John Pechacek
Product Designer
(469) 279-8479 | johnapechacek@gmail.com
Product designer with over a decade of experience leading research-led design across consumer mobile, web, and institutional software products. My work spans the full design cycle, from user interviews and survey research to high-fidelity prototyping and design-to-development handoff, with the front-end fluency to collaborate directly with engineering on implementation. Recent work at Moultrie includes designing AI-assisted product features, running multi-method research projects, and initiating the company’s first cross-functional design workshop.
Experience
Moultrie
Product Designer — November 2024 – Present
- Led Phase 1 design of Buck List, a manual system for identifying and tracking individual bucks across trail camera images. The feature achieved 27% user adoption in its first season, identified over 300,000+ unique bucks, and is projected to generate $11.8M in new FY27 revenue.
- Conducted a multi-method hunt planning research project spanning competitive analysis across 4+ apps, 8 user interviews, and a 151-person survey; findings reframed the team’s model of hunter decision-making and are actively shaping a major product initiative in development.
- Initiated Moultrie’s first cross-functional design workshop, making the case to leadership and writing three research-derived personas used throughout the session. 13 participants across product, engineering, marketing, QA, and customer experience generated one prototype now confirmed for the product initiative in development.
- Resolved a late-breaking ML constraint by partnering with engineering to design and ship a custom image cropping solution in a three-week window before development began, replacing a planned automated approach without delaying the season launch deadline.
- Led end-to-end design of Navigate to Pin, a feature guiding hunters through pre-dawn terrain to trail cameras and hunting stands, including automatic trail logging and return-to-origin navigation. Currently in development and targeting 10% user activation and 15% track-save conversion in its first release season.
- Solved a two-dimensional data visualization challenge for the Activity feature’s wind view, designing a stacked bar chart that maps both direction and speed in a single accessible view. Chose an existing Syncfusion component to minimize development lift, designed an accessible color system for wind speed segments, and added a selectable chip key that highlights corresponding bars when users filter by speed.
Istation
Web Application Engineer — January 2023 – June 2024
- Conducted a detailed audit of the web application documenting discrepancies between design specifications and production implementation, device responsiveness issues, and accessibility concerns; findings served as a shared reference across product, QA, development, and engineering teams.
- Implemented Figma designs across dozens of app components and modules, developing hands-on fluency with where design intent and production behavior diverge.
- Built and maintained the SCSS styling structure for a lessons template app hosting thousands of K-12 lessons, establishing visual consistency across 5 themes and multiple device types.
UX/UI Design Lead — June 2019 – January 2023
- Designed Introduction to Computers, a pre-K experience teaching mouse and tablet interaction before benchmark assessments; built on interviews with 5 teachers, the feature addressed inaccurate assessment data caused by technology unfamiliarity among first-time computer users.
- Created a suite of 7 interactive pre-K Spanish reading activities unified by a gamified rewards system, covering 25% of all pre-K U.S. reading standards; led cross-functional design thinking sessions that aligned educational experts, designers, and engineers on the curriculum concept and production plan.
- Conducted usability tests with pre-K student users throughout the design process, surfacing critical interaction issues including symbol comprehension failures and counter sequencing problems that were resolved before development began.
- Mentored 5 designers in technical skills and cross-functional collaboration, supporting their work on projects with tight deadlines.
Skills
Design & Prototyping:
- Figma
- Adobe Creative Suite
- High-Fidelity Prototyping
- Design Systems
- Responsive Web Design
- Cross-Platform Design
- Interaction Design
Research & Strategy:
- UX Research
- Usability Testing
- User Interviews
- Survey Design
- Competitive Analysis
- Persona Development
- Design Thinking
- AI-Assisted Research
Technical Fluency:
- HTML
- CSS
- SCSS
- JavaScript
- Git
- Accessibility
Collaboration:
- Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Design-to-Development Handoff
- Technical Documentation
- Mentorship
Education
Southern Methodist University — Dallas, Texas
Certificate Program – User Experience Design | June 2021
University of Texas at Dallas — Dallas, Texas
Bachelor of Arts – Arts and Technology | August 2012