Tamara Adlin wearing a striped shirt sitting on a chair.

Tamara Adlin brings a fresh perspective to product improvements & innovation.

Tamara Adlin is a product and user experience expert. Tamara started her professional life during the birth of Web 1.0, helped build Web 2.0, and is bringing her expertise to Web 3.0. She has worked with established companies from Apple to Zillow, dozens of startups, and international organizations like the United Nations. She co-authored the Persona Lifecycle books and is a recognized thought-leader and speaker in the user experience community. She has spent 20 years adapting user experience methods and best practices to help startups create world-class products. From 2002-2005, Tamara was a User Experience Lead at Amazon. She has a Master’s Degree in Human Centered Design and Engineering from the University of Washington. 

Making products better.

What are some quick changes you can make to your product to get important needles moving in the right direction? Which ‘best practices’ are right for your user experiences and interfaces? How can you translate troubling usage data into practical improvements? Are there things you can do outside of the product itself to improve results for your users and your company?

As a consultant, her superpowers are helping teams focus in on exactly who their target users are and what those users want and need, and user experiences

ompanies can engage with her to do everything from quick ‘easy wins’ user experience assessments to deep dives into user-centered strategy, end-to-end user experience design, executive alignment, product-market fit, design processes and team development. She helps teams create products that make sense to their users. 

Making better products.

Are you solving the right problems? How much can you ‘slow down to speed up’ without risking your edge? How should you use your competition to influence your own decisions? Do you have the right people in the right roles? Should you hire or outsource interaction design, interface design, and/or visual design? How do you triage and prioritize ideas and improvements? What tweaks can you make to your design and development process to create better results?

Why Tamara?

I’m a recognized expert, author, and speaker in user experience and user-centered design and I have 25 years of real-world, startup-focused experience. I ran teams at Amazon and have worked with startups that have gone from two people in a room to rapid growth to exit. I’ve been-there-and-done-that as a consumer and provider of consulting services.

I work with teams at all levels without stepping on their toes. I know the right way to create great products but I also know what to do if there’s no time. I’m a Venture Capitalists’ secret weapon and a mentor to students just learning about technology. And I am obsessed with delivering practical, actionable results in every engagement, from speaking to consulting to advising.

My perspective: practicality.

It makes me nuts to hear about consultants and agencies that sell you with their big names and then hand you to junior teams. I can’t stand huge reports that never get used. I hate hearing about expensive research that doesn’t actually answer any important questions. I believe that consultants should work themselves out of a job by helping teams build new habits and learn new tools. And I recognize that bringing forth and organizing the embedded knowledge and assumptions you have is the first step in creating a data-driven, user-centered culture.

Selected clients

Testimonials

“Tamara is a "go to" for transforming product organizations.”

Rich Cusick, Chief Product Officer, Universal Media Group

“Tamara is a force of nature bent on creating consensus out of chaos. She was flexible, affable, and always goal oriented. Her ability to adapt to personalities and politics is second only, perhaps, to her ability to keep a room engaged and an activity energetic.”

Andy Fitzgerald, Andy Fitzgerald Consulting

I've been leading high-stakes UX work for nearly 20 years, so you can believe me when I say: Tamara is the best coach in the UX field. She was a guiding light for my team at a tumultuous startup, and she paved the way for me to do the best work of my career.

Mark Wieman, BEAM Design

“I would recommend Tamara to any organization that cares about putting consumers first and struggles to making that focus a clearly articulated reality in their company.”

Jennifer Statham, former Chief Marketing Officer, WSECU

“I would recommend Tamara to any organization that cares about putting consumers first and struggles to making that focus a clearly articulated reality in their company.”

Jennifer Statham, former Chief Marketing Officer, WSECU

“I’ve stolen most of my methods from her.”

Katie Geminder, Co-Founder, Cent

I worked with Tamara both at Amazon and Zillow and in both situations she was able to help our teams find a way through the swath of technical and business problems to create better user experiences. Her insights are amazing and will help your team get to better solutions faster. A few days with Tamara saved us weeks of arguing/hashing out designs within our teams.

Tim VanDerMey

Tamara is, bar none, the best user-centered design consultant I've worked with for on-demand services and web applications in 15 years. I hired her to help guide a start-up company through building personas for a new customer segment. Tamara knows how to guide large and small groups through complex design processes, lead internal teams to consensus even when there are vast gaps in belief about who the target customer set is and what they need.

John Atkins, Co-Founder, Digital DNA

Tamara is an exceptional talent who can attack problems creatively and with great vigor. She speaks the truth about customer needs and can help businesses see through their short term challenges to the big picture problem of delighting customers with clear value.

Brian Walker, Chief Strategy Officer, Bloomreach

Tamara delights in big ideas, working collaboratively, and bringing great talent to the table to do what they do best. She's not afraid to speak truth to power—and she does so without ego and with the best interest of the business always in the forefront. Tamara's passion for making ideas into businesses that delight and serve their customers makes her a sought-after resource by CEOs around the country.

Corinne Sherry, UX Leader

Tamara is an exceptional, forward-thinking, motivational speaker, thought leader, trainer, and consultant. I have seen Tamara in action many years, as a workshop leader in my class at UW Department of Human-centered Design and Engineering, as a keynote speaker at national industry events in user experience, and as a seasoned consultant aligning executives to remove organizational obstacles that impede their product’s customer experience. Her approach is dynamic and engaging; her message confident, convincing and most of all memorable. She is the real deal – a UX veteran with years of practical experience helping improve customer experiences for Fortune 500 companies to scrappy early startups.

Suzanne Boyd Founder & CEo, Anthro-Tech

Thought Leadership