Joel Goldfoot.
I lead product design organizations that turn complex, data-intensive platforms into AI-first experiences that people trust and agents understand.
The work I'm most invested in right now: designing the behavioral layer of AI products. The systematic, testable specifications that govern how an intelligent system communicates confidence, handles uncertainty, and recovers from failure. Most teams treat this as a UX polish problem. I treat it as an engineering-specification challenge, and I've built the teams and methodology to back itserved up.
At Conviva, a Silicon Valley-based real-time intelligence platform processing over 500 billion events daily, I lead global design, research, and content teams across the U.S., India, and China. I built a solo AI-native prototype in three weeks that landed a $1M annual contract, establishing UX as a sales differentiator for the first time in company history. I led design strategy for a product line that reached $11M ARR within its first year, and shaped the design approach behind Conviva's Visionary placement in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Monitoring.
I formalized the behavioral design approach in my book, How to Lead Design in the AI Era (ai-plus.design), and created BiModal Design (bimodal.design), an open-source framework for building interfaces that serve both human users and AI agents. I co-authored a paper on stateful analytics UX published at ACM CHI 2024, contributed to a U.S. patent for visual programming in analytics, and serve as a member of the OpenAI Forum. Trained in systems thinking at MIT.
Recognition. Over 100 design awards spanning 30 years, including the cover of HOW Magazine back when I thought goatees were cool. My work has contributed to Conviva's Visionary placement in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Monitoring, and my research on stateful analytics UX was published at ACM CHI 2024. I currently serve on the Design Thinking Advisory Board at the University of California, Riverside, and advise Lexus North America on product innovation and customer experience.
I live in San Francisco with my wife Jill and our snarky little Poohuahua (Poodle-Chihuahua, for the uninitiated). We love the crazy city life, drag, food, and friends.
