Jeff Mielke.

Complex problems,
made simple enough
to ship.

I'm Jeff Mielke, a UX leader. For two decades I've walked into sprawling, ambiguous product spaces — a 21-product org at Google, a network of food and travel brands, a startup with no product team at all — and left behind focused journeys, healthy teams, and numbers that moved.

UX Director & Design Leader Google · 8th Light · Scripps · AOL New York
See the work How I work

The through-line

01

Focus the journey

Most teams are drowning in goals. I find the two or three journeys that actually matter, get every stakeholder to agree on them in writing, and put everything else in the parking lot — on purpose, and out loud.

02

Prove it with research

Baselines, not opinions. Max/diff surveys re-run every six months, research bites instead of forty-page reports, A/B testing paired with qualitative work — so the team always knows whether it's winning.

03

Build the team that ships it

Strategy dies without a healthy org. I design teams, rituals, and critique culture so good thinking survives contact with reality — and so people are still standing at the end of it.

Selected work

The case studies are password-protected — they contain client metrics and colleague feedback. Ask me for access and I'll send it over.

Google · Sr. UX Manager

Making a distributed Google feel like one company

An 80-person org across New York and Munich, 21 products, and a pandemic rewriting the problem every quarter. We built on top of Meet, Gmail, Chat and Calendar to fix three things Googlers actually felt: nowhere to meet, no sense of connection, and no boundary between work and life.

160k+office visits booked in year one, across 86 offices
+87%increase in feeling connected to teammates
92CSAT on the desk booking tool

Read the case study

Google Meet with reaction and collaboration tools built by the Distributed Workplace team

Home Connect · Design Director, 8th Light

A “Tinder” for real estate, built by a team new to AI

A first-time founder, a fixed budget, ten third-party integrations, and a five-person team with no PM and no AI experience. I ran product strategy, research and design at once — and coached the team through rapid prototyping to a launch on iOS, Android and web.

−50%time to create a property listing
3platforms shipped, January 2025
2×contract extensions from the client

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Home Connect onboarding screen matching sellers with buyer wishlists

Food Network & Food.com · UX Director, Scripps

Winning back cooks who were leaving after one recipe

Food Network was a marketing site with too many goals. Cooks arrived from Google, took a recipe, and left. We cut to two journeys, rebuilt the architecture around them, and designed a suite spanning web, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch and Android.

+72%video views — the highest-value ad inventory
+2500%page views on the In The Kitchen app
1B+page views per quarter across the category

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Redesigned Food Network home page Food Network In The Kitchen iPad app

Travel Channel · UX Director, Scripps

Turning one show's app into a travel companion

When Anthony Bourdain left Travel Channel, the Layover app was about to become obsolete. We broadened it into an immersive itinerary builder drawing on the whole network's content — and made the interface get out of the way of the photography.

+75%page views on the new app
+24%unique visitors, a genuinely wider audience
6 mofrom kickoff to launch, under budget

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Travel Channel Cities iPad home screen Travel Channel Cities destination browsing

iVerify · UX Designer & Design Lead

Making mobile forensics legible to skeptical IT admins

A security product built almost entirely by engineers and a founder, with no UX and no front-end hires in sight. I evolved the brand, cut the design down to its core tasks, and produced the site and marketing films that had to earn trust from a suspicious audience.

1core task, finally in focus, replacing a design built for edge cases
↑significantly higher usability scores after redesign

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iVerify mobile security app across three phone screens

Flourish · Sr. UX Advisor

An AI well-being advisor for hard feelings

Advised on a focused, usable and quietly playful experience — the central question being how much humanity to keep in the loop when the technology is doing the listening. myflourish.ai

Games

Where I still ship it myself

JeffImagines is my indie studio — five iOS games I design, build and release end to end. The same convictions apply, with nobody to delegate them to: no ads mid-play, no energy timers, no pay-to-skip. Difficulty is a feature, not a paywall.

Haptic Maze — a glowing marble navigating an invisible maze on a dark screen

Haptic Maze

iOS

Navigate invisible mazes through touch and vibration.

There's nothing to see — just a dark screen and a marble you can feel. Every wall is a buzz, every path a rhythm.

$0.99 · no ads, no IAP

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Stunt Frog Superstar — a caped frog chaining a combo across falling lily pads

Stunt Frog Superstar

iOS

Become the ultimate amphibian acrobat.

Touch, drag and fling your frog across a swamp of weather-dressed hazards — umbrella bees, night-vision moths, one very unbothered crocodile.

Free for a limited time · no ads, no IAP

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LilyPad Legend — a tile-based pond puzzle grid with a crowned frog, switches and numbered goal pads

LilyPad Legend

iOS

The mobile puzzle game that respects you.

Hop across sinking pads, toggle bridges and dodge snakes to reach every goal in order — clean puzzle logic across snow, moonlight and glowing caves.

18+ levels · free campaign

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Brainery — a cryptogram puzzle mid-solve with a letter-mapping keyboard

Brainery

iOS

Seven puzzles. One sharper brain.

A calm, paper-warm bundle of seven cognitive games — cryptograms, memory grids, reaction drills, mental math — built as a quiet ritual, not another notification.

No ads mid-puzzle, no dark patterns

Visit site

Containment Realm — a neon perimeter drawn around escapees on a dark grid, with timer and shield meter

Containment Realm

iOS

Master the art of containment before time runs out.

Draw neon barriers to corral escapees before they breach the perimeter, as colour-coded rule-breakers, bombs and a relentless Warden escalate the chaos.

Game Center leaderboards · free, no ads

App Store

What colleagues say

Jeff led the team through a massive pivot of priorities and requirements. Overnight he had to understand and switch focus on new priorities caused by COVID remote work. He set up clear processes on how to analyze new requirements and user pain points and led the team through this transformation.
PM Lead, Google
Through Jeff's leadership and his ability to lead with humility and transparency, he and his co-lead were able to pull off the impossible — a highly complex cross-org alignment resulting in a smooth product launch with a user satisfaction that many other teams and products can only dream of.
UX Director, Google
I'm consistently in awe at his ability to be an effective lead for all types of UX disciplines, while creating great team dynamics and growth opportunities for each and every team member.
Engineering Director, Google
A true designer at heart, Jeff leads teams to create compelling and groundbreaking products for any device. Jeff is a true user advocate while balancing business needs. I'd love the chance to partner with him again.
Sara Viena, VP Design, MetaLab

More on how I work

Get in touch

Got something complicated?

That's usually where I'm most useful. I'm open to design leadership roles and advisory work.

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