About

Brad Becker leads product design for IBM Watson.  Over 20 years experience creating market-leading products/platforms with superior user experiences. Team leadership and hands-on expertise across all aspects of product creation from product management to product design/UX to development.

Previously 

chief experience officer at buuteeq (now Priceline) where he led the user experience and customer support organizations; Director of Product Management at Microsoft for Windows Azure, Silverlight, .NET, and the Expression tools; founding member of the UX consulting team at Macromedia (now Adobe) and the Senior Product Designer for Flash and Flex products including Flash streaming video which enabled modern video on the internet. Prior to working at Macromedia, Brad spent eleven years as a software engineer and user interface team lead in the development of commercial client/server and enterprise SaaS web applications.

Brad has been quoted in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. In his spare time, Brad created web projects for clients including Universal Music, Arista, and Mojo Records. He also found time to form a band, record six albums, perform for half a million people, and write songs for television and one very forgettable Warner Bros movie.

History

Founded Scary Noises in 1997 for digital product strategy and design consulting.

Owns end-to-end customer experience for the buuteeq products from product workflows and user interface to customer on-boarding and support. Built UX Design team, designed product features to allow expansion internationally and into mid and upper hotel markets. Managed and grew the customer support team, establishing tools and processes to reduce churn, improve response times, and increase customer satisfaction rates.

Director of Product Management for cloud media platform. Managed teams responsible for several next-generation platforms and technologies for the cloud, web, mobile, and desktops. Responsible for globally launching an entire new line of products for professional designers—the Expression family of tools—as well as the WPF graphics platform of .NET which achieved over 75% adoption worldwide. Secured executive approval and funding for the creation and business development of Silverlight. Championed product from vision to the fastest growing developer platform in the industry at the time with over 600 million users in under four years. Landed articles/quotes in New York Times, Wall Street Journal, US Today to drive awareness and growth.

Sr. User Experience Consultant at Macromedia (Adobe)

Founding UX member of the Macromedia consulting group. Designed and prototyped cutting-edge solutions for clients including Avaya, Sherwin Williams, Dorado, Standard & Poor’s, General Dynamics, and a major redesign of Yahoo! Maps.

Sr. Product Designer at Macromedia (Adobe)

Leadership team member and the product designer for all Flash and Flex products. The Flash Player achieved 98% market adoption and Flash streaming video won a Technical Emmy and enabled modern internet video experiences such as YouTube and Hulu. Designed features and worked with multiple product teams to get them implemented. One of four members of the cross-product user interface board at Macromedia making user interface and application design decisions for the $400M Studio product suite.

UI/UX Team Lead at NDCHealth (McKesson)

As a software engineer, designed and developed proof-of-concept prototype which green-lit new SaaS B2B product for hospitals. To build the full product, conceptualized a User Experience team responsible for UI layer, defined roles, recruited UI developers and designers. Managed team and established visual design standards, coding best practices, and UX methodologies. Pioneered early cloud, AJAX, and RIA technologies. Created online tool to track and turn UX specs into documentation and API calls. Hands-on participation in the entire development cycle from contextual inquiry, use cases, and requirements to prototyping, software development, usability testing, and QA testing. Coordinated external graphic design agency, internal DBA’s and software engineers, customers, and product management. Product in use at over 1000 hospitals across the US.

Performing and Recording Artist with Universal Records

Signed to Mojo/Universal Records. Wrote, recorded, and released several nationally distributed albums. Toured across North America, playing to over half a million people at venues like Red Rocks and the Hollywood Bowl. Wrote songs placed in television shows and major motion pictures