Your Product’s X-Factor

Christian Crumlish

My name is Christian, but you can spell it Xian, xian (which looks better to my eye), or even χian. I’m a product person, team leader & music lover.

I host the Design in Product community for people interested in the relationship between UX design and product management, and I curate the Design in Product conference with Rosenfeld Media.

In my copious spare time I consult on Product and UX leadership at Design in Product, and occasionally still assist in the development and launch of products, such as OptiListen. (We're not taking new clients right now but I am available for speaking engagements.)

As of February of 2024 I'm the Director of Product at 18F, a digital services agency within the Technology Transformation Services department of the General Services Administration (GSA) of the United States Government.

In August of 2022, after working on COVID19.CA.GOV and cannabis.ca.gov, I was appointed by the Governor of California as senior product manager for the Office of Data and Innovation. In February of 2023 I was made the senior official performing the duties of the Acting Deputy Director for Service Innovation. In February of 2024 I resigned to take a new position as a Fed.

When the pandemic first hit, I joined a volunteer effort spearheaded by Ramesh Raskar, an MIT Media Lab professor, and built a product team at the PathCheck Foundation.

Before all that, I was VP of Product at 7 Cups, Senior Director of Product & UX at CloudOn (acquired by Dropbox in 2015), Director of Product for AIM, & the last curator of the Yahoo design pattern library.

Speaking

I speak at User Experience and Product conferences & facilitate workshops for leaders that struggle with how their UX & Product teams should be structured or relate.

Be in touch to check my availability or schedule me for your team or event.

Writing

I like to write about UX, product, team building, and remote collaboration. My book Product Management for UX People dropped on March 3, 2022. I also wrote The Power of Many (Wiley), and co-wrote Designing Social Interfaces (O’Reilly). I have another book in progress called Growing Product People (Sense & Respond), too.

Ukulele

When I’m not consulting, writing, or speaking, I’m either playing or writing songs on my ukulele. I believe music is one of the fundamental universal languages and both a channel for, and model of, understanding and sympathy among people making something meaningful together in harmony. I've presented on the "secrets" of the pentatonic scales and how to design for play drawing on music among other sources for these insights, but really it's just my happy place.