Seastone Labs — Chris Stone

Complex products,
delivered with confidence.

End-to-end design consulting and AI strategy that drives key metrics. Through years in B2B, B2C, and Enterprise solutions, I’ve found a sweet spot working directly with founders and key executives to evolve founder-built software. Together, we can strengthen the competitive moat, expand an existing customer base, and reach new ones. You don’t learn to build a house without picking up a hammer. I stand upon a foundation of hands-on, practical “learning-by-doing” (and coaching) since ’06. I’ve added the next layer by harnessing AI to think better, work faster, go deeper, and increase quality.

Check out how I work and some of the actual work. If it sounds interesting I’d love to chat.
— Chris

Modern solutions that meet customers where they’re at.

Every engagement maps into a process that I’ve refined across an extensive career as a product designer, design leader and product manager. I rely on context, clarity, and collaboration with your team to ensure high quality delivery. Success for me is an engaged, excited team that can’t wait to get the solution into your customer’s hands.

Customer Testimonial

David Kennerley

VP of Engineering, AgileFleet

Richard Banfield

VP of Design Transformation, InVision

Amelia Jones

Customer Success, InVision & Mural

Context

How did we get here?

To plan a path forward I need to know how we arrived. I will find out what you, your team and your customers are trying to accomplish. From there, I distill the information into a shared understanding that identifies potential value points where you can meet your customers.

Research · Debate · Strategic Insights · Synthesis · Opportunity Mapping

Context

Clarity

What is the path forward?

With context established we’ll work together to distill the strongest options before design exploration. I work like this to minimize re-work/waste. From here, I will deliver design mockups or coded proof of concepts for customers to evaluate and for your team to integrate.

Product Strategy · Architecture · Exploration · Evaluation · Prioritization · Design · Build

Clarity

Collaboration

Shall we go together?

“Start together, finish together.” We are stronger together and more informed than we could ever be as individuals. I work with subject matter experts from your team and your customers to deliver solutions that drive value. If it doesn’t deliver value, don’t build it. I won’t waste your time or theirs.

Stakeholder Participation · Subject Matter Experts · Customers · Empathy

Collaboration

Stories of impact.

I reshape founder-built products to handle the next wave of growth and innovate on enterprise solutions to drive renewals, without breaking what existing customers depend on. By focusing on your unique value, I design and build products that survive for years, not fads. Here’s a sample of how I’ve helped organizations drive revenue growth, reduce operational costs, and engage new audiences.

Easy Smart Pay

Fintech

Head of Design

Product, Brand, Partner Sites &
Website Redesign

Become the leader in online property tax payments in California and prepare to scale nationally.

Partner program, website, and application scaled from 5 to 41 (of 58) counties across California

$50M in monthly payments by Oct 2025

Fully responsive platform

New admin tool reduced support triage time

+700%

Partner adoption

+400%

Site conversion

+500%

Transaction volume

Redesign the application to optimize product findability

/ Web Application (Responsive)

Modernize the brand to ensure credibility across target audience segments

/ Marketing Website (Responsive)

/ Marketing Materials

Build partner landing pages to drive conversion

/ County Landing Pages

REDESIGNED BRAND WITH FULLY RESPONSIVE SITE AND PRODUCT

User Research
Information Architecture
Design Strategy
UX Design
Visual Design

TARGETED COUNTY PARTNER SITES SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASED CONVERSION RATES

Easy Smart Pay — Los Angeles County partner landing page

UX Design
Design Strategy
Visual Design
User Research

SIMPLIFIED, BRANDED TAX BILL INSERTS THAT POINTED TO COUNTY-SPECIFIC WEBSITES

Easy Smart Pay — branded tax bill mailer inserts

Visual Design
Communication Design

MADE MONTHLY PAYMENTS EASY TO CALCULATE, UNDERSTAND, AND TRUST

Easy Smart Pay — estimated monthly payments calculator modal

Design Strategy
UX Design
Visual Design
User Research

Chris is one of the most thoughtful and strategic thinkers at the company. As the CEO, I have relied on him many times to provide us with the direction we need.

Alan Fernandes

CEO, Easy Smart Pay

lynda.com +
LinkedIn Learning

Online Learning

Senior UX Designer

Learning Paths, Learning Guides &
Assessments Framework

Build a learning system that drives both business capability and career growth.

Increased learner stint time by 24%

Delivered a synchronized learning experience across all devices

Learning Supports

Learning Guides

Learning Paths

+24%

Learner engagement

The increase in learner engagement on lynda.com elevated the new learning framework as a launch requirement for shipping LinkedIn Learning to 400M members.

Design a learning experience for long-term engagement

/ Learning Supports

Provide business-owner awareness to key roles

/ Learning Guides

Combine what we learned to provide learners a clear route to a new role, or to becoming an expert.

/ Learning Paths

FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE LEARNING PATHS WITH CAPSTONE PROJECTS FOR ENTERPRISE TEAMS

Information Architecture
Design Strategy
UX Design
Visual Design

Learning Path Difficulty Selector

Learning Path Pre-Assessment for shaping content around learner competency

LinkedIn Learning — Learning Path pre-assessment modal prompting the learner to gauge familiarity before starting

Instructional Design
Design Strategy
UX Design
Visual Design

Expert curated learning guides for business owners and hiring managers

lynda.com learning guide — “Starting A Business” curated guide with author panel and a multi-part course progression

Information Architecture
Design Strategy
UX Design
Visual Design

InVision

Design Transformation Products

Senior Director

Design Maturity Assessment &
Learning Product

Deliver organizational insights that help customers hire, train, and retain high performing teams.

100+ Design Maturity Assessments facilitated

Designed and delivered a “train-the-trainer” sales enablement program to support scaled engagement across key accounts

$5M

ARR impact in 18 mth program

$1.5M Pilot

Exceeded revenue goal by 300%

InVision Learn Flywheel

Assessment Diagnostic
Train via Learning Product
Pilot Behavior Change
Re-Assess

The insights from this program have materially advanced our ability to help our teams learn and grow. We’re now building OKRs around the results.

InVision Customer

Executive Sponsor

ORG MATURITY PRODUCT FLYWHEEL

Product Management
Design Strategy
Instructional Design
Product Design

The DMA has become a strategic pillar for us. It’s critical for driving learning and development opportunities across the entire design organization.

InVision Customer

Executive Sponsor

ORG-WIDE TEAM DIAGNOSTIC

Design Maturity Snapshot report: overall maturity score, dimension-by-dimension breakdown, peer comparison, and per-team opportunity areas

Product Management
UX Design
Information Architecture
Visual Design

BULK UPLOAD TO LAUNCH ASSESSMENT PROGRAMS FASTER

Bulk-upload admin tool: CSV upload summary showing members and teams to be created, with requirements and warnings validation before confirming

Product Management
UX Design
Visual Design

SELF-GUIDED SALES ENABLEMENT TRAINING SITE FOR CUSTOMER SUCCESS

DMA Training Resources site: a self-guided sales-enablement hub with a 3-phase framing/build/run flow, Slack channels, and field stories appendix

Product Management
UX Design
Visual Design
Instructional Design

This is what my biggest customers want. It’s a problem that they will never be able to solve and they’re willing to convert 100% of their app spend to get seats for Learn.

Strategic Sales Rep

Key Accounts

Thinkific

Online Learning

Director of Design

Product Redesign &
Design System Implementation

Unblock product velocity and build a platform for innovation

Decreased UX-related support tickets

Delivered a 100% responsive web experience across all product lines

Reduced customer exposure to accessibility claims

Reconciled 5+yrs of design/development debt

Faster R&D

100%

Of engineers could deliver front-end code and meet UI quality standards

JavaScript libraries unified

“Content First” Design

Strategically, we prioritized how content was shaped and scaled for the optimal learning experience, which then guided our responsive design implementation

Navigation was blocking innovation

We had to create more space for teams to experiment and drive more customer value

Multi-level Navigation

Opened up space for new product revenue streams

Thinkific My Courses view with multi-level left-hand navigation

Information Architecture
Design Strategy
UX Design
Visual Design

Design driven monetization

We incorporated new, researched, paywall elements in the product that were foundational to the design language

Targeted Upsell System

Monetization triggers incorporated at high-value conversion points

Bulk Email

Student Billing Options

DesignMap

Design Agency / Supply Chain Decarbonization Project

Principal Product Designer

Agentic AI Strategy & Design

We started with AI features and ended up with a 12-16 month AI strategy

Delivered a 12–18 month product roadmap, supported by implementation-ready design docs

You’ve generated a ton of buzz into the future… sales leaders want this yesterday… — VP

AUTOMATED, PERSONAL ACTION PLANS FOR SUPPLY CHAIN PARTNERS

User Research
Information Architecture
Design Strategy
UX Design
Visual Design

AI GENERATED, ORG-SPECIFIC PITCH DECKS FOR DECARBONIZATION PROGRAM INVESTMENT

User Research
Information Architecture
Design Strategy
UX Design
Visual Design

BITE-SIZED DATA GATHERING WAS WOVEN INTO CONTENT UX TO ENRICH PROGRAM SPECIFICITY

User Research
Information Architecture
Design Strategy
UX Design
Visual Design

The plan for the next 12 to 18 months is solid… I can see us getting a lot of business and leading the market in the future.

Product Management

A concept model for balancing marketable feature releases with incremental enhancements, so you're acquiring new customers while building trust with existing ones, without burning your team out.

One player.
Full accountability.

I made the move from sales to product design in 2006. As a contractor, senior IC, product manager, and design leader, I've worked at agencies and companies like LinkedIn, Thinkific, InVision, Mural, and Bench Accounting.

A decade in leadership didn't pull me away from the craft. It gave me the ability to see the work through other people's eyes. Seastone Labs is how I return to full-time, end-to-end design consulting.

I work directly with founders, product leaders, and subject matter experts at companies facing rapid growth, legacy debt, or AI transformation. We find the decisions that actually matter, then move fast to explore the options worth shipping.

If it doesn't deliver value, don't build it.

Vancouver, BC — available for remote and hybrid engagements

I nerd out on this stuff
every day.

Your product may have outgrown its original design, enough that it’s starting to weigh on renewals and slow your roadmap. You may be racing to pinpoint where AI genuinely adds customer value. You might even be weighing new “AI-first” product streams that open new markets. If any of this rings true, I can help you get to a solution you’ll be proud of. Let’s talk.

chris@seastonelabs.com

Theme selector

Complex products,
delivered with confidence.

Modern solutions that meet customers where they’re at.

Stories of impact.

Redesign the application to optimize product findability

Modernize the brand to ensure credibility across target audience segments

Build partner landing pages to drive conversion

Design a learning experience for long-term engagement

Provide business-owner awareness to key roles

Combine what we learned to provide learners a clear route to a new role, or to becoming an expert.

Reflections on what I've learned from the trenches.

One player.
Full accountability.

I nerd out on this stuff
every day.

Complex products, delivered with confidence.

Modern solutions that meet customers where they’re at.

Stories of impact.

Redesign the application to optimize product findability

Modernize the brand to ensure credibility across target audience segments

Build partner landing pages to drive conversion

Design a learning experience for long-term engagement

Provide business-owner awareness to key roles

Combine what we learned to provide learners a clear route to a new role, or to becoming an expert.

Reflections on what I've learned from the trenches.

One player.Full accountability.

I nerd out on this stuff every day.

Complex products,
delivered with confidence.

One player.
Full accountability.

I nerd out on this stuff
every day.