My wife designed her Burton-inspired Catwoman costume herself
Everything feels better in Mexico.
Pops, the Wife and the Mets.
Catching up with my old teacher.
Our most-excellent Italian honeymoon.
Seth Friedman: Product Designer, UX Guru, Artist, Writer, Advocate for the User (You).
Designing remarkable user experiences is both an art and a science, conducted using heart and mind to craft something that can both sit on a museum shelf as a paragon of design, and also show proven evidence of solving real problems for real people. Directing this process is what I do best. My career has taken me to San Francisco and back to New York City to work throughout the tech industry as a product-focused innovator and strategist with a proven history of shipping UX design solutions that balance user needs, commercial interests and technological constraints.
I spent the first half of my 20+ year career in San Francisco where I created some of the first corporate websites that existed for various companies, and pioneered UX doctrine by employing user-centered design practices. It was a fun ride to be able to work in Silicon Valley during the infancy of the web and the birth of the smartphone era, before returning to my home in NY in 2012 to help grow the burgeoning tech sector.
I got married in Prospect Park in summer 2016 and after eating and drinking our way through Italy for a few weeks, my wife (also an artist) and I returned to New York City where we draw, hit art galleries, cook, and enjoy living and working in this crazy, chaotic, constantly-inspirational city.
I was recently interviewed on the Truth to Power Podcast, to discuss my creative process.
My Drawings
My mother and grandmother were artists and as such, I've been an illustrator since I was a tiny sprout. I draw regularly in Central Park near my apartment, at The Met nearby where I'm a member and at The Society of Illustrators where I'm a regular character at sketch night.
My Novel
After dabbling in screenwriting for a few years, I decided to take an idea for a script and turn it into a book. Thus began a 5 year journey that culminated in my novel The Pilgrim. The story takes place during the Middle Ages, at the dawn of the Third Crusade, and centers around a Templar knight and King Richard "The Lionheart" who are brought together, against the tapestry of the Medieval world, to try to win back Jerusalem and return to England before the country falls into ruin under the corrupt rule of Richard's younger brother John. Think "Game of Thrones" if it actually happened and had less dragons.
The book is available in print and download on Amazon and is also currently used to help teach Medieval history at the historic Greenwich Country Day School, where I go to speak to the students each semester after they have finished reading it.