# Adam Hickey > Independent product designer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for complex enterprise software: enterprise design systems, modernizing legacy products, AI product prototyping and embedded senior product design. Product design for software that got complicated, plus identity and illustration made end to end. Twenty years inside enterprise platforms, design systems, and products that outgrew their original shape. Works with product leaders across the United States, remotely and in person. Contact: adam@adamhickey.com. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamdhickey/ Every page is plain HTML with its content in the markup; nothing is rendered by script. Each page carries a canonical URL, an Open Graph card and a schema.org graph (Person, ProfessionalService, Article, Service, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList), and https://adamhickey.com/sitemap.xml lists all twenty-two pages with a last-modified date. ## Engagements The four things you can hire. Each page states who it is for, how long it takes, how it is priced, what the client's team gives and what they leave with, and answers the questions people ask. - [Product Clarity](https://adamhickey.com/engagement/product-clarity.html): turn a complicated product into one agreed problem, a sequence of decisions, and a direction the team can judge. Two to four weeks, fixed scope and fixed fee. - [Design System Foundation](https://adamhickey.com/engagement/design-system-foundation.html): one shared foundation that several teams actually use, with the operating rules that keep it that way. A three-week fixed-fee diagnostic, then a build scoped from it, usually two to three months. - [Embedded Senior Product Design](https://adamhickey.com/engagement/embedded-senior-product-design.html): a senior owner for an initiative that has none, inside the team rather than beside it. Three to six months, two to four days a week, priced as reserved weekly capacity. - [Working Product Prototype](https://adamhickey.com/engagement/working-product-prototype.html): from ideas and sketches to a working product real people can use, and an honest build, kill, or park call. Four to six weeks, fixed scope and fixed fee. ## Writing Six articles, each answering in its first paragraph a question people ask about complicated software before they know who to ask. The index is at https://adamhickey.com/writing/index.html. - [Why enterprise UX problems are usually organizational problems](https://adamhickey.com/writing/why-enterprise-ux-problems-are-organizational-problems.html): the interface is where the problem showed up, not where it started; what sits behind inconsistency, stalled decisions and unused systems. - [What should a working prototype actually prove?](https://adamhickey.com/writing/what-should-a-working-prototype-actually-prove.html): whether the idea is worth building, in real code on real inputs with the people who would use it, ending in a build, kill, or park call. - [When does a product need a design system?](https://adamhickey.com/writing/when-does-a-product-need-a-design-system.html): when more than one team builds the same component differently and the product shows it; what belongs in a system and what keeps it alive. - [What I learned standardizing UX across 40+ SAP Fiori apps](https://adamhickey.com/writing/standardizing-ux-across-40-sap-fiori-apps.html): one style guide and component library, feedback loops, checks in the release process, and teams that own it; design-to-development time down by about a third, production UI defects down by more than half. - [Why AI-built interfaces drift from your design system](https://adamhickey.com/writing/is-your-design-system-ready-for-ai-agents.html): AI coding tools are a third audience for a design system, they generate from whatever the organization made legible, and the test is to give an agent a real task. - [Where does design end and development begin, now?](https://adamhickey.com/writing/where-does-design-end-and-development-begin-now.html): AI moved the line; it now sits at what one person can build, verify and responsibly stand behind, and engineers come in for leverage rather than rescue. ## Case studies - [One real-time view of a 450+ truck fleet](https://adamhickey.com/case-study/dispatch-complexity.html): lead product design for Midwest Couriers, a research-led dispatch cockpit. - [Making 40+ enterprise apps feel like one product](https://adamhickey.com/case-study/sap-product-maturity.html): lead UX for a global corporation's SAP Fiori suite, under a governed design system and an accessibility standard. - [Grant tools unified into one trusted platform](https://adamhickey.com/case-study/usda-operational-overhead.html): lead product design for the USDA-backed Nutrition Incentive Hub. - [A global innovation network on one brand and platform](https://adamhickey.com/case-study/innovators-studio-visual-identity.html): identity and a multi-year internal platform for a worldwide innovation network. - [13 years as an enterprise design consultant](https://adamhickey.com/case-study/enterprise-consulting.html): the RBA years, 2013 to 2026, for CBRE, Toro, Banner Bank and International Trucks. - [8 years as a hybrid designer / developer](https://adamhickey.com/case-study/hybrid-designer.html): three Minneapolis studios, 2005 to 2013, the last five years at Pixel Farm. ## Built end to end Products designed, built and illustrated alone. - [How I built Door County Found](https://adamhickey.com/case-study/door-county-found.html): a curated travel guide where every place is structured data, built on Astro and edited through a web form. - [How I built Lucy Learns](https://adamhickey.com/case-study/lucy-learns.html): a dog-training app that works offline, built for one household, with the AI tools run from a terminal instead of a chat window. - [How I built While We're Here](https://adamhickey.com/case-study/while-were-here.html): a 300mm square hardcover of essays produced from HTML and CSS through a paged-media engine. ## Optional - [Homepage](https://adamhickey.com/): the practice, the four engagements, selected work, and About. - [Design system](https://adamhickey.com/design-system/index.html): the tokens, type, spacing and components behind the site, documented from the stylesheets. - [Résumé (PDF)](https://adamhickey.com/Adam%20Hickey%20Resume.pdf)