Jon Sandruck - Design Director

Jon is an inspirational leader who possesses a unique ability to motivate and empower his team.

His enthusiasm for design is contagious, fostering a collaborative and creative environment where everyone feels valued and encouraged to contribute their unique perspectives.

With an innate understanding of human behavior and needs, he consistently demonstrates a deep-rooted empathy for users, ensuring their voices are at the heart of every design decision.

—Jessica Turner

Jon was my Director at USAA for over 3 years. I watched him weed through complex bureaucracy and ambiguity to identify viable strategies that provided value to users and the business.

His extensive experience in strategy, research, and design thinking was a valuable resource to the team and my personal growth.

Jon is one of the most thoughtful and insightful leaders I know.

—John DeGore

It was a pleasure being the lead UX researcher on Jon’s team.

Jon is passionate about learning directly from the users in the lab, in the wild, and in between. His design solutions are thoughtful, efficient and attractive; and he inspires his team to be just as thoughtful in their own work. He’s a rare designer with business acumen and technical knowledge which allows him to speak convincingly with business and technology about the many benefits of human-centered design.

His enthusiasm and expertise elevated the maturity of user experience at Sabre.

—Kris Courtney

I had the pleasure of working closely with Jon at Sabre during a critical period of pursuing a significant potential customer.

Jon was instrumental in driving the user experience and user interactions strategies that played a crucial role in our success. Throughout our collaboration, Jon demonstrated exceptional leadership and expertise in design thinking and UX strategy. As Sabre was evolving our design strategies as a company, Jon played a significant role in guiding that direction. I would highly recommend Jon as a valuable addition to your company's design leadership team.

—David Radack

Jon brings an understanding of cross-functional teams' work streams that you very rarely see in one person.

He is measured as a leader, has no issue teaching and managing his teams by doing the work with them, and will stop at nothing shy of the best possible work he can deliver regardless of what the work is.

He is the type of person who makes those around him better. He's a game changer, difference maker, leader, facilitator, innovator, and driver of success and strategy.

—Wasseem Ghorayeb

Personal Summary

I went to art school because I wanted to draw comic books, but became a designer when I realized we have the power to shape the world and how people understand it.

I play bass guitar well and regular guitar badly. (Regular guitar badly is way more fun.)

I believe that if you truly love something, that love is unconditional.

This is how I know I love Pizza, Dogs, Coffee, and Batman.
It’s also how I know I don’t really love tacos. I just like-like tacos.

I’m left-handed, and I think it prepared me for being a UX designer. Have you ever tried explaining to a right-handed designer why using left-handed scissors is harder than becoming ambidextrous?

I like learning things that take a lifetime to master.

I think clear is kind. Thank you, Brene Brown.

I take a number of things very seriously, but myself is not one of them. Clearly.

I'm a servant-leader. As a teenager in the Boy Scouts, I learned that being in charge meant you have responsibility, not power.

Professional Summary

I am a design leader with over a decade of experience creating value and driving innovation through human-centered design. I have built and led teams from three to forty, including teams of teams. I have developed long-term product visions and multi-horizon roadmaps that secured billion-dollar contracts. I have established practices, standards, and systems that reduce risk, ensure quality, and improve margins. I create environments where designers can do their best work.

Highlights

Grew a spare-bedroom freelance design practice into an award-winning graphic design studio. Over three years, our work in brand, web, print, and packaging design won 36 awards and was published 31 times in 11 publications.
Led the design of a mobile options trading app that, because of its usability, won Barron's "Best Online Brokers" award two years in a row.
Drove the development of an industry-leading developer experience portal from prototype to public beta with 6 APIs in 90 days and from beta to production with over 200 APIs in six months.
Created the vision that won a $1.4 billion contract.
Directed the design of solutions that created a 23% year-over-year increase in profit for our pilot customer.
Facilitated the creation of an Augmented-reality car-buying app, resulting in 17% quote generation and press coverage in American Banker, Cheddar, and Forbes.
Increased membership by 30% during my two-year term as President of AIGA DFW by instituting human-centered programming, implementing a graduated event pricing structure that incentivized members to bring friends, and passing new bylaws that modernized board elections.
Used human-centered methods to influence vendor selection, strategic direction, and product vision for a multi-billion dollar IT project.
Implemented processes and performed strategic planning that limited program risk by 80% while reducing staffing costs by 57%.
Managed a team of 40 volunteers to improve an employee engagement program, increasing program participation by 200%.