Emily Privot McNamara
Head of Experience
Boston
Validated traits
Artifacts
TroveWhat did you do? Across several separate streams of work, I made calls that determined what using Trove feels like on both sides of the exchange. I cut onboarding down to the moment of value instead of a data collection step. I moved validation forward so it reads as the point of the product instead of an afterthought. And I sourced, briefed, and managed the brand engagement that gave the whole thing a settled visual and verbal language (that is uniquely differentiated in this market!), including the naming research that killed terms alpha users were misreading. What changed because of it? Onboarding now completes in a median of under two minutes (1m 53s), with an ~8/10 completion rate from start to finish. And the Polymath font system, the current color palette, and the product nomenclature are what every user is looking at right now, replacing terminology that alpha research showed was actively confusing people (e.g. Ledger reading as blockchain). How did you do it? On onboarding, I killed the "let's set up your account" step and swapped the work-history-and-role fields for a single headline. The role-targeting question was creating a mismatch: someone would pick a path like "establish foundation" and then get asked something that felt like a job application. When we built the supporting intake agent that helps users craft a narrative, I designed the framework to guide those questions (storytelling mixed with behavioral question interview techniques). I decided the form should teach the product by getting someone to their first artifact fast, not by collecting structured data upfront. On validation, the product had it buried behind the artifact creation flow, which worked against Trove's whole thesis. Trove only holds up if the witness feels like the point, not a confirmation step tacked on at the end. I moved it forward in the experience because burying it reads as "trust us" instead of "here's who was there." On the design system, alpha interviews had already surfaced confusion with the terminology and visual hierarchy in use, so I ran research with a few dozen participants to figure out what was and wasn't landing, which is what killed Ledger and reshaped how we talked about Artifact. In parallel, I found, vetted, and onboarded Champions as the design partner, wrote the brief, and managed the relationship through delivery. That's where the typeface system, the palette, and the decision to drop the isometric cube motif all came from.
This event was the first time my personal interests and professional experience were able to coalesce and I loved it. Age Of_ was conceived out of that overlap. This event was the first (and at the time only) SF Design Week event around aging and it was graciously hosted at IDEO's SF HQ. I had been studying co-design methods with and building products for older adults for nearly a decade and through conversations with Rahmin Eslami and Elysia Syriac (the other folks in Age Of_), identified an opportunity to shift the conversation around aging and design. While most industry dialogue focused narrowly on accessibility and decline, the Age Of_ team recognized a design gap (and a market opportunity) to explore aging through lenses of identity, culture, and aspiration. I conceived the idea to launch "Age Of_" as a flagship workshop at SF Design Week, bringing together designers to reimagine what it means to design for this demographic. Our team was multidisciplinary: experience and community designer, creative director, and strategic forecaster, Julian Bleecker. Together we built an aging-specific curriculum and facilitation guide, adapting Julian's own design fiction techniques into a compressed 90-minute workshop format. The methodology centered on a "mad lib" style exercise using prompt cards across five dimensions (living with, human need, form, action, and attribute) that guided teams to brainstorm solutions for older adults through exploratory prototyping. On the day of the event, I delivered a baseline presentation on opportunities in aging design and guiding participants through the exercises and prototype development. We 3D-printed branded pen holders for the requisite brainstorming sharpies and printed some inspirational quotes around aging on cards to get brains warmed up. There were beautiful images of older adults doing every day activities to set the context of the space. The workshop exceeded all expectations, drawing over 70 participants against a planned capacity of 25. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with several participants noting it was the first time they'd encountered aging discussed through a lens of possibility rather than limitation. The room came alive during both the introductory presentation where the universal relevance of aging resonated across the audience and during the team share-outs. The curriculum we developed was intended to become the foundation for an ongoing workshop series, establishing a new framework for how designers approach this underserved and high-potential market.
Testimonials
Peer
Sr. Product Designer, Web at Hatch
Work history
Sep 2026 - Present · 2 months · Head of Experience
Oct 2025 - Present · 1.1 years · User Experience Researcher
Jul 2017 - Oct 2025 · 8.3 years · Senior Strategist, Devices Design Group, Senior Researcher, Industrial Design
Aug 2024 - Aug 2024 · 1 month · Design Fellow
Nov 2015 - Jul 2017 · 1.8 years · Senior Experience Strategist
Apr 2014 - Nov 2015 · 1.7 years · Senior Product Design Strategist
May 2013 - Apr 2014 · 1 year · Design Strategist
Jul 2012 - May 2013 · 11 months · Architectural Designer
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Sep 2011 - Sep 2012 · 1.1 years · Program Development Associate
Jun 2007 - Sep 2011 · 4.3 years · Architectural Designer
Sep 2006 - Sep 2009 · 3.1 years · Designer
Jan 2006 - Dec 2007 · 2 years · Intern, LEED Consultant
Sep 2006 - Jun 2007 · 10 months · Model Builder
Jan 2006 - Dec 2006 · 1 year · Volunteer
May 2005 - Aug 2005 · 4 months · Transportation Intern
Jun 2001 - Jun 2002 · 1.1 years · Histology Technician
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