Hi, I’m Mekael
I design complicated systems until they feel a little less complicated.
They might involve people, software, hardware, AI, or some combination of the four. I like understanding how the pieces fit together, finding where things get confusing, and making the whole experience simpler, more reliable, and easier to use.
Away from my computer, I’m usually grilling something, fixing something around our house, or being confidently informed by a three-year-old that I’m doing both incorrectly.
Want to talk design, systems, or grilling? Say hi at
Selected work
Designing building health at Runwise
A building page that could say something was wrong but never that nothing was. Thirty-six versions, eleven names for three categories, and the one that shipped is number thirty — six more came after it and none of them beat it. All thirty-six are rebuilt in code on the page.
The hundred-point inspection
Runwise monitored about forty-five conditions in every building. Its alerts page could prove three of them. Thirty-four frames, a week of support tickets, and one green check mark that meant the wrong thing.
I made the number smaller
A savings card showing $14,226,548 that drew 595 clicks in a year. Ten interviews and twenty-four versions later it shows eight bills and a number a thousand times smaller — and all twenty-four are on the page, rebuilt in code.
The project I talked us out of
A year of finished designs, then I pulled the numbers: 498 sessions out of 334,512. I made the case to the head of product who’d been asking for them, and what I proposed instead shipped.
Building an AI coworker that knows what happened
I built the Slack agent that answers questions about our code and our production data for people who don’t write SQL, and that opens a pull request when asked. The work was bounding each of those so it can’t talk its way past them.
Redesigning the whole app without turning it off
First designer they ever hired. Six months, nine screen areas, every one rebuilt while thousands of buildings ran their heat through it mid-season. One empty state sourced a closed deal.
Connecting utility accounts once
The product assumed every building had one utility login. Real accounts did not work that way. I changed the underlying model, and completion rose from 5.1% to 29.9%.
Making 10,000 pieces of furniture count
Google had furniture across 238 buildings and five organizations describing it five different ways. I designed the shared model that made ten thousand items countable.
An interface for radio waves
One dead relay can silence sensors across several apartments. I designed a dashboard for the office and blinking lights for the technician standing beside the hardware.
Tooling for people standing in a basement
Installation instructions lived in a binder and in four people’s heads. I turned them into ten guided flows, and 40% of installs now need no trained technician.