Gunthar.com work

Experience

With over two decades of experience, I bring a wide range of capabilities to bear across product strategy, management, research and design. I've worked with innovative organizations spanning industries such as reality capture, nature tech, drones and robotics, online video, social media, home entertainment, fintech, health and wellness, and more. My focus on leading edge technologies has lead me to being a co-author on multiple patents.
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I endeavor to be a collaborative, energetic, and inclusive leader and colleague, invested in my team’s and organization’s success. I bring with me a growth mindset aimed at finding how my skills and experience can augment the expertise and needs of those organizations I am working with. I am particularly attuned to the needs of organizations that are building their technical understanding and product development team and practice. I practice a "player/coach" approach, always excited to roll up my sleeves and start building alongside my team.

Product Leadership

‍Developing innovative product vision and strategy that aligns with organizational objectives, in collaboration with leadership and cross functional colleagues.
Managing projects from concept to completion and developing processes that ship projects on time and deliver impactful results.

Research

Establishing and running high-impact qualitative user research processes for product discovery and feature validation.
Implementing quantitative analytics systems to provide metrics measuring impacts and outcomes.

Experience Design

Practicing and leading human-centric design, ensuring powerful technology is accessible and intuitive, and delivers towards organizational objectives.
Keeping pace in a continuously changing industry by adopting the latest industry tools, practices, and methodologies.

Team Building

Building and scaling growth-oriented product organizations from the ground up.
Developing effective cross-functional and cross-team processes and practices.

Technology for Conservation

Techical Consulting, Advising and Field Operations

2021-2026

Over the last few years, I have had the opportunity to work with organizations focussed on conservation and restoration of forests, particularly in the Choco-Andino of Western Ecuador.

Advising Fundación Maquipucuna on reality capture technologies, conducting drone mapping of remote forest areas, developing a drone program, technical capacity building, process and program management, and more.
Serving on the steering committee of the Biodiversity Finance Innovation Alliance and helping drive its efforts to develop new forms of conservation financing.
Collaboratively planning and facilitating community workshops on ground truthing with the Nature Tech Collective.
Training the team at Fundacion Futuro on drone mapping techniques.
Flying remote areas of the Choco Andino cloud forest for the Bellavista Reserve to help land protection efforts.
Advising Collaborative Earth teams developing AI tools to facilitate conservation research and documentation.
Consulting with project developer Thryve.earth on product design and user experience during a data portal redesign.

Reality Capture for Conservation: Maquipucuna (Blog Post)
Case Study: Nature Tech at the Maquipuna Reserve (PDF, Google Drive)

Image Processing at Scale

Head of Product. Special Projects Consultant.

2022-2025

Imgix is a pioneer in the management, optimization and delivery of media via its global CDN and advanced internal technology. Its capabilities are a core component of the technology stack of a businesses across a wide range of industries - media, e-commerce, real estate, and more.

Collaborating with CEO and other stakedholders, defined a comprehensive product strategy to leverage emerging AI technologies at scale, resulting in enhanced platform core strengths and market positioning.
Spearheaded development of key new features (AI License Plate ID, AI Image to Video, advanced video capabilities, enterprise org management tools) and successfully implemented a new Credits revenue model.
Special Projects included development of sales lead generating pageweight analysis tools, launch of Japanese website, identity and visual rebrand, research of user and ideal customer profiles, design mentorship, and more....

Site Reality Capture

Director of Product Design and User Experience

2019-2022

DroneDeploy is an industry-leading SaaS plaform providing site reality capture and analytic insights by leveraging drones, ground scanning, and AI / ML technologies.

Served as the first Director-level design leader, joining as the organization focused on growing its enterprise customer base and scaling ARR.
Launched a new iOS app for ground-based reality capture, opening a new market segment.
Spearheaded the creation of a comprehensive design system (web, mobile, geo, 3D), significantly improving UI quality and development speed.
Scaled the design team by establishing robust recruiting, hiring, and leveling processes.

Case Study: Floors and Interiors Product Design (PDF Google Drive)

Healthy Eating Made Simple

Director of Design & User Experience

2017-2018

Zipongo (now Foodsmart) provides software tools and services with the working premise that "food is medicine."

Directed the complete redesign of the mobile product, successfully implementing a "mobile first" strategy that codified UX and feature sets across all product lines.
Architected the UX and service design for “Food Scripts,” a key business initiative targeting health systems.
Creative direction for growth & engagement content initiatives, photoshoots, and video production.
Established design recruiting procedures, leveling standards. Mentored and promoted team members.

Empowering Entrepreneurs

Director of User Experience

2013-2016

‍‍Circleup's mission was to provide capital and resources to promising companies in the consumer packaged goods space. A particular focus of the organization was to create a neutral, software based process to reduce bias and provide opportunities to underserved members of the entreprenuer community.

Hired as the first non-engineering product employee (Employee 10); built the design practice and established UX research frameworks that were instrumental in creating the CircleUp Equity Marketplace.
Lead design on CircleUp Marketplace, helping 250+ CPG entrepreneurs raise $300M in growth financing.
Established user research process. Conducted 100+ interviews utilized to define product requirements and validate product features and designs.
Collaborated with PM and engineering to implement an effective, high velocity AGILE development process.
Member of senior team establishing strategy, setting goals, evaluating key results to improve org outcomes and culture.

A Platform for Play

Franchise User Experience Director

2011-2013

In the early 2010's, Zynga was the leader in social gaming, endeavoring to create an optimized game play experience for its millions of dedicated players.

Design Director and Principal Interactive Architect for the dedicated gaming portal, www.zynga.com, which successfully scaled to 1 Million Daily Active Users (DAU) within the first six months, significantly increasing NPS and player retention.
Managed the zChannels team for Facebook promotion design and served as UX manager for 3rd party Developer Platform tools.
Design manager for launch of Zynga’s independent account and identity system connecting web and mobile games.

Broadcast Yourself

Staff User Experience Designer

2007-2011

YouTube is the world largest online video platform, serving billions of videos per day.

Drove product design and UX efforts on multiple feature areas during YouTubes high-growth early years, creating foundational designs for home page, video upload & management, user channels & profiles, playlists, subscriptions, and much more.
Tackled numerous firsts, including TV and game console implementations.
Worked in conjunction with product and engineering teams to create systems and practices for social networking and sharing, personalized content discovery, video quality, content syndication and APIs.
Collaborated with teams across Google to develop platform level UX for products such as iGoogle and GoogleTV.
Presented at internal & external industry & developer conferences.
Patents: US8069414, US8468201. US9553947B2. Multiple Filings.

Howdy!