Derek Wood Technical Product Designer / Advocate
Los Angeles, CA + Remote (213) 400 6366 · derekthomaswood.com derekthomaswood@gmail.com | linkedin.com/in/derekthomaswood
Cross-disciplinary dev and designer with 15+ years of experience. I started in art school, got obsessed with web dev in the early days of responsive design, and moved into product design and larger design systems. Answering questions on Stack Overflow led to mentoring, and eventually to founding and running Perpetual Education, a full-stack design school: hundreds of workshops and resources, interconnected by an overarching module system. Comfortable on camera, on stage, and in the docs, and excited to bring that mix of making and teaching to a product team that I can grow with.
Experience
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Perpetual Education (2019–2026)
Founder & Principal Product Designer
Designed and built a cross-disciplinary product design program covering the full product lifecycle, from information architecture and accessibility through visual design, engineering, design systems, and product strategy. Created the platform, curriculum, progression model, and supporting systems from scratch.
Guided multiple concurrent cohorts over four years, helping hundreds of designers and engineers develop the shared language, systems thinking, and collaborative habits needed to work effectively on cross-functional product teams. Prototype everything: Figma, code, AI, whatever tested an idea fastest. The curriculum and platform evolved through continuous learner feedback into a self-paced program that now runs on its own.
Contract experience
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List at Ease (2024–2025) · contract
Product Designer / Front-End Lead
Green-field real estate platform; ran the project end to end: discovery and research, all product design, the application architecture, and the full-stack build, using agent-driven, test-first workflows. Complex multi-step forms intertwined with education flows, seller/agent messaging, legal and security considerations. Design system and form library from scratch.
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BetterLife (2023–2024) · contract
Product / UI Designer
Financial education platform scattered across third-party systems, unified under single sign-on. Dashboards, design system, gamified onboarding, living style guide. Evolved the visual design system and color palette mid-project.
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Equivalent Design (2022) · contract
Accessibility Consultant
R&D and user testing for accessible SVG and animated graphics that adapt to any environment. Built tools that teach teams accessible design through interactive stories. Focus on WCAG compliance and universal design principles.
Earlier experience
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PXL Agency (2018–2019)
Senior Developer
Interactive experiences for entertainment brands including DreamWorks and Universal: dreamworks.com, quiz games, marketing microsites. Maintained large-scale content platforms with complex datasets. Consulted on UX and mentored junior developers.
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Niagen Bioscience (2017–2018)
Senior Product Designer
Helped build out the product design department for the Tru Niagen product arm. Worked with scientists and doctors to translate complex biology into approachable interfaces. Designed a health tracking system letting customers monitor their own energy and wellness metrics in place of claims the company could not legally make. Unified the design system, ran stakeholder interviews and user testing, then hired a UI designer to take over execution and moved on when the foundation was set.
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Early career: agencies & startups (2011–2017)
Product Designer & Front-End Developer
Front-end development for a wide variety of clients across agencies and startups, increasingly pulled into UI and UX work: game-based learning systems for AAA Insurance, a data-driven internal app for Fox Films, sites and microsites for entertainment, publishing, and consumer brands. Often brought in to set up in-house process: version control, modern build tooling, and design-systems thinking.
Speaking & teaching
Speaker at AICAD Symposium, ArtCenter (2024). Co-chair of World IA Day LA (2026). Published in CSS-Tricks. Guest lecturer and guest crits at colleges/bootcamps. Active moderator in design/dev learning communities. Hosting weekly public office hours for designers and developers since 2023.
Education
BFA, California College of the Arts (2005). Individualized major: printmaking, painting, cross-disciplinary art and technology. Workshops on design-token architecture with Brad Frost and multi-brand theming at scale with Sam Gordashko.