Melissa Carmichael

I’m Melissa Carmichael, Founder of Spread Good Design—a hands-on partner for product and marketing teams who need sharper UX, faster insights, and ideas that actually ship. When onboarding falls flat, growth ideas sit untouched, or your team isn’t sure where to focus next, I help cut through the noise. I bring 20+ years of experience designing B2B and consumer products—and a practical, roll-up-your-sleeves approach to solving the right problems at the right time. That might look like facilitating a brainstorming session, sketching a cleaner upgrade flow, reviewing a product with fresh eyes, or guiding your team through lean, low-lift user research. Whatever the starting point, I help teams make smarter design bets—without adding headcount or fluff. If you need someone who can dive in quickly, ask the right questions, and help your team move forward with more clarity and confidence—I’d love to help. Schedule a free mentor session today!

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  Building a team

  I have been a product design manager and functional head for design and user research for over 5 years, managing small teams comprised of junior through to senior levels. I have been through hiring process at several companies, promotion cycles, preparing to put employees on PIPs, helping others get off of PIPs, as well as a variety of culture-building activities including crafting team values.

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  Conversion rate optimisation

  I have a background in A/B experimentation on a freemium subscription Saas product - with a heavy focus on converting free subscribers to Paid plans, as well as Individuals to Team plans. I also have experience across International Markets. I can help guide best design approaches & copy for best results, as well as how behavioral economics and psychology can come into play.

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  Design / UX

  I have over 20 years of visual, interaction, and product design experience. I can help guide you on appropriate design thinking approaches, Lead Product Methodologies, and User-Centered Design processes for your projects.

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  Idea validation

  I can assist with idea validation with users by utilizing everything from guerilla and low-budget user research to formal studies. The most important thing is to break things down into smaller achievable learnings to get to insights faster. I can help you format your testing appropriately - from A/B experiments to user research.

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  Technology and tools

  My day-to-day software and tools cross Design software (Figma, Sketch, Abstract, Invision), Project Planning (ProductPlan), User Research (UserTesting.com, User Zoom, EnjoyHQ), and Confluence/JIRA for ticket work.

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  User research

  I fully believe that you can blend fast, iterative learnings between both quantitative and qualitative research. I have experience in both A/B experiments as well as a variety of primary research methods from generative to evaluative. I can help you determine who to test, how to recruit, assist in moderated scripts or task-based tests, as well as analyzing results.

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  Venting frustration

  Always happy to lend an ear and help navigate frustrating or hairy situations! Sometimes the hardest thing about a job is working with people - I can help break down problems and approach them by applying design thinking - first understand and empathize with the other person, then dig into the heart of the problem, what they value, and what their pain points are - in addition to yours. Then how do you come up with a mutually beneficial solution?

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  Figma

  8 years of experience

  Advanced skillset leveraging Figma's capabilities for prototyping, creating sitemaps and information diagrams, customer journey maps, wireframes, utilizing design system components, and collaborating through white boards.

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  Hotjar

  12 years of experience

  I have used Hotjar in the past for screenrecordings, click maps, and heatmaps. I'm currently looking install again at current company, so will soon be more up to date to the software capabilities (and will also be vetting out FullStory to compare).

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  JIRA

  12 years of experience

  I have worked across a variety of product teams and have helped determine the best way to integrate design and design processes (from design concepting, final ticket, specs, review of builds, etc.) into the JIRA ticketing system and engineering workflows.

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  Retail Technology

  I was the Head of Design for Side, Inc. a propTech company based in the SF-bay area, working with the top 10% of real estate agents to start their own brokerage and support from listing, closing, to commission payouts.

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  Billing

  At SurveyMonkey, I led design for the Plans, Pricing, Monetization, and Billing Teams. I worked on both feature development product teams, covering the international billing team, as well as ran A/B tests to optimize the checkout and purchase experience on the core product.

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  Enterprise Applications

  Lead Designer for tool re-platforming to enable Distribution Center Buyers to forecast, buy, and monitor the supply and demand flow of $3B worth of perishable products. Partnered closely with PM, Eng, and AI/ML teams to plan for foundational steps of a multi-year, multi-phased migration plan. Led user research Discovery interviews across 20 Regional Buyers to understand their workflows, challenges, and opportunity areas to establish project scope and areas for improvement.