About Me
A circular headshot of Max, smiling, with a burgundy v-neck and black sunglasses on his head. The background is green woodlands, shot in John Muir National Park.
I'm Max Blum, nice to meetcha 🤝
Hint: It's pronounced "bloom"
I'm gregarious, and I like to make people laugh to put them at ease. There's an underlying sense that I care, and that I'm not just here for me. When I'm in, I'm all in.
Send me an email
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Connect with me on LinkedIn
Bridge Builder
There's an ethical argument for inclusion and acceptance of people's identities. Let's honor doing the right thing.

And, on a broader strategic level, there's a lot to gain by listening to people with different experiences. Whether those are identity or job function differences, you never know who could provide a breakthrough insight. Everyone is a person.

By getting to know people throughout the organization, as people first, I get to make friends and unlock insights and knowledge that might otherwise be kept locked in silos. It's more effective... and it's more fun!
"Max is an immensely competent, benevolent, and jovial person. He makes people around him better. Everyone can benefit from a bit more Max in their life."
Daniel Mason, Product Designer
A Public Voice
A blue blob on a white background with white text that reads "UX Wizards Podcast"
I talk creativity, personal marketing when looking for a job, design inspiration, and more with Nolan Stewart from the UX Wizards Podcast.
A blue square with white text reads "GTM: Got Ten Minutes? A Podcast for Product Teams. A labor of love by Samelogic, Action Based In-Product Surveys, powered by AI." Samelogic's logo, a purple heart with detailing that looks like a brain, sits in the upper right corner.
I talk teamwork, getting to know people as people, asking questions, and much more with Dwayne Samuels from Samelogic and the Got Ten Minutes Podcast.
A black and white headshot of Max sits on a dark blue background with Figma's logo partially obscured. White text reads "FigMax Design Series: Getting Started in Figma. Thursday, October 14, 6:00-7:30 PM PDT." At the bottom left of the image, more white text reads " Max Blum, Product Designer at UXW." At the bottom right of the image is the UX Wizards logo. At the top right of the image is white text that reads "UX Workshop."
Part 1 of the FigMax series, created with UX Wizards. Teaching absolute beginners how to create and maneuver shapes in Figma.
A black and white headshot of Max sits on a purple background with shapes reminiscent of Figma's logo partially obscured. White text reads "FigMax Design Series: Building With a Design System. Thursday, October 21, 6:00-7:30 PM PDT." At the bottom left of the image, more white text reads " Max Blum, Product Designer at UXW." At the bottom right of the image is the UX Wizards logo. At the top right of the image is white text that reads "UX Workshop."
Part 2 of the FigMax series, created with UX Wizards. Teaching absolute beginners how to use premade design systems.
A black and white headshot of Max sits in a dark blue teardrop shape on a light blue background. Shapes reminiscent of Figma's logo are partially obscured. Dark blue text reads "FigMax Design Series: Animating Transitions. Thursday, October 28, 6:00-7:30 PM PDT." At the bottom left of the image, more dark blue text reads " Max Blum, Product Designer at UXW." At the bottom right of the image is the UX Wizards logo. At the top right of the image is white text that reads "UX Workshop."
Part 3 of the FigMax series, created with UX Wizards. Teaching absolute beginners how to create animated transitions.
"This was incredibly informational. I am so glad I attended this event. Thank you for organizing and spending all this time and effort to educate people like me!"
FigMax participant
Lifelong Learner
Whether it's design techniques, accessibility, business strategy, or motor racing, there's always more to learn. I love to read, I love to practice, and I love to improve, and I seek out opportunities for all three.
Curated Book Lists
We stand on the shoulders of giants, and books are a great way to transfer knowledge and wisdom. I organized three book lists to help anyone skill up in different areas:
Organizing a Design Business
Building Design Skills
Growing Leadership and Strategy Skills
I recommend reading through each list in order, but each book also stands on its own.
Organizing a Design Business
The cover of the book Good to Great, by Jim Collins.
From Good to Great
A study on how lasting successful companies “did it,” compared to similar, not as successful companies.
The cover of Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization, by Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright, includes an image of five equal-sized piles of different-colored paperclips, set against a white background.
Tribal Leadership
An exploration of 5 different stages of evolving group mentalities, and tips on how to move a group from one stage to the next.
The cover of Difficult Conversations, by Stone, Patton, and Heen.
Difficult Conversations
How to have compassionate, constructive conversations, even in difficult circumstances.
Doughnut Economics, by Kate Raworth
Doughnut Economics
To remind you that every common truism has an origin, and sometimes those bedrock patterns can and should be rewritten.
The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel Van Der Kolk
The Body Keeps the Score
To understand how trauma is processed in the body, and how we can release it.
The cover of the book Everyday Ubuntu, by Mungi Ngomane
Everyday Ubuntu
‍On the importance of recognizing the humanity in each person.
The Inmates Are Running the Asylum, by Alan Cooper
The Inmates Are Running the Asylum
An easy-to-read treatise for business folks about the value of hiring and using designers for their businesses.
The cover of the book Design Is a Job, by Mike Monteiro.
Design Is a Job
Practical advice on organizing your business, talking to clients, and making money.
Think First, by Joe Natoli
Think First
Practical advice on how to start a project with a new client.
Building Design Skills
The cover of the book 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People, by Susan Weinschenk
100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People
Basic psychology facts about human beings.
Don't Make Me Think, by Steve Krug
Don’t Make Me Think
Simple guidelines about how to organize information.
Design Is Storytelling, by Ellen Lupton
Design Is Storytelling
A meta-argument for a practical way to approach any design.
The Design of Everyday Things, by Don Norman
The Design of Everyday Things
A big-picture perspective on how to think about design, and why that’s important.
The Field Guide to Human Centered Design, by IDEO
The Field Guide to Human Centered Design
Remembering that design is about more than digital screens, through lots of case studies.
The cover of the book Viking Economics, by George Lakey
Viking Economics
Did you know that 100 years ago the “Nordic model” of economics didn’t exist? This case study illuminates the idea that major foundational changes are possible.
The cover of the book Leading at a Higher Level, by Ken Blanchard.
Leading at a Higher Level
Introducing the concept that leading a team is about enabling them and removing roadblocks, not commanding subservients.
Influence, by Robert Cialdini
Influence
Practical insights on how to influence people’s behavior, and how they might be influencing yours.
The cover of the book Hooked, by Nir Eyal
Hooked
Describing the 4-step behavior cycle that often leads people to identify with (and re-use) a product.
The cover of About Face, 3rd edition, by Alan Cooper
About Face
Practical nuts and bolts of designing digital interfaces.
The cover of the book How to Make Sense of Every Mess, by Abby Covert
How to Make Sense of Any Mess
How to organize your activities and inner world to do a complex project.
Lean UX, by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Sieden
Lean UX
Remember: the first thing you create WILL be wrong. The important question is how?
The cover of the book Sprint, by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, and Braden Kowitz.
Sprint
This is one way to get quick, helpful feedback about an idea.
Growing Leadership and Strategy Skills
Playing to Win, by A.G. Lafley and Robert L. Martin
Playing to Win
How strategy can guide a transformation.
The Art of War, by Sun Tzu
The Art of War
A treatise on strategy and tactics of war that can be used as a metaphor for organizing business activities and people.
The cover of the book Good Strategy Bad Strategy, by Richard Rumelt.
Good Strategy Bad Strategy
How to construct an impactful strategy.
The Smartest Kids In the World, and How They Got That Way, by Amanda Ripley
The Smartest Kids In the World
Remembering that there are lots of ways to approach the same concept.
The cover of the book The Prince, by Niccolo Macchiavelli.
The Prince
Most people think this is a treatise on being an evil bastard, but my takeaway was that the most effective way to lead is through nurturing relationships with friends and allies.
The cover of the book The Connected Company, by Dave Gray
The Connected Company
Organizing modern companies as a series of interconnected pods, not a pyramidal org chart.
The cover of the book Design Leadership, by Richard Banfield
Design Leadership
Real-world explorations about how design leaders manage, grow, and nurture their teams.
Outside of work
I have almost too many hobbies, but right now my top 3 are riding my motorcycle, racing karts and cars, and swing dancing. I also love traveling, skiing, TTRPGs, music, food... the list goes on.

Here are a few fun pics. Can you guess which countries I'm in?
Max stands grinning in a black, grey, and red Karting race suit. There is a clear plastic rain suit on over his legs, with the arms tied around his waist. He stands in front of a waist-high chain link fence at Sonoma Raceway.Max, rocking out with an acoustic bass.Max wears black sunglasses, a flower-print hoodie, a maroon neck warmer, and a blue zippered vest. He lounges, balanced on a tilted white circular seat in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, CA. There are two other empty seats in the background that also look like tilted tops and sit at varied angles. The ground is painted green, yellow, and blue in an abstract geometric pattern, and has thick black lines between each color. Max is having fun, with a playful, cool expression on his face.Max wears a backward grey ball cap, black sunglasses, and a red jacket. He sits astride an orange bicycle with a QR code on it and smiles up into the camera.Max wears a midnight blue tuxedo and leans, smiling, on his elbow on a yellow marble banister in the Boston Public Library. A marble column is behind him, with a Classical-style mural in an arched inset in the wall in the background.Max grins and wears black sunglasses and a black hoodie with an awesome hand-sewn green and purple pattern emblazoned across the chest. He's in front of a red and white sign that says THUNDERHILLMax wears an orange open-face car racing helmet and a maroon v-neck t-shirt. His elbow is out the window of a charcoal grey car, and he looks up to the side, communicating with someone in a yellow shirt who we see in a distorted reflection on the curve of the car door. A yellow vinyl sticker on the door has a black a white logo that reads HOD.Max wears a navy blue Dungeons & Dragons t-shirt and smiles into the camera while he cooks.
The camera looks up at Max, who's at the base of one of the Golden Gate Bridge's towers in San Francisco, CA. He wears a black hoodie with the hood up and an awesome hand-sewn green and purple design across the chest and a grey cloth face mask.Max wears a lime green ski jacket and poses with one hand lifted palm up into the sky, as if parodying a cartoonish opera singer. A blue Nalgene water bottle hangs from his belt and he stands in front of Gulfoss in Iceland.Max wears a white helmet and drives go kart #17 through a corner at Sonoma Raceway. There are blue and yellow kerbs around the inside of the corner, and two orange cones. He is in front of another driver, driving kart #10.Max wears a red jacket and sits on the marble banister at the bottom of a sweeping white marble staircase in Charles V's palace in Grenada, Spain.A tall glass of mint tea steeps on a multicolored patterned tile table overlooking the ocean in Tangier, Morocco.Max wears a midnight blue bomber jacket and sits in the Thinker posture on top of thick, 6-foot-high stone wall outside of a castle rampart in Teba, Spain.Max wears a midnight blue backward ballcap, black sunglasses, a light blue button up short sleeve shirt with small pink flamingoes patterned across it, and grey shorts. He stands barefoot on the deck of a sailboat floating in its berth near a clean suburban dock.Max wears a turquoise dragon-scale patterned t-shirt over his armor and carries a black dirtbike-style Fox helmet. He sits astride a blue and white Suzuki dirtbike on top of a hill at Carnegie Vehicular Recreation Area in Tracy, CA.
Let's get results, together.
Right now, I'm open to UX Consulting clients and Full-Time W2 inquiries.
Send Max an email
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Connect with Max on LinkedIn
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