About Me

I'm Josh Keyes. I've spent the last 14 years making complex systems feel simple — designing for nurses, financial advisors, insurance members, construction crews, utility operators, and a lot of people who just want to find the right doctor.

I'm a UX Architect at Perficient, where I lead user research and design for enterprise clients in healthcare and financial services. Before that, I worked across industries — automotive, energy, fitness, insurance — always gravitating toward the problems where the underlying system is complicated and the user just needs it to work.

Where I Come From

I studied Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Michigan, where I learned to think about design as an applied science — equal parts empathy and evidence. My graduate work included designing an in-vehicle center console interface for Ford. That project taught me something I've carried ever since: a driver with their eyes on the road doesn't have attention left over for learning your interface. It either gets out of the way, or it fails.

How I Work

I'm a mixed-methods researcher who happens to design interfaces. Card sorts, surveys, and analytics tell you what's happening. Moderated interviews and usability testing tell you why. I use both because neither tells the whole story alone.

I start by understanding the problem — through research, interviews, whatever it takes to not guess. From there I'm pragmatic: if speed matters, I'll wireframe and test in parallel. If the stakes are high, I'll add rigor. I document everything because nothing frustrates me more than watching a well-considered design fall apart in implementation because someone had to guess at the intent.

I specialize in the complicated stuff: multi-user systems where different roles need different things from the same platform. Healthcare portals where regulatory constraints and user needs are constantly in tension. Search and discovery systems where the information architecture is the product. These aren't the flashiest design problems, but they're the ones where getting it right actually changes someone's day.

What's Next

Fourteen years in, the problems I find most interesting are the ones where the system is smarter than it used to be but the interface hasn't caught up. How do you design for tools whose capabilities shift faster than you can ship? How do you build trust when the user can't fully predict what happens next? These aren't new questions for me — I've been designing for complexity, building trust through clarity, and serving users with very different mental models for my entire career. The domain is evolving. The design problems are familiar.

In practice, that means AI is part of how I work now — Claude for research synthesis, first drafts, and wireframes, and a lot of time evaluating what these tools generate on their own. Being specific about where that output falls short is the useful part — it's the same critique muscle I built as a usability auditor at the start of my career.

Outside Work

I live in Traverse City, Michigan with my wife Erin, our two kids, and three miniature dachshunds who have, in fact, taken over the household. I'm a lifelong Michigan State Spartans fan and a long-suffering Detroit sports enthusiast — a combination that's taught me more about optimism than any self-help book could.

I've read over 340 books since 2008, mostly thrillers and speculative fiction. Jack Carr, Daniel Silva, N.K. Jemisin, Blake Crouch — if it's tense and the pages turn fast, I'm in. I keep a running list and I'm always looking for the next one.

If you want to talk about design, a good book, or Michigan, I'm easy to reach.