Russell — Lead Designer JD

Role: Lead Designer, MemberIntel
Incumbent: Russell (“Russ”)
Reports to: Blair Williams, CEO of MemberIntel
Peers: Seth Shoultes (Lead Architect) · Santiago Perez Asis (Product + Project Lead)
Effective: May 2026 — initially part-time / contract through Phase 1; full-time conversion contingent on Phase 1 design load and Phase 2 ramp.
References: MemberIntel SPEC v1, Seth — Lead Architect JD, Santiago — Product + Project Lead JD, Blair — CEO JD, Design references

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Mission

Own the visual system and product UX for MemberIntel end-to-end. Translate Blair’s strategic vision and Seth’s architecture into shipped interfaces that feel like a paid SaaS advisor — not a plugin admin screen. Define the design language that lets MemberIntel show up convincingly outside MemberPress so the product reads as platform-agnostic and credible to BuddyBoss-side customers in V2.

This is a shipping role, not a research role. We’re not building a comprehensive design system from scratch or running large-N user studies. We’re shipping a small surface area very well — chat, insight cards, the onboarding wizard, the brain editor — and iterating against real customer feedback once Phase 4–5 puts users in front of it.

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Authority structure

Blair (CEO, MemberIntel) holds:

• Product strategy and target customer
• Final say on product design direction (Russ proposes; Blair approves)
• Brand identity and visual positioning relative to MemberPress and BuddyBoss

Seth (Lead Architect) holds:

• Technical architecture and implementation
• Engineering hand-off acceptance — Russ can’t ship a design Seth can’t build inside the cost/latency envelope
• Tool surface design — the shape of what the customer-facing tools do (Russ designs how it feels)

Santiago (Product + Project Lead) holds:

• PRD ownership and acceptance criteria
• Sprint scope, delivery dependencies, project tracking
• Cross-functional coordination (content, marketing-site, IPJ liaison)

Russell (Lead Designer) holds:

• Visual system: typography, color, components, motion, density
• End-to-end product UX: chat flow, insight cards, onboarding wizard, brain editor, pricing page, marketing site sections
• Design-to-engineering hand-off: design tokens, component specs, Figma source-of-truth
• Customer-facing copy direction (in collaboration with Santiago for product copy and Sarah for marketing copy)
• Design-side accessibility (WCAG AA target for V1)

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What you own week-to-week

Phase 1 (May 2026 — scoping)

• Convert the existing Claude design mockup into a Figma source-of-truth file with components, tokens, and a documented type/color scale
• Pin the visual identity for MemberIntel as platform-agnostic — must work standalone on memberintel.com (or successor domain) and must work embedded inside MemberPress admin without either context feeling parasitic on the other
• Co-author the onboarding wizard flow with Santiago (decision flow, error states, partial-completion fallback)
• Sit in on the privacy-counsel architecture review in late May; reflect any UX-relevant constraints in design

Phase 2 (June 2026 — build kickoff)

• Chat UI complete: streaming responses, citations rendering, insight-card embed, error states, empty states
• Brain editor v1: how customers add/edit/version their per-customer brain content (versioning was Blair-approved as schema; UX needs design)
• Pricing page + Free→Pro upgrade flow (entitlement-aware UI; Seth provides the entitlement payload)

Phase 3 (July 2026 — first features)

• Insight cards: 3–5 templates for the most common retrieval outputs (churn risk, ARPU trend, content gaps)
• Per-customer brain “history” UI tying into the version + superseded_at schema
• Differentiation eval surfacing: a simple way for the team to compare MemberIntel vs vanilla LLM answers side-by-side internally

Phase 4–5 (Aug–Oct 2026 — beta + GA)

• Iterate on the above against beta feedback
• Marketing-site sections that match the product visual language
• Launch-day surfaces: pricing, comparison, support docs entry points

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Decision rights (additions to the existing matrix)

Decision	Owner	Consults	Final say
Visual system (typography, color, components, motion)	Russ	Blair (brand direction), Seth (implementation cost)	Blair
Product UX flows (chat, wizard, brain editor, insights)	Russ	Santiago (PRD fit), Seth (technical feasibility)	Blair
Design tokens + Figma source-of-truth	Russ	Seth (engineering hand-off shape)	Russ
Marketing-site design	Russ	Sarah (content), Santiago (launch coordination)	Blair
Accessibility standards (target WCAG AA)	Russ	Seth (implementation), counsel (compliance gate)	Russ
Design-system tooling choice (Figma vs alternatives)	Russ	Seth (engineering integration)	Russ
Customer-facing copy tone (product surfaces only)	Russ	Santiago (PRD), Sarah (brand voice consistency)	Blair

Anything not on this list flows through the existing decision-rights matrix. Disagreements between Russ and Seth on hand-off shape, or between Russ and Santiago on flow scope, go to Blair within 48 hours.

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What “good” looks like in 90 days

By end of Phase 2 (June 30, 2026):

• Figma source-of-truth file exists, is the authoritative reference for design, and is documented well enough that an engineer can implement from it without a synchronous design review for every component
• Chat UI, brain editor, and onboarding wizard are designed end-to-end with all states (empty, loading, streaming, error, partial, success)
• The visual language reads as a paid SaaS advisor — not a plugin admin screen. Specifically: it would not feel out of place on a Linear/Notion/Vercel-tier landing page next to other modern SaaS tools
• Engineering has shipped at least one full surface (chat or pricing page) that the design hand-off worked smoothly for — meaning Seth’s team didn’t have to re-design as they built

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What “wrong shape” looks like (and why we’d cut early)

• Comprehensive system over shipped surfaces. If month 1 produces a 200-component design system but no shippable chat UI, that’s the wrong order. Surfaces first, system extracted from the surfaces. We’re not at the scale where the system-first approach pays off.
• Design that requires custom engineering for every component. The team is small. If your components routinely require Seth or the AI Engineer to invent new abstractions, the design is too far from web platform defaults.
• Mockups that don’t survive contact with real entitlement / latency / streaming-response constraints. Phase 2 onward, every design has to be implementable inside the cost/latency envelope. Coordination with Seth early is the cheapest way to avoid this.
• Visual identity that locks MemberIntel to MemberPress branding. V2 ships on BuddyBoss. The design has to read as platform-agnostic from day one — Blair was explicit in the 2026-05-11 session.

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How you collaborate

With Blair: weekly design review (~30 min). You bring the work; Blair approves direction and brand-level decisions. Major identity-level choices (e.g., should MemberIntel feel more “tool” or more “advisor”?) go through Blair explicitly.

With Seth: as-needed working sessions on implementation feasibility, especially for streaming chat, citation rendering, and the brain editor. Seth has a strong opinion on engineering cost — listen to it. He has weaker opinions on visual taste — push back when needed.

With Santiago: weekly product sync on PRD fit and sprint scope. Santiago owns delivery; you own the design contained in what gets delivered.

With Sarah (when she ramps in Phase 3): brand voice consistency across product and marketing. Sarah owns brand voice; you own how that voice renders in the product UI.

With the privacy council (Allen) in late May: you sit in to flag any UX-relevant constraints (data exposure, consent flows, deletion UX). You don’t need to lead the conversation — Seth does — but you need to be in the room.

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Practical norms

1. Figma is the source-of-truth. Not screenshots, not Claude mockups, not Loom recordings. If it isn’t in Figma, the engineering team can’t reference it.
2. Design tokens land in code via Seth’s preferred path (CSS custom properties on the existing app.css token layer, per the visual design conventions documented in docs/design/MemberIntel/CLAUDE.md).
3. You own component naming. Engineering matches the names you set; don’t let them get renamed silently.
4. Disagreements with Seth on hand-off shape go to Blair within 48 hours. Same norm as the rest of the team — no silent escalation drift.
5. For surfaces customers will see in V1, target WCAG AA. AAA is overkill for V1; AA is the floor we won’t compromise on.
6. Mockups for live discussion are fine to share via Claude / Loom / Figma share links — durable artifacts ship to Figma source-of-truth files.

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Compensation philosophy (for context, not approval)

The contract-to-full-time conversion is contingent on Phase 1–2 design load and Phase 2 ramp. If the design surface area expands as expected (chat + wizard + brain editor + pricing + marketing site by GA), full-time is the right shape. If it stays narrow, contract continuation is the right shape. Decision point: end of Phase 2 (June 30, 2026), revisited end of Phase 3 (July 31, 2026).

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Out of scope (so the role doesn’t sprawl)

• Brand identity refresh of MemberPress. Russ is not redesigning MemberPress. Caseproof has separate brand conventions; MemberIntel’s identity has to be compatible without overwriting.
• BuddyBoss design. That’s BB’s product team in V2; coordination is via the partnership terms, not Russ taking over their design surface.
• Support docs site. Sarah (content) owns support content; Russ owns its design framing but not the content.
• Engineering implementation. Russ designs; Seth’s team builds. Russ doesn’t write production CSS or React.

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Document version: Draft v1 — written 2026-05-11 after the Blair × Seth working session that approved adding Russ. Requires Russ’s review and sign-off before operational rollout, and Blair’s final approval on the design authority structure laid out above.