david_baden

David Baden

I work at the intersection of product and design, helping teams find clarity and momentum — especially in the messy, early stages. I care about the "why" as much as the "how," and I'm drawn to projects where structure, story, and intuition need to align.

Lately, I've been exploring how AI can support creativity, shape experience through language, and make the hard parts of building a little easier.

Work Experience

Treering

Head of Product Strategy, Design & UX 2021–Present
  • Drove product strategy and design innovation that contributed to scaling company revenue from $7M to $50M, including the launch of new business lines, AI integration, and a streamlined customer experience across platforms.
  • Lead product strategy, design, and UX across two business units: (1) an online yearbook platform used by over 14,000 schools and 1.5 million users annually, and (2) a B2B2C initiative partnering with cruise lines and lifestyle brands to deliver white-labeled memory capture and print-on-demand services.
  • Led product management and integration of proprietary AI models into the company's flagship yearbook platform—collaborating with data science, design, and engineering to automate photo selection, optimize layouts, and personalize the creation experience for millions of users.
  • Designed and launched a customer-facing approval and commenting system for print-on-demand designs, reducing turnaround times by over 75% and enabling seamless collaboration between internal teams and external brand partners.
  • Developed and launched a customer lifecycle initiative that increased engagement by 38% and improved feature adoption by 22% through more strategic communication and segmentation.
  • Built a customer insights pipeline combining ML-based sentiment analysis with ongoing qualitative research—including interviews with users, stakeholders, and support teams—to inform roadmap prioritization and drive alignment across product and design.
AI Integration Revenue Growth Product Strategy B2B2C Partnerships Customer Insights

Independent

Freelance Product Consultant 2015–2021
  • Worked with early-stage startups and entertainment brands to define product strategy, improve UX, and develop digital marketing frameworks for consumer-facing platforms.
  • Advised product teams on customer experience design, information architecture, and feature prioritization for mobile and web applications.
  • Helped a national edtech company transition its legacy Flash-based application to a modern, responsive JavaScript framework—guiding product and UX decisions to improve usability and performance.
  • Led UX strategy for multiple consumer-facing mobile platforms—including onboarding, information architecture, and feature flows—helping simplify complex planning tasks and improve engagement.
  • Supported the design and development of an augmented reality application used by television and film professionals to plan camera positioning, scene composition, and location-based effects during pre-production.
Product Strategy UX Design Tech Migration AR Development Information Architecture

Spot

Co-Founder & Product Lead 2013–2014
  • Founded and led product for a mobile travel discovery app offering personalized city guides through data-driven recommendations and clean mobile UX.
  • Took the product from concept to beta, launching ten editorially curated city guides built on a proprietary database of over 50,000 vetted locations.
  • Drove product discovery through four major prototype iterations to identify product-market fit.
  • Built and led an 8-person cross-functional team; launched web and mobile apps and raised a $2M seed round to fund product development.
Founding Fundraising Team Building Product Discovery Mobile UX

StumbleUpon

Director of Product 2012–2013
  • Led key product initiatives for a social content discovery platform with over 600,000 daily active users.
  • Led redesign of desktop UX, increasing new user retention by over 10%.
  • Conceived and launched "StumbleUpon Lists," adopted by nearly 30% of users; 3.3M+ lists created in four months.
  • Delivered Lists to market in three months, collaborating closely with engineering and data science.
  • Managed vendor selection and integration for social, commenting, and moderation tools.
Scale UX Redesign Feature Launch User Retention Vendor Management

Linden Lab (Second Life)

Director of Product & UX Designer 2010–2012
  • Led the redesign of key user-facing systems in Second Life, driving major usability improvements.
  • Directed product and UX strategy across avatar creation, e-commerce, social features, and communication tools.
  • Delivered a comprehensive redesign that improved task success rates by over 60%.
  • Streamlined user journeys through cross-functional collaboration and data-informed prioritization—resulting in improved onboarding, retention, and engagement.
System Redesign Virtual Worlds Task Success User Journeys Cross-functional

Skills & Expertise

Product & UX

Product Strategy UX Research Design Systems Figma User Testing A/B Testing

AI & Technology

OpenAI API Claude Code Python Prompt Engineering ML Integration Prototyping

Leadership

Team Building Strategy Stakeholder Management Agile Cross-functional Mentoring

Let's Connect

Email

davebaden@gmail.com

LinkedIn

linkedin.com/in/david-baden