Charles Buchwald

Resume

Charles Buchwald

Principal UX Designer Minneapolis, MN · charles.e.buchwald@gmail.com · 507.321.0257 Portfolio: charlesbuchwald-portfolio.vercel.app/resume · LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/charlesbuchwald GitHub: github.com/charlesbuchwald

Principal UX Designer | AI Product Design at Scale | Leading AI-First Transformation in Regulated Environments

Designated AI Champion at a top-10 US bank, where I founded a responsible-design practice that ran 75+ sessions on transparency, bias mitigation, guardrails, override patterns, and human-in-the-loop design. I operate at the system level, not the artifact level - at the seam where design, engineering, and product converge. Engineering depth to reach problems pure designers can't access; design judgment to frame problems pure engineers won't see. Track record of measurable leverage: a 10-year modernization roadmap for expert users in a regulated industry compressed to 3; a $30,000/month vendor problem eliminated in one day; a design ethics community that restarted after a corporate reorg because participants thought it was worth restarting.

U.S. Bank · Minneapolis, MN · 2019 - 2024

VP, Development Group Manager - Transportation Services / Business Technology Services (2023-2024) AVP, Senior Experience Strategist / Architect - Personalization Studio, Retail Payment Services (2019-2022)

Five years designing risk, fraud, and compliance workflows in a top-10 regulated US bank, across multiple Product Group verticals.

Voyager Modernization (2023-2024) Served as Design Manager structurally embedded in U.S. Bank's Product organization - one of 12 designers in that position across a ~360-person design org, with direct access to product strategy, planning, and user research most peers couldn't reach.

  • Led 10-person team (4 designers, 2 accessibility consultants, 2 UX researchers, 2 content developers) on overhaul of Voyager, the bank's 30-year-old fleet management product for enterprise Fleet Managers - expert users, ingrained workflows, heavily regulated industry, continuous delivery into a live environment
  • Compressed a 10-year UI/UX modernization roadmap to 3 years by reframing 80 report templates as 12 reusable components; used LUMA facilitation to build cross-triad consensus across product, engineering, and design as part of the workflow - not as a handoff
  • Operated at product strategy level: contributed to roadmap planning and stakeholder alignment normally reserved for Head of Design level
  • Designed search, drafting, and review workflows for trust-critical financial decisions across thousands of vehicles per fleet
  • Architected information hierarchy to surface regulatory compliance requirements, approval chains, and audit trails within Fleet Manager task flows
  • Planned and executed iterative usability studies with UX Researchers and Fleet Managers - recruited 47 participants across 6 enterprise clients, moderated 62 sessions, synthesized findings into research artifacts that shifted roadmap prioritization and informed the component reframing strategy

AI Champion & Design Ethics Community of Practice (2021-2024) Designated AI Champion by U.S. Bank's enterprise AI program. Founded and led the Design Ethics community of practice 2021-2023 alongside formal design leadership roles - with org support, not as a JD line - and served as senior advisor in 2024.

  • Led 75+ closed weekly sessions reaching ~25% of the design organization, covering responsible AI, LLM/generative technologies, transparency moments, safety guardrails, override and recovery patterns, bias mitigation, dark patterns, behavioral design, and data governance
  • The community survived a 2024 corporate reorganization: when the sponsoring structure was dissolved, participants chose to restart it independently.
  • Co-authored the Designers' Code of Ethics in partnership with the Global Ethics Office
  • The only forum at the bank where designers could hear directly from internal AI and ethics experts; built bridges to AI Ethics, Behavioral Science, and external networks including Grace Hopper

Other contributions

  • Designed and facilitated UX Bootcamp for Non-UXers × 23 sessions (including 382-person session); format adopted by Product and Agile Bootcamp facilitators
  • Contributed to Shield Ways of Working Toolkit and Experience Design Guide; co-developed enterprise personalization strategy
  • Mentored 19 colleagues; mentees moved to Apple, TIAA, and Target
  • Gold Shield Award (Cardlytics); Silver Shield Award (Innovation); Innovation Champion; LUMA cohort member

Museografica · Minneapolis MN / Mexico City · 2014 - present

Partner, Interactive Experience

Binational museum-technology firm. End-to-end exhibit work: planning, design, interactive media, fabrication, installation.

  • Bringing agentic AI workflows in-house for content production, research, and rapid prototyping; advising museum clients on multi-modal, future-proof AI content systems
  • CIMMYT 50th-Anniversary Museum: designed and built a distributed open-source interactive system now in its 10th year of operation - V1 precedent for Sinthius, an open-source framework addressing the exhibit longevity problem
  • Clients include Minnesota Historical Society, Parks Canada, Goethe Institut, Televisa, and Novo Nordisk
  • Improved 40-year-old firm's profit margins by 9% through Agile adoption and infrastructure-driven workflow

Selected Earlier Work: Design × Engineering

Sage Technologies - Designer & Programmer Built batch-processing routines for West Publishing Corporation - now with Thomson Reuters - delivering two projects in 40% of budgeted time; saved $10,000 in planned hardware spend through an automatic cataloging system. Additional clients: BMW (Fallon Advertising), Pillsbury, Minnesota Children's Museum.

Park Tool - Art Director World's largest bicycle tool manufacturer. Designed consumer products including the P-handle wrench (still available in 27 variations); built a custom DAM + CMS driving print and web publishing in 5 languages. Contributed to 10% YOY growth.

Kavouras, Inc. - Art Director Led development of a premier broadcast weather graphics product, cutting development cycle time 75%. Turned a $30,000/month vendor problem - the European Space Agency changed a satellite image format - into a one-day fix using Photoshop automation and custom scripting on a standalone machine.

Tools & Stack

AI & prototyping: Figma, Figma Make, v0, Cursor, Claude Code, Python notebooks, Claude / GPT for prompt design, model sandboxes, no-code AI orchestration tools. Facilitation: LUMA. Process: Agile / Lean, JIRA, Git.

Education

BA, Studio Art - College of Wooster C/C++ Programming - Science Museum of Minnesota Yacht Design and Naval Architecture - Westlawn School