Anthony D Paul
Director of User Experience, idfive

Anthony is the Director of User Experience at idfive. With 15 years of experience in web application design, development, and research, he’s built productivity systems for the NSA; extended atomic brand systems for Yahoo and others; launched hundreds of digital properties; and helped lead teams, users, and decision-makers through many sense-making activities. Anthony understands macro business processes to recommend changes and tools to improve employee, content administrator, and end-user experiences. In addition to working on client projects, he teaches graduate level workshops and maintains a regular speaking schedule across North America on topics including remote team management, user research and facilitation, user experience and information architecture artifacts, web accessibility, and other industry best practices.

What advice would you give to your 20-something self?
Start funding your Roth IRA.

What’s your dream design job? If you could work on any project in the wide world, what would it be?
I enjoy simplifying complex data visualization and productivity interfaces, whatever they may be for. My past favorite was visualizing worldwide DDoS/bot activity. A future dream job would be something like working on Tesla’s in-car digital dashboard. I’m also impressed with the direction health tech is headed, with biometric analytics and visualizations aiding in diagnoses and progress tracking.

How do you define success in your career as a designer? What factors have led your success so far?
Steve Jobs said our mission as designers is to “dent the universe.” My driver has always been to do good with design, and to feel like I’m positively affecting someone. Success is being able to recognize when you aren’t seeing your positive impact anymore and changing direction.

What’s your favorite creative hobby, outside of design? Are you working on any side projects right now?
Everywhere. I travel, cook, do wood-carving, garden, and make hot sauce.

Baltimore’s 5th Annual Design Week is back! Register now for Designing for Stress Cases: Understanding the Everyday Relationship Between UX and Accessibility.