J. BRIAN POTTER.

Senior Product Designer · Denver

Clear, trustworthy products, now built for climate.

A decade of designing high-stakes fintech platforms and design systems. Now I'm bringing that rigor to the teams working on climate change.

See my work Let's talk

Featured work

How I approach complex systems, data-heavy interfaces and community-centered design.

SmartX · 2022–2026

One system for every product team

Problem: Inconsistent UI across teams and no shared source of truth.

Role: Led the move from Sketch to Figma; built the component library and brand system.

Result: Used by every front-end team, synced to Storybook and Chromatic.

SmartX · Fintech

Accuracy-critical tools for advisors

Problem: Advisors managing whole books of business need dense data they can trust.

Role: Product designer across 3–4 teams, leading initiatives and workshops.

Result: A platform serving about 61 financial firms.

Repair Café Pasadena · 2016

Repair community first, toasters second

Problem: A free community repair event felt chaotic and rushed. Items got fixed, but guests left without any sense of community.

Role: Attended events, mapped the guest journey, redesigned the in-person experience, then built the website.

Result: A calmer event that brought back repeat guests and drew new volunteers.

PromonTech · Fintech · 2017–2018

Mapping the mortgage, backwards

Problem: A mortgage moves through many hands (borrower, loan officer, outside vendors) and no one could see the whole flow at once.

Role: One of about six designers. I created MUTO (Multi-User Task-Oriented journey), a method that starts at the outcome and works backward, task by task, across every party involved.

Result: Gave the team a shared picture of how work flowed between users and showed where to improve it.

Why climate

I trained through Terra.do's climate program and co-founded a podcast showing that climate work is real work, and a good living.

J. Brian Potter recording an episode of Team Climate Team Climate podcast cover
13 episodes of Team Climate, interviewing people fighting climate change
750+ downloads, and growing
3 mo Terra.do climate training: science, solutions and careers
J. Brian Potter and his dog Kevin in a car packed with rescued food boxes

Denver Food Rescue · 2019–2023

15,000+ pounds of food kept out of landfills

Through COVID and beyond, I picked up near-expired and imperfect groceries once or twice a week and delivered them to food banks and soup kitchens, usually by car and sometimes by bike trailer. Every run moved 75 to 100 pounds of food to people who needed it.

"Jeffrey's work ethic is excellent, one of those qualities that is becoming rare. He's consistently enthusiastic about mastering new skills."
Marlene Samuels · Author and Sociologist · Design Client
J. Brian Potter in front of a brick building

Born in Flint. Inspired in Chicago. Based in Denver.

I come from the Midwest, where I learned to get things done regardless of egos. I believe in collaboration and design thinking to simplify over-complicated processes, because good design and working together are what we have to give.

Let's talk LinkedIn

jbrianpotter@gmail.com

Looking for earlier work? Browse the archive: Blue Whale, My Buddy's Place and more.