Treat internal tools as products.
Engineers are users, too. I give component APIs, defaults, documentation, and automation the same care as type and spacing, and I judge them by whether teams choose them over building their own version.
About Joshua Briley
Where product, design, and engineering meet.
I’ve spent more than twenty years designing and building interfaces, from insurance platforms to consumer products. I care about how an interface feels and how it holds up in code.
Why design and build.
I’ve worked on both sides of the handoff for more than twenty years. The most useful work has usually happened in between: working out what a workflow actually needs, then testing that answer in working software instead of a static mockup.
The industries have changed, from insurance portals to recipes, child care, and an enterprise design system used by roughly 3,500 engineers and designers.
Across those roles, the useful work has often been connecting disciplines: making design intent concrete, giving engineers usable patterns, and staying involved when real data makes things complicated.
Read the full résuméWhat I care about.
Start with accessibility.
Keyboard order, labels, contrast, and recoverable errors shape the design from the first sketch. When that behavior lives in shared components, every team that uses them gets it by default. I test it and publish the gaps, including the ones in my own case studies.
Decide what success looks like first.
Before building, I name the result that would show a change worked, then check it. At America’s Test Kitchen that meant Optimizely tests instead of debates. At Logatot it meant reworking the forms where Hotjar and analytics showed people getting stuck.
Work through the awkward states.
Empty lists, failed requests, long labels, and first-run screens are part of the experience. I use working interfaces to resolve those details with design and engineering before they become late surprises.
Why I wrote the books.
When I went looking for formal resources on UX engineering, I couldn’t find any. The work tends to be treated as something any developer can do because they know JavaScript or another programming language.
Knowing the language is only the start. The job also means building for people who use screen readers and other assistive technology, meeting visual accessibility needs like color contrast, and respecting user settings such as prefers-reduced-motion and prefers-contrast. It means knowing what CSS can handle on its own before reaching for JavaScript, and which browser APIs already solve the problem you’re about to write code for.
So I wrote the books for myself, because no one else had. I still use them as reference material in my own work, and both are free to read online.
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UX Design Engineering: JavaScript for interface builders (opens in a new tab)
A practical course in JavaScript for designers and front-end developers who already know HTML and CSS.
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Building your own component system: From first principles (opens in a new tab)
A step-by-step guide to building an accessible, token-driven React component library, from an empty directory to a deployed Storybook.
Let’s look at the work.
If you lead design, start with IVFCRYO and Logatot. If you lead engineering, start with VMSpark and Rudiment UI.
Design judgment and collaborationIVFCRYO: research, interaction decisions, front-end ownership, and a backend engineering partnership. Application behaviorLogatot: voice input, repair flows, reusable UI, and the parts I would improve. Design system rolloutVMSpark: a 350-template audit and a four-stage rebuild with no pipeline regressions. Components and architectureRudiment UI: a personal React reference library with tokens, accessibility behavior, and documented decisions.
Frameworks and fit. My current design system work is in Stencil Web Components. The teams using it work in several frameworks, and web components let all of them use the same accessible components instead of rebuilding them for each one. Rudiment UI shows my React component work.
Away from the keyboard.
Family, music, travel, and strong opinions about gumbo.
Louisiana roots
I grew up on Cajun food and music. My grandmother’s chicken and sausage gumbo remains the standard. There has been no successful migration.
An Army beginning
My wife and I met at our first duty station in Hohenfels, Germany. We lived in the nearby village of Seubersdorf and had our first child there.
Bass and drums
I’ve played for more than thirty years, from college clubs across the Southeast to Bourbon Street and Frenchmen Street in New Orleans. These days I play locally.
A family that travels
We travel with our kids whenever we can. Iceland is still our favorite, and closer to home we look for places off the beaten path.