I help teams solve difficult problems in Enterprise products.

Notable work

September, 2019 to March, 2020

Bose, an international leader in audio equipment, was creating a platform for Creators to build and share Augmented Reality Audio experiences.

In an emerging technology, there were a lot of questions on how AR Audio could be used. Bose wanted to solve that.

Integrating with the existing Bose team, I was brought in to establish design best practices, user testing processes, create accessibility guidelines, and update the visual design to meet modern standards. I helped move feature definition away from hypotheticals, and used user feedback to help grow the AR Creator Tool.

Bose AR logo
ezCater logo

April to July, 2019

ezCater, an online marketplace for corporate catering, was growing a new team to handle the entry funnel for new customers — their landing screens.

The rapidly-expanding company, valued at over $1.25b, was invested in understanding and presenting the correct content to users searching for business catering.

ezCater reached out to Cantina to optimize this customer experience on mobile, tablet, and desktop. Using A/B testing, prototyping, component-based design, fast iterations, and metric definitions, I defined and lead the user experience work and user interface design of their landing screen types.

task rabbit logo

January to March, 2010

A decade ago, I helped streamline TaskRabbit’s checkout flow as they transitioned from small startup to nationally recognized product.

Before TaskRabbit was nationally known, they were a small startup named RunMyErrand, preparing for a big change.

Using research, interviews, and testing: I helped reduce task postings from 6 screens down to a single screen — reducing posting time from several minutes to <90 seconds.

HealthCareSource logo

October, 2018 to March, 2019

HealthCareSource, a multi-million dollar healthcare recruiting company, wanted to create a new standard for digital tools in their industry.

This large enterprise wanted to create an easier and more efficient process for recruiting healthcare professionals.

I led the visual design portion of the ideation, research and design of this greenfield application. Using interviews, prototyping and fast iterations, we created a streamlined and efficient prototype.

Due to the nature of consulting work, not all work is available for the public.

Mike Kivikoski Headshot

I’ve been fortunate enough to work on projects with budgets in the seven figures, speak at conferences around the States, and have had my work shipped to literally millions of users.

With over fourteen years of professional software experience, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in design, I solve difficult problems in Enterprise level software. I am proficient with Problem Identification, User Research, Interviews & Testing, and UX Flows. The depth of my knowledge and skills are in Visual Design, UI Development and Code Integration.

Learn more about me

Featured Talks & Media

CascadiaJS — Seattle, WA, Aug 2016

CSS Pseudo

This talk was part of a 2-day single track conference in Seattle, WA with 300+ in attendance. Learn practical uses for over 35 pseudo-classes and pseudo-elements. Starting with the basics, you’ll quickly advance to use cases that apply to positioning, text, content, and get a glimpse at some (hopeful) future selectors.

Watch on YouTube CSS Pseudo Slides
O’Reilly media — Oct 2014

UI Development for Engineers

Video series with O’Reilly Media that introduces developers to design concepts and front-end development. The course teaches views how to create UI design mockups and then make them real, with production ready markup.

View on O’Reilly.com
Creative Mornings — Mar 2012

Taking the plunge

This Creative Mornings Boston talk included Highlights, tips, and tricks for folks looking to become self-employed. I discussed processes, myths, and methods that help make a successful transition. Prep work involved, how to mitigate risk, and how to transition successfully; as I learned over the course of my 5 years of running a small consulting business.

Watch on YouTube

Capabilities

User Research
User Flows
Design Sprints
Visual Design
Design Systems
HTML, CSS / Sass
CSS Architecture
Accessibility
Performance
Typography