Mike Montgomery

About

Twenty years of shipping. Still curious about what’s next.

I’ve spent more than two decades designing digital products, experiences, and brands, from Fortune 500 companies to startups exploring entirely new categories.

I’ve worked across design, product, creative, strategy and technology, inside agencies, startups and large companies, and I’ve designed and shipped well over 100 digital products along the way.

What connects it all is range. I can move from strategy to concept to UX to visual design to prototype to shipped product, and I’m not someone who hands designs over and disappears. I like the messy middle: finding the opportunity, defining the experience, prototyping the idea, working with engineers, and getting it out the door.

Today I’m especially interested in AI and emerging technology, not as a trend to decorate a portfolio, but as a new material that changes what products and creative workflows can be. I explore it hands-on, and bring what I learn back into product work.

See what I’m exploring

How I work

I like the messy middle.

Not a handoff. I stay in the work: from the first fuzzy opportunity to the shipped product.

  1. 01

    Strategy

    Find the opportunity worth the effort.

  2. 02

    Concept

    Turn a vague idea into a point of view.

  3. 03

    UX

    Define the experience, flow by flow.

  4. 04

    Visual

    Give it a voice that’s unmistakably its own.

  5. 05

    Prototype

    Make it real enough to argue with.

  6. 06

    Shipped

    Stay with engineers until it’s in the world.

Principles

How I think about products.

  1. 01

    Start from the person, end at the product.

    Taste and craft matter, but only in service of something people actually want to use.

  2. 02

    Prototype to think.

    The fastest way to know if an idea is good is to make it real enough to argue with.

  3. 03

    Treat new technology as a material.

    Understand what it makes newly possible, then design the experience, not the demo.

  4. 04

    Ship.

    Ideas are cheap. Working with engineers until it’s live is where the learning happens.

Experience

Where I’ve done the work.

Fortune 500 teams to startups exploring entirely new categories.

  • Disney
  • Google
  • Meta
  • Microsoft
  • Sony
  • Montblanc
  • Lexus
  • NFL
  • Nickelodeon
  • EA
  • Hasbro
  • Lionsgate
  • Legendary Pictures

Let’s build what’s next.

Product design, prototyping and creative direction for teams working on something new.

Let’s work together