Case Studies

Kind Words

Resumé

Design system specialist

Accessibility advocate

I build the foundations other designers build on.

Trusted by

I'm Chuck Borowicz – 25 years in design, 18 in UI & UX.

I'm Chuck Borowicz –
25 years in design, 18 in UX.

At GE Vernova, I led the creation of DEX – the platform's first accessibility-first design system, built by a cross-functional team working from a framework I defined.
At Marriott, I contributed to their first responsive design system on a reservation path where a single day's 1% conversion loss is a catastrophic business outcome.
At EightShapes, Nathan Curtis and Dan Brown showed me how to think in systems before the discipline had a name.

At GE Vernova, I led the creation of DEX – the platform's first accessibility-first design system, built by a cross-functional team working from a framework I defined.
At Marriott, I contributed to their first responsive design system on a reservation path where a single day's 1% conversion loss is a catastrophic business outcome.
At EightShapes, Nathan Curtis and Dan Brown showed me how to think in systems before the discipline had a name.

At GE Vernova, I led the creation of DEX – the platform's first accessibility-first design system, built by a cross-functional team working from a framework I defined.
At Marriott, I contributed to their first responsive design system on a reservation path where a single day's 1% conversion loss is a catastrophic business outcome.
At EightShapes, Nathan Curtis and Dan Brown showed me how to think in systems before the discipline had a name.

Case Studies

Raising Work Request Acceptance to 50% with an AI Coach

PMs were sending UX work requests through scattered channels: email, Teams, random links, often with no clear problem or user defined, and my team kept redoing work once the real requirements finally surfaced. I built Anderson, an AI coach inside Aha!, to fix that at the source: it checks every request against eleven required fields, sorts requests into the right type before coaching begins, and holds its standard even when a PM pushes back. PMs who use it get accepted far more often. In early pilots, first-pass acceptance has grown roughly five-fold, from about 10% to 50%.

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Raising Work Request Acceptance to 50% with an AI Coach

See case study

Raising Work Request Acceptance to 50% with an AI Coach

PMs sent UX requests through scattered channels with no clear problem or user defined — my team kept redoing work once real requirements surfaced. I built Anderson, an AI coach in Aha!, checking every request against eleven fields and holding its standard under pushback. First-pass acceptance grew roughly five-fold, from 10% to 50%.

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Semantic Tokens for Color, Order for 600+ Icons

Color and icons in APM had broken the same way and every team was solving both independently, with no shared system, no governance, and no accessible baseline. I built two governed foundations for DEX: a 163-variable semantic color token architecture, WCAG 2.2 AA compliant from the start, and a 600+ icon library that replaced years of bespoke, unsustainable icon production with a system built on Google Material. Both are enforced, not just documented – automated contrast testing on the token side, a hard enforcement clause on the icon side. now every color token meets accessibility standards, UX design workload dropped 50%, and it's the first icon library in the company's history that teams actually adopted consistently.

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Semantic Tokens for Color, Order for 600+ Icons

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Semantic Tokens for Color, Order for 600+ Icons

Color and icons in APM had broken the same way – every team solving both alone, no governance, no accessible baseline. I built two governed foundations for DEX: a 163-variable color token system, WCAG 2.2 AA compliant, and a 600+ icon library built on Google Material. Workload dropped 50%.

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The Handoff Is a Contract: A Protocol for a Team with 10 Time Zones Between Them

Design handoff has a basic problem: the person who designs something and the person who builds it rarely share the same mental model of it. That problem gets worse across ten time zones with no hallway conversations to catch a misunderstanding. I invented the sticker sheet format to solve it: a 3-part documentation standard (How It Works, a variant inventory, plugin-generated specs) paired with a formal delivery process that treats every handoff as a contract both sides sign-off on. 44 components in the DEX library follow this standard today, 38 to 40 of them authored personally, and it's the active protocol every new component goes through.

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The Handoff Is a Contract: A Protocol for a Team with 10 Time Zones Between Them

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The Handoff Is a Contract: A Protocol for a Team with 10 Time Zones Between Them

Design handoff breaks down when designer and engineer don't share a mental model — worse across nine time zones with no hallway conversations to catch it. I invented the sticker sheet: a three-part documentation standard plus a delivery process that treats handoff as a contract. 44 DEX components follow it today.

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Calm and Empowered: Redesigning How Patients Understand Their Bills

An Explanation of Benefits is technically complete and genuinely unreadable; it lists every cost and payment without ever explaining what any of it means to the person holding it. At Geisinger, I co-led stakeholder workshops to align on a clear north star – a responsive experience that leaves patients feeling calm and empowered – then redesigned the claim overview, service explanations, and benefits experience around that standard: plain language in context, not a glossary; two levels of understanding for anyone who wants to go deeper; mobile and desktop built in parallel from day one. The work was strong enough that Geisinger extended the contract.

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Calm and Empowered: Redesigning How Patients Understand Their Bills

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Calm and Empowered: Redesigning How Patients Understand Their Bills

An Explanation of Benefits is technically complete and genuinely unreadable, listing every cost without explaining what it means. At Geisinger, I co-led workshops to align on a north star, calm and empowered, then redesigned the experience around plain language and two levels of understanding. The work helped win a contract extension.

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Components, patterns, and elements from the DEX design system.

DEX Design System: Building the Foundation a New Company Would Stand On

GE Vernova's platform grew out of Predix, GE's earlier industrial IoT system, and it showed: fragmented UI patterns across teams on different frameworks, some modern and actively maintained, others legacy and unable to easily absorb bulk updates, with no accessibility standard and no responsive standard tying any of it together. I led the design of DEX, the organization's first accessibility-first (WCAG 2.2 AA) and responsive design system, built as one foundation rather than a bundle of separate tools; the token architecture, icon library, and sticker sheet protocol all reinforce each other rather than solving color, spacing, or documentation independently. Design work took about a year; engineering build has been underway for about two, with early adoption already growing.

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DEX Design System: Building the Foundation a New Company Would Stand On

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DEX Design System: Building the Foundation a New Company Would Stand On

GE Vernova's platform grew out of Predix, and it showed: fragmented UI across teams on different frameworks, no accessibility or responsive standard tying it together. I led DEX, the org's first accessibility-first, responsive system, built as one foundation where tokens, icons, and sticker sheets reinforce each other. Adoption is growing.

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Collage of projects from EightShapes from Cisco, Marriott, and Sonatype.

Trained at the Source: Where Modular Systems Thinking Was First Learned

When I joined EightShapes, design systems weren't a named discipline yet. There was no playbook, only the work itself, across clients with nothing in common except one need: make a decision once, reuse it everywhere. Three years across Marriott, Cisco, and Sonatype taught me modular component design directly from the people originating the practice – a branded pin system built to survive a reservation path where a single day's 1% conversion loss was real money, an icon matrix that's the direct ancestor of the DEX icon index built a decade later, and a dark-theme near-miss that the token architecture I'd eventually build at GE Vernova was designed to finally solve. That thinking shows up in every system I've built since.

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Trained at the Source: Where Modular Systems Thinking Was First Learned

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Trained at the Source: Where Modular Systems Thinking Was First Learned

When I joined EightShapes, design systems weren't a named discipline yet, only the work itself. Three years across Marriott, Cisco, and Sonatype taught me modular thinking: a pin system built for real revenue stakes, an icon matrix that's the direct ancestor of DEX's, a dark-theme near-miss tokens would later solve.

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Timeline

I'll spare you from my life story – the highlights are pretty good though.

2000

Graduated from Northern Michigan University and immediately modernized newspaper production – replacing cut-wax grid sheets with digital layouts, cutting revision cycles by 35%, and reducing production errors. Promoted to manager in 2004.

2006

Relocated to Washington D.C. to pursue larger-scale design work, enrolling at The Art Institute of Washington to formalize a foundation that was already producing professional results.

2008

Graduated with honors from The Art Institute of Washington. Designed and built the Sputnik 50th Anniversary website for the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum – the first project at institutional scale.

2009

Built a scalable front-end video system for EFX Media capable of producing two videos per month per organization without hitting a ceiling – an early lesson in designing for growth, not just for now.

2011

Increased donor retention and brand recognition for Conservation International through U.S.-focused digital campaigns supporting women-led sustainable farming projects in Chiapas, Mexico and Rwanda, in collaboration with Starbucks.

2012

Joined EightShapes — the Washington D.C. consultancy co-founded by Nathan Curtis and Dan Brown that was defining what design systems could be, before the discipline had a name.

2012

Co-designed a responsive component library for Marriott International's first responsive reservation system – establishing UX and UI consistency across devices, reducing design and development effort, and building the scalability the platform needed to grow.

2016

Redesigned a patient portal and health insurance dashboard for a major regional Pennsylvania health system, making complex insurance data legible across device sizes and giving patients a clearer picture of their own care. (Red Privet)

2016

Contributed to the redesign of a patient portal and health insurance dashboard for a major regional health care provider in Pennsylvania, designing responsive data visualizations across multiple device sizes to demystify health insurance for patients (Red Privet). Joined GE Digital – now GE Vernova – later in 2017.

2018

Improved industrial analyst productivity across GE Digital's Asset Performance Management platform by streamlining wayfinding, surfacing actionable information, and establishing a new specification format that brought consistent, scalable UX to teams across the product.

2025 - Now

Led the creation of DEX – GE Vernova's first accessibility-first design system, and the first unified foundation in the organization's history. Replaced years of fragmented UI with a single system built to work across a diverse technology stack, with WCAG compliance, clear documentation, and responsive behavior designed in from the start.

Skills

UI and UX

Design systems
Semantic token architecture
Component and pattern design
Interaction design
User interface design
Icon systems
Specifications and documentation
Responsive design
Accessibility advocacy
Workshop facilitation

Design systems

Semantic token architecture

Component and pattern design

Interaction design

User interface design

Icon systems

Specifications and documentation

Responsive design

Accessibility advocacy

Workshop facilitation

Software

Figma
Framer
Adobe Creative Cloud
Miro
Sketch

Figma

Framer

Adobe Creative Cloud

Miro

Sketch

Practical

Art direction
Visual design
Branding
Vector illustration
HTML and CSS

Art direction

Visual design

Branding

Vector illustration

HTML and CSS

Book Cameos

I don’t have a book to sell you, but I have helped friends with theirs.

The User Experience Team of One (2nd Edition): A Research and Design Survival Guide

By Leah Buley & Joe Natoli

Published by Rosenfeld

Joe Natoli, whose approach to leading with value and writing shapes how I think about portfolio work, asked me to review the first draft. I was honored. This is an essential book for anyone practicing UX, whether they're just starting out or have been doing it for decades.

By Leah Buley & Joe Natoli

Published by Rosenfeld

See it at Rosenfeld

Designing Together: The collaboration and conflict management handbook for creative professionals

By Dan Brown

Published by New Riders

Dan Brown co-founded EightShapes, where I spent three years learning to think in systems. This book, about collaborative behaviors and navigating conflict in creative work, is exactly what you'd expect from someone who ran a consultancy built on rigorous thinking and clear communication. I was one of several designers in Dan's informal focus group during the writing process.

By Dan Brown

Published by New Riders

See it at Peachpit

Learning Responsive Web Design

By Clarissa Peterson

Published by O'Reilly

Clarissa mentioned the idea for this book at a UX conference afterparty. I told her it was exactly the right project for her and encouraged her to pursue it. I'm proud she did– the result is a thorough, practical guide to responsive web design using HTML and CSS.

By Clarissa Peterson

Published by O'Reilly

See it at O'Reilly

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