AI Design Consultant in San Diego

I work through Pineapple Blueprint, my product design and AI transformation consultancy. The short version of what I do: I map where AI belongs, I design how it works, and I stay with your team until it ships.

What an AI design consultant does

An AI design consultant is not there to add a chatbot to an unchanged process. The job is to find where AI creates real value, redesign the workflow around it, and design the human plus AI interaction so people trust it enough to rely on it.

I can do the work myself, and I have held many of these roles. When a project needs more hands, I bring in a trusted network of specialists sized to the need: AI development, frontend and backend engineering, design systems, branding, and research. The team scales to the project. The leadership, the standards, and the accountability stay with me.

Who I work with

Pineapple Blueprint works with mid-market and enterprise teams. My most recent work has been in healthcare and commerce: patient experience, self scheduling, and clinical workflow design in healthcare, and memberships, seller onboarding, and merchant tools at Walmart and Shopify. The best fit is usually one of these:

• Teams without AI yet, who want to know where it would have the most impact first.
• Product teams with AI capability live, but adoption or impact is flat.
• Cross-functional teams after the pilot and before scale, who need clear priorities and a plan.
• Organizations with engineering committed and ready to build the application layer.

Ways to work together

Every format is described in full on AI Design Consulting. In short:

• Advisory intro (30 minutes). A focused conversation to check fit, define the problem, and agree on next steps.
• AI Opportunity and Adoption Diagnostic (2 weeks). A ranked list of AI opportunities and a plan to execute the highest-impact one first.
• Adoption System Design (4 to 10 weeks). The experience, designed and proven, with human-in-the-loop patterns and a detailed engineering handoff.
• AI Product Architecture on Retainer (ongoing). The core offering: design leadership on retainer instead of another full time hire.

What you leave with

Most teams start with the diagnostic, because it answers the question that stalls everything else: where should AI pay off first? At the end of two weeks you have:

• An AI opportunity map across your internal workflows and customer experience.
• An adoption and trust assessment showing where usage drops or stalls, and why.
• A prioritized list of use cases, split into quick wins and strategic bets.
• A roadmap with owners, sequence, metrics, and governance.
• A 30, 60, and 90 day plan your team can actually execute.

From there, AI product decisions do not arrive on a project schedule. Models change monthly, and every flow you ship opens the next set of choices. That is why the retainer exists: you get the architect in the room, not on a proposal.

Consultant, fractional leader, or full-time hire?

Not every company needs a Chief AI Officer. Many need senior design judgment now, a clear plan, and someone accountable for the outcome, without adding headcount first. I compared the options honestly in CAIO, Fractional, or AI Design Consultant: Who You Actually Need.

Track record

Before founding Pineapple Blueprint, I held product and UX leadership roles at Walmart, Shopify, Illumina, and Intuit. As the sole designer on key TurboTax checkout trust flows, I helped drive a 33% checkout conversion lift. The work has earned three Webby Awards and a Good Design Award, and I served on the board of UX Speakeasy from 2022 to 2025. Those outcomes belong to those roles, and the detail is on Outcomes.

Based in San Diego

Pineapple Blueprint is based in San Diego County, California, and works with teams across the United States. Most work happens remotely. Workshops and working sessions can happen in person in San Diego, and on-site elsewhere when the work calls for it.

Getting started is simple: tell me what you are solving on the contact page, and I will reply within 24 hours.

Frequently asked questions

How much does an AI design consultant cost?

It depends on the format. The two-week diagnostic is a fixed scope, Adoption System Design is scoped during the diagnostic, and the retainer is an ongoing monthly arrangement. The 30-minute advisory intro is where we size the work together.

Do you work with teams outside San Diego?

Yes. Pineapple Blueprint is based in San Diego and works with teams across the United States. Most work happens remotely, with in-person sessions in San Diego and on-site visits elsewhere when the work calls for it.

What happens on the first call?

The advisory intro is a 30-minute structured conversation. We check fit, define the problem you are trying to solve, and decide on the right next step, if there is one.

Do you only advise, or do you do the design work too?

Both. I do the design work myself, and when a project needs more hands I bring in specialists from a trusted network while the leadership and accountability stay with me.