Complex products with users in the iteration loop.
I’m Christopher Mullins. I figure out what should be built before anyone starts, on products where the cost of being wrong is high. For five years I was the only designer at an AI incubation studio, where the job as often as not was recommending against a direction. Northern Virginia, remote.

The work
Hard domains, established workflows, and real consequences when the product gets something wrong.
I design products where the underlying system is difficult and the interface has to reduce complexity without hiding what matters. That includes trustworthy AI, enterprise tools for domain experts, and public-scale services where confusion creates real operational cost.
My role is to determine what should be built before time and engineering investment lock in the wrong direction. I work directly with users, turn uncertain ideas into testable product behavior, and recommend against a concept when the evidence does not support it.
Explore the work by domain, practice, and outcome.
Teams can also engage a 6–12 week embedded principal — one problem, not a retainer.
How I work
Shorten the distance between a product decision and real evidence.
Functional code lets me put ideas in front of the people who will depend on them before decisions harden. The prototype may test a workflow, expose a bad assumption, or become the foundation of the shipped product.
That approach has shaped clinical voice AI, security investigation tools, public services, and independently built systems designed around uncertain machine output.
My full product-design approach covers discovery, product definition, prototyping, delivery, and knowing when not to build.
Career
2021–2026
Red Cell Partners
Principal Product Designer. AI-focused incubation studio: contract from 2021, full-time from 2023. Sole designer across dozens of new business ideas in healthcare, security/defense, and government AI, about half of which became viable products in their markets. With minimal product and project management layering.
2019–2021
CrossLead
Principal Product Designer. Enterprise SaaS for Fortune 500 and government. Core product experiences, design systems at scale, and close engineering collaboration from discovery through delivery.
2017–2019
Amtrak
Senior Experience Designer. Digital platform serving 30M+ annual passengers. Booking, trip planning, seat selection, WCAG AA accessibility, mobile conversion.
2015–2017
NHTSA
Web Designer · Regulatory communications, government web
2013–2015
Palladian Partners
Interactive Designer · Health & science communications, federal agencies
2011–2013
Univ. of Southern Mississippi
Web Designer · BFA, Graphic Communication
2003–2011
Gannett / USA Today
Creative Artist · Editorial and digital media
2000–2002
Pearl River Publishing
Graphic Artist · Print and early publishing
On GitHub
The work leaves a commit trail.
Code is part of how I design: making ideas testable, working through implementation details, and carrying decisions closer to production. Most professional repositories are private; the activity below is the public edge of that practice.
3,052 contributions on GitHub (@chrisrmullinsdesign) in the last year.
Design isn’t a service layer. It’s the fastest path to better product decisions.