I joined as the first design leader at a Series E public safety platform. I grew the design and research org from 3 to 18, shifted Waterfall to Agile, and built a research practice that brought engineers into precincts and dispatch centers.
Mark43 makes cloud-based software for first responders and the communities they serve. The tools have to bring transparency, accountability, and speed to public safety. The pitch is simple: when the software works better, response times drop and communities are safer. That's what kept the work urgent every day.
Public safety tech is notoriously outdated. Poor usability. No real accessibility consideration. Workflows that ignore the people who actually use them. I saw a chance to change that. Modernizing the interfaces was the easy part. The harder one was bringing real empathy for first responders and the communities they protect into every design decision we made.
First design hire in an engineering-led R&D org. The work was less about screens and more about building the practice that would ship them.
No career ladder, no calibrated critique, no shared definition of “good.” Designers were doing strong individual work without a practice around them.
Design wasn't part of the roadmap conversation. Decisions were made in eng leadership, then handed to design to dress up.
A Series E company scaling fast on a process built for predictability. The seams were starting to show in every release cycle.
Two investments running in parallel: the practice and the research engine. Scale one without the other and neither holds up.
Career ladder in the first 30 days. Real partnerships with eng and PM leadership shortly after. The investment in research turned out to be the unlock. Research trips brought engineers and PMs into precincts and dispatch centers with us, and suddenly research wasn't just a design thing. It was everyone's thing.
The first artifact, shipped in 30 days. Two parallel tracks, calibrated against each other. Designers got a credible path to grow on. Hiring managers got a calibrated bar.
She established a design career ladder where none had been before. She retained design ICs long past their typical tenure, and aggressively hired for a company in an industry often overlooked by top talent.
James Friedman, Head of Product, Mark43 (now Head of Product at Cinder)
Public safety software gets used at 3am, in vehicles, under stress. The principles had to reflect that reality, not aesthetics for their own sake.
Every decision starts with the responder and the community they serve. Field research isn't a phase. It's the precondition.
These tools run in cars, at 3am, in dispatch centers under load. Contrast, target sizes, focus order. None of it optional. The hardest contexts set the bar.
Design influence comes from partnership, not titles. Show up with research, with prototypes, with a point of view. The seat shows up with you.
A day in public safety runs across five operational stages. Friction concentrates in the middle, where the report has to hold up, the context has to carry, and the next shift inherits whatever you didn't document.
Triage 911 calls and route the right unit, fast.
Caller information fragments across multiple systems and screens.
Arrive on scene, assess, and stabilize.
Hard to pull prior context on a person or location in the moment.
Build a complete record while leads are still fresh.
Reports compete for attention with active calls and field work.
Document what happened with enough detail to hold up later.
Reporting eats hours; prior reports and templates aren't reusable.
Hand off to the next shift and to command without dropping context.
Information loss between shifts is the unspoken norm.
The org-building work mapped to four phases. Each phase shipped artifacts that outlasted the moment they were built for. That's how you know the function is real.
What's the actual state of design influence here? Who's blocked? Where does the unit of work begin?
Designers need a ladder to grow on. PMs and engineers need a partner to engage with. The first 60 days set the rest.
Hiring fast without breaking the practice. Holding the standard as the team triples and surface area expands.
A practice that survives without me. Rituals owned by senior leaders, not held together by the VP.
Mark43's product spans the operational chain from 911 call to court-ready report. My team partnered across the surface area, with deepest engagement on the field-facing tools where reporting fatigue lives.
911 call intake, unit assignment, real-time location and status.
Field-facing access for first responders during a call.
Reporting, booking, evidence, the system of record for an agency.
Digital citation issuance and management at the roadside.
Operational dashboards and public reporting for leadership.
Each artifact closed a specific gap in the practice. Together, they made the function durable enough to hold the standard whether or not I was in the room.
The first artifact, shipped in the first 30 days. Gave every designer a credible path to grow on, and gave hiring managers a calibrated bar.
The foundation that scaled with the team. Held the line on accessibility and consistency as we tripled in size and surface area expanded.
Field trips brought engineers and PMs into precincts and dispatch centers. Research stopped being a design thing and became everyone's thing.
Championed the shift from Waterfall alongside engineering leadership. Hard transformation, but the right one for a Series E company at enterprise speed.
Some of the surfaces we partnered on. Where the practice showed up day-to-day.
When the software works better, response times drop and communities are safer.
The mandate that shaped every decision
These are the numbers I point to when asked what changed at Mark43.
Two calls I'd defend in any retrospective. Both involved trading short-term comfort for compounding leverage.
At 6× growth, every quarter you spend hand-holding senior ICs is a quarter you don't have surface coverage. The cost was uneven onboarding in months one and two. The gain was holding the line on the practice's reach.
A system before the team needed it created drag for a quarter. By month six it was the only reason we could absorb 6× the scope without losing the accessibility and consistency standard.
Lean or lengthy, every workflow we shipped was validated by end users. The cost was sometimes slower cycles. The gain was confidence that what we shipped held up under real conditions, the only kind that matters in public safety.
What I'd give more time to is the work after the foundation. We grew the team 6× in under two years, shifted Waterfall to Agile, and got engineers and PMs into precincts and dispatch centers with us. What I didn't fully see coming was how hard it would be to make any of that durable beyond my own tenure.
Some of this was velocity. When you're the first design leader at a Series E platform scaling at enterprise speed, every quarter brings a new fire. We built rituals (critiques, learning sessions, research trips) but rituals only stick when their owners stick. A fast-growing team is a team in constant flux.
What I'd do differently is invest earlier in the second layer of leadership. Hiring senior designers wasn't enough. They needed air cover to own the rituals, the system, and the partnerships I was holding together day-to-day. The work that lasts at a public safety platform isn't the screens you ship. It's the practice you leave behind. That's where I'd push harder now.
