, integrating engagement data from Disney+, ESPN+, Hulu, and Hotstar.
  • Led and culturally transformed the design team for ESPN App & Web during a remarkable period of growth.
  • Designed the immersive ESPN App experience demonstrated by Apple's SVP, Craig Federighi, during the keynote at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference.

Experience

Moon Maus
2019 - Current
Founder
West Hartford, CT
Moon Maus serves as a platform for developing new ideas and facilitating consulting engagements with technology clients, such as Instacart, focusing on priority roadmap initiatives aligned with user experience and product design.
  • Incubating the following, as of Spring 2024
    • Native system service for macOS (Swift) and Windows (C++, Qt)
    • Disk management proxy interface on macOS, Linux, and Windows (JS x-platform)
    • Technology service business profitable in pilot market; launching Summer 2024
    • Healthcare management platform in partnership with a diverse team of medical professionals
Instacart
2021 - 2023
Product Design Consultant, Instacart App
San Francisco, CA (Remote)
Embedded in Instacart's Customer Satisfaction SWOT pod, tasked with executing strategic cost optimization initiatives set forth by Instacart's senior leadership. The cross-functional team included leads representing Data Science, Product, User Research, Engineering, Content, and Design, focusing on enhancements across iOS, Android, and web platforms.
  • Cost Optimization ($50M Milestone)
    Collaborated daily with partners to refine critical segments of the platform (e.g., customer transaction lifecycle) through data-driven adjustments and testing, boosting retention and reducing appeasement costs. This strategy unlocked a $50M opportunity for FY23 as noted in Instacart's IPO S-1 (p. 135), surpassing the team stretch goal.
  • Instacart Health
    Principal designer for Instacart's new venture, Instacart Health, supporting business development engagements with leading healthcare brands. Designed the debut Health product, Fresh Funds, an innovative program giving people funds to buy nutritious food and incentivizing healthy habits to combat nutrition insecurity nationwide.
  • Value-Driven Design
    Enhanced the Instacart+ Family Account experience by streamlining workflows, enriching content, and seamlessly integrating brand elements, facilitating effortless onboarding for invited family members.
The Walt Disney Company
2017 - 2019
Sr. Director of Design, DTC Data Platforms
Bristol, CT
  • Streaming Metrics
    Led the creation of Disney's Direct-to-Consumer Streaming Insights Platform on iOS, Android, and web, transforming near real-time (NRT) subscriber and content engagement data from Disney's streaming products — Disney+, ESPN+, Hulu, Hotstar — into actionable insight channels for executives and content stakeholders.
  • Leading By Example
    Steered a six-person contract team of React and API platform developers through an 8-month product build. Wore multiple hats as product designer, acting product manager, and contributing UI developer, to ensure a comprehensive release.
  • Strategic Partnership
    Orchestrated the data-sharing collaboration between Disney Streaming Services and ESPN+. This partnership culminated in the creation of Disney Streaming Metrics, the internal standard and benchmark for content and subscriber data specifications, policies, and API endpoints across The Walt Disney Company.
The Walt Disney Company
2014 - 2017
Head of Design, ESPN App & Web
Bristol, CT
  • Growth Leadership
    Guided the ESPN App design team through unprecedented growth of priority roadmap initiatives across iOS, Android, and web — necessitating a 65% increase in headcount.
    • Elevated product quality by modernizing design operations, fostering a human-centered approach aligned with user intent and mental models.
    • Cultivated collaboration by evaluating employee performance based on relationship quality and communication with project partners, bolstering team cohesion and empowering designers in cross-functional settings.
    In collaboration with Research, Product, and Engineering, these efforts drove a 56% increase in monthly active users, alongside 15% and 12% year-over-year rises in App Store and Play Store ratings, respectively.
  • Apple Partnership
    Paired with the CTO to represent ESPN at Apple for the review of tvOS platform integration. Accepted invitations from Apple Platform Marketing to create innovative concepts for iOS, watchOS, and tvOS on-site in Cupertino — Apple's SVP, Craig Federighi, demonstrated an iOS experience during the Apple WWDC keynote in 2016.
Egg Haus
2008 - 2014
Founder
San Francisco, CA
  • Entrepreneurial Leadership
    Egg Haus was established as a product design firm, empowering Bay Area and Silicon Valley technology companies with tailored solutions and talent augmentation for native software and web projects. Egg Haus's designers and engineers were frequently embedded on-site, collaborating with prominent client teams at Google and YouTube.
  • Client Portfolio
    Collaborated with industry leaders such as Google, YouTube, Disney, Condé Nast, and ESPN to produce high-quality branded experiences across native and web platforms.
  • Industry Recognition
    Garnered seven accolades including "App of the Week" and "Editor’s Choice" in Apple's App Store.
  • Strategic Decision-Making
    Declined an offer from Google's M&A team to join YouTube in December 2013, choosing instead to pursue an executive role at The Walt Disney Company.
eBay
2004 - 2007
Product Designer, User Experience & Design
San Jose, CA
  • Created “eBay Desktop,” a marketplace built atop the Adobe AIR runtime for Windows and OS X while entirely comprised of eBay and PayPal Developer Platform APIs, surpassing 1 million installs following the public-beta release in 2007.
  • Devised and implemented a method to reduce merchandise display advertising payload by 71%.
  • Selected as one of 30 employees for a two-month collaboration to re-envision eBay — co-presented proposal to CEO, Meg Whitman.
Fidelity Investments
2003 - 2004
Interaction Designer, User Experience & Design
Boston, MA
  • Designed interactive product walkthroughs for Fidelity NetBenefits customers, enhancing user comprehension and engagement.
  • Built a desktop application concept that transformed internal APIs into a real-time interactive stock portfolio.

Notables

Stanford University, Hasso Plattner Institute of Design
2010, 2011
Guest Mentor, Launchpad Program
Palo Alto, CA
  • Mentored graduate students on human-centered design, rapid-prototyping, branding, and product marketing to incubate and launch a new business (e.g., product, service) during a 10-week period.
San Francisco State University, College of Extended Learning
2011 - 2013
Adjunct Instructor, Mobile Design
San Francisco, CA
  • Authored and taught a course on user interface design for mobile devices including iOS and Android.
Patent
Online Garage Sale #US-20100169180, eBay, Inc.
  • Co-authored the method of listing a garage sale online, which encapsulates the event time, location, and items presented as event promotion or marketplace accessible to internet-connected devices.

Technical

Proficiency
  • JavaScript (built this site from scratch), Python, Terraform, shell script (POSIX, PowerShell), Jupyter, Linux server administration, Ansible
Hobbies
  • Maintaining a homelab consisting of a 3-node Kubernetes cluster and redundant network hardware serving as support for the following:
    • Local infrastructure for personal projects
    • 10Gb access to 43 TiB ZFS storage pool
    • Custom home automation and security
  • Pursuing novel concepts by intersecting data science and compute (e.g., AI, ML, DL)
    • Wrote a Python app that extracted $100k+ in value from a private dataset