Ariel Rheannon Spaulding
A strategic leader responsible for ensuring that products, services, and digital experiences are designed with a deep understanding of user needs, behaviors, and preferences while aiding strategies with the end-to-end customer experience.
Hi, I’m A. Rheannon Spaulding. I’ve seen the power of design and how it can enable people to feel confident. I lead diverse, cross-functional teams to build digital products that people love and drive business results.
I am a Human Centered Design (HCD) practitioner.
At times, I drive program-level initiatives which decrease internal frustrations and costly bottlenecks ( #servicedesign ).
I also love mentoring, empowering others, witnessing people find their ah-hah moments, writing, painting, and creating music.
Happy to provide walk-throughs for work shown in background ↓
Selected Work
The teams, the projects, the messy middle, the evolutions, and the impacts.
Where I operate
Product Experience & Innovation
Omni-channel execution across Mobile, Desktop, VR, Web, Multi-touch surfaces, CTV/Smart TV, print, and not shy about expanding to others.
Strategic Operations & Leadership
Established Systems Architecture, DesignOps, and Change Management frameworks for global enterprise environments including Dow Jones and Lenovo.
Foundational Technical Expertise
A designer with deep roots in infrastructure, networking, and high-volume technical execution. The technical foundation behind a systems-first approach to design leadership.
Data Analysis
Driving decisions through well-informed insights across multiple data channels. Hands-on with analytics, not just the designs they inform.
Research
Deep-rooted understanding of when to introduce usability testing and which approach to take. Research does not need to be costly and time-intensive, it just needs to be effective.
Design Systems
1-Off designs cost companies both long- and short-term. Improperly governed design systems do too. Properly executed, governed, and built systems increase release times while decreasing support costs - when done right.
Happy to provide walk-throughs for work shown in background ↓
Select teams I've worked with
How I lead
Be the good you wish to see in the world.
Psychological safety
People do their best work when they're not afraid to take risks. I build environments where creative risks are expected, mistakes are learning opportunities, and no one has to perform confidence they don't feel
Empowerment over dependency
I don't lead by being the person everyone needs to go through. I lead by making sure my team has what they need to move without me.
Navigating organizational friction
Restructurings happen. Products get sunsetted. Priorities shift. I've led teams through all of it. The work doesn't stop because the org chart changed.
Build things that outlast you
Every system, process, and program I build is designed to survive without me. If what I create only works when I'm in the room, I haven't done my job.
On mentorship
The best part of leadership isn't the strategy decks. It's watching someone realize they're capable of more than they thought.
On hiring
I hire for the organization, not for myself. Culture fit, problem-solving instinct, and resilience matter more than interview polish. The people I've brought in tend to stay, even when the company around them changes.
Happy to provide walk-throughs for work shown in background ↓
Creating work-culture where people thrive, bringing a low-ego, creative problem-solving atmosphere, while tackling unique business problems big and small.
A. Rheannon Spaulding
A UX Practitioner since 2004.
Leading UX-in-Agile Practices. Experienced in Waterfall as well.
Integrator of Accessibility Standards including Section 508 and WCAG AA.
CERTIFICATIONS
NN/g (UX Mastery & Leadership), w3schools (HTML/CSS) and CompTIA A+.
Google Data Analytics Professional Certification – in-progress.
INDUSTRIES SUPPORTED
EdTech
Financial & Legal
Insurance
Food & Beverage
News & Media
Facilities Support Services
Public Sector & Infrastructure
Environmental Regulation & Safety
Medical Devices
E-commerce
IT Service Management Systems
Content Management Systems
A Data Visualization Experiment
EpochEarth is something I recently created. EpochEarth is a real-time earthquake and tsunami visualization tool spanning 200+ years of seismic data — 3,500,000+ earthquakes and 1,284 tsunamis rendered through an interactive timeline interface.
Data comes from three sources: USGS Earthquake Hazards Program, NOAA's Global Historical Tsunami Database, and Natural Earth for geographic boundaries. I co-developed it with Claude (Anthropic's AI), which handled the code while I handled the architecture, design, data strategy, and problem-solving.
The official APIs kept timing out under the volume of data. I solved this by creating locally cached JSON files and a batch processor, then developed a temporal buffering approach — a concept I borrowed from media and video rendering — to stage and release data in controlled intervals rather than trying to render everything at once.
Built with React, D3.js, and Tailwind CSS. Design, architecture, data strategy, and product decisions are mine.
Each object which shows on the screen can be clicked-upon. Seismic activity clicked-upon will include the scale, time, and links to google results. Some have news, some do not.
It's not yet mobile friendly. If you are on a desktop system or a tablet, give it a try.