Hi, I'm Paula.
I lead digital product and design.

About

I've spent my career leading design, and the past year building with AI.

I've led design organizations for over a decade, most recently at Frontier, where I rebuilt the team as part of a company-wide transformation. When Frontier's acquisition was announced, I stepped away to recharge and dedicated the year to understanding how AI could impact product, design, and development.

I started with a prototype that eventually became Radish, a garden planning and management app for iOS, now headed into production. I leveraged AI for the business plan, product strategy, branding, design, and code. That work gave me a first-hand understanding of what these tools can and can't do, and where they can have the biggest impact.

Next, I want to bring this experience back inside a company. I'm looking to lead a blended product and design team at a startup or small to mid-sized company going through growth or change. I also take on select consulting work. Based in northern Michigan with travel and time onsite as needed.

Building

Radish app showing a garden's plant list with growth stages
Radish In beta

Garden planning and management

I'm a gardener, and the tool I wanted didn't exist. So I built it. Radish is a native iOS app that helps with layout and season planning, seed management, activity tracking, and photo journaling. Built solo with AI-assisted development.

Independent Consulting

Most recently: the strategy, design, and build of an accessible website, plus a new brand identity, for a local government organization.

Local government website homepage, desktop view
Local government website homepage, mobile view

Experience

Paula Figura LLC

Product & Design Strategist

2025–Present

Independent product and design practice: strategy, design, and development for small organizations and local government.

Frontier Communications

Head of Experience Design

2021–2025

Led experience design through a post-bankruptcy transformation: rebuilt the team from 7 to 19 with 100% retention over three years and established research and design operations from scratch. Owned the roadmap for the company's full website replatform and drove a full rebrand, delivered in six months, supporting the company-wide turnaround.

Hagerty

Head of User Experience

2015–2021

Joined as one of three designers, made the case for a consolidated UX team, and built it to seven. Stood up a research and analytics function combining A/B testing, user research, and site analytics; individual quote-funnel tests drove 8–10% conversion lifts. Led a complete redesign of Hagerty's web experience.

General Motors

Interactive Design Consultant

2015

In-car infotainment UX for model year 2018 GM vehicles.

Comcast

Associate Creative Director

2009–2015

Led a team of 9 to transform XFINITY Home from a white-label security product into Comcast's own security and automation platform. In-home research through complete redesign across web, mobile, and in-home touch screens.

Yellowbook

Senior Information Architect

2008–2009

Information architecture for online search, the advertiser portal, and early mobile apps.

Wunderman · Team Detroit

Information Architect

2005–2008

Lead Information Architect for the first consolidated build-and-price experience, bringing all Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury vehicles onto a single interactive platform.

Education

University of Michigan, School of Information

M.S., Human-Computer Interaction

Michigan State University

B.S., Geology

Other Work

Broadband coverage map of Benzie County

Board Member & Broadband Subcommittee Chair

As a board member of the Benzie County Economic Development Corporation, I led a committee of elected officials and residents working to improve rural broadband access in the county.

Winding mountain bike trail through green forest

Mountain Bike Trail Design & Build

Four miles of machine-built trail on 114 private acres, designed using product design process and principles: concept, prototyping, testing, iteration.

As a board member of the Benzie County Economic Development Corporation, I led a committee of elected officials and residents working to improve rural broadband access in the county.

Early in the process we learned that the FCC data on coverage was badly wrong, having been self-reported by the service providers themselves. Accurate data was critical before identifying solutions.

We secured county investment to fund independent data collection. The resulting dataset became the county's source of truth and opened access to grant funding the county couldn't pursue before.

Four miles of machine-built trail on 114 private acres, designed using product design process and principles: concept, prototyping, testing, iteration.

I taught myself QGIS and LiDAR analysis for this project. Using LiDAR for trail design was essentially unheard of at the time. Terrain data at that fidelity, paired with on-the-ground assessment, was instrumental in making design decisions we couldn't have made otherwise.

The trail routing was optimized for sight lines, views, and a sense of remoteness on a bounded parcel. Two loops, with berms, rollers, climbs, and descents worked into the rolling terrain.

Ongoing iteration since 2016.

I'm a gardener, and the tool I wanted didn't exist. So I built it. Radish is a native iOS app that helps with layout and season planning, seed management, activity tracking, and photo journaling. Built solo with AI-assisted development.

The apps available weren't well designed. The only one with the layout functionality I wanted was desktop-only. None of them accounted for how a garden changes over a season. And none of them offered guidance that adapts to your garden and growing zone.

Radish will be a yearly subscription with a two-week free trial. The target user is a gardener who wants to plan and document a season, get useful guidance along the way, and share the results.

I had never shipped a native iOS app before this. I learned the architecture, the database design, the path from simulator to TestFlight, and how to work with Claude and Claude Code to get the product I envisioned built.

Timing drove the schedule and scope decisions. Gardeners plan in winter and commit before the season starts, so the window to launch is narrow. I missed spring 2026 because building it properly took longer than I expected. Rather than push an unfinished product into the wrong part of the season, I decided to spend more time in beta and move launch to spring 2027. I also deferred a combined timeline showing all plant activity in one view, to get into testers' hands sooner.

Beta starts with five to ten testers and will expand from there.

Let's talk.

Open to leadership roles and select consulting work.

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Or connect with me on LinkedIn