Paige Saez
Senior Product Designer at Aurora Solar
Emeryville, California
Overview
Work Experience
Adjunct Professor
2025 - Current
I teach Design Research at CCA, equipping the next generation of product designers with practical UX research skills that drive innovation. My students learn interviewing, design thinking, usability testing, and AI-powered research methods, leveraging emerging tools to analyze data, generate insights, and streamline workflows. The course emphasizes real-world application, ethical research, and collaboration, integrating AI in research while maintaining human-centered design principles. With guest lectures from industry experts, students gain exposure to cutting-edge practices. As a Principal Product Designer and UX Researcher, I bring hands-on experience from B2B SaaS, enterprise, and startup environments, preparing students for the evolving landscape of product development.
Principal Product Designer
2018
As the Founder and principal Product Designer at Little Cities, I help teams turn complex ideas into intuitive, scalable products. I'm a generalist rather than a specialist, preferring right-sized work, lean UX, and experimentation to bridge the gap between business goals, user needs, and product execution. With deep expertise in product design and user research, I take a hands-on approach—rapid prototyping, UX strategy, and research-driven design—to create products that feel effortless, even when the systems behind them are anything but. Who I’ve Worked With Startups: I’ve helped fast-moving teams at Carrot, Replika, IFTTT, Designlab, Alphaclone, and Honeycomb.io define product vision, conduct right-sized research, iterate quickly, and scale design operations. Enterprise Companies: I’ve led design and research initiatives at Cisco, Intuit, Aurora Solar, and Yammer, driving UX strategy, AI-powered experiences, and workflow optimization. Agencies + Studios: I’ve collaborated with leading creative agencies and studios like Metalab, All Turtles, Wieden+Kennedy, Hot Studio, Avatron, and Tangible UX to craft innovative digital experiences. For well over a decade, I’ve been designing AI and ML-powered products, working with teams at Cisco DNA, Replika, Global Viral Forecasting, Alphaclone, and more, ensuring that AI-driven experiences are transparent, ethical, and delightful. In addition, I teach Design Research at CCA, guiding students in honing practical product design and UX skills while exploring AI-driven research methods. I love tough design challenges, especially in complex or emerging tech spaces. If you’re building something new and need a partner in product design, UX, or research-driven innovation, let’s talk.
Co-Founder, Product and UX Design Director
2009 - 2025
Co-founder. Led strategy and design for numerous products and multi-media projects including Wherecamp, Windowseat App, 2ndLine, IFTTT, Meedan, Nasa, Yammer, and Citibank.
Senior Product Designer
2023 - 2024
I spearheaded a multi-year effort at Aurora Solar to redesign the HelioScope product line, focusing on enhancing usability for scaling teams in global markets. By implementing user-centered design principles and collaborating with cross-functional teams, I successfully addressed critical usability issues and improved the overall user experience.
Aurora Solar is a SaaS company that uses aerial imagery to assess solar installation projects.
Raised $523,470,493.00 from Emerson Collective, Energize Capital, Coatue, ICONIQ Growth, Lux Capital and Fifth Wall.
Principal Product Designer
2020 - 2022
Senior User Researcher
2019 - 2020
All Turtles is an artificial intelligence studio that develops pragmatic brands, products, and user experiences for the workplace.
Lead Product Designer
2017 - 2019
Led ongoing product discovery workshops and quarterly inter-departmental design sprints with customers. Produced an inspiring north-star product vision prototype shared by leadership globally. Created user flows, wireframes, and final designs to help explore concepts, drive research, and validate alignment between user needs and business goals. Managed and mentored three junior designers.
Cisco DevNet is your source for everything developer at Cisco Systems.
Lead UX Designer
2017 - 2017
Guided product strategy, including discovery and definition, through user research with customers to validate hypothesis-driven product exploration. Created user flows, wireframes, final designs, and prototypes for product iterations.
Honeycomb provides full-stack observability for engineering teams to understand, debug, and improve production systems.
Raised $146,900,000.00 from Storm Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, Dominik Richter, Headline, Guillermo Rauch, Insight Partners and Industry Ventures.
UX Design Director, Curriculum & Content Designer
2015 - 2017
First employee. Created the flagship Bootcamp program UX Academy and a new revenue stream. Increased new student enrollment by 5x revenue per student, resulting in a 10x increase in total annual revenue. Defined internal team processes and managed contract and vendor resources. Led company-wide rebrand in 2017. Built and managed a remote three-person product design and content team.
Senior UX Designer
2014 - 2015
Multiple contract roles including Intuit, Seagate, Fanatics, and Lattice for iOS/Android product design and responsive web design. Embedded onsite with product development teams for long-term engagements. Established product strategy, including discovery and definition through user research with customers. Created UX and visual design deliverables to explore concepts, drive research, and production-ready designs.
Senior UX Designer
2014 - 2015
Sauce Labs provides cloud-based testing for mobile and web applications.
Raised $151,000,000.00 from TPG, TPG, TPG, Riverwood Capital, Adams Street Partners, Centerview Capital and IVP.