Creating experiences that make you feel Comfortable, Confident, and Delighted.

Jason is a Designer based in Chicago at Perch Design Studio. He specializes in user-centered design for exhibits, web apps, and websites, blending empathetic storytelling with strategic planning, prototyping, animation, 3D and illustration. With a masters degree in counseling, he brings a research-driven approach and a deep focus on the human experience to every project.

Comfortable

Comfort comes from familiar patterns, clear visual cues, and intuitive navigation that align with how people naturally think. My background in clinical psychology helps me design experiences that reduce cognitive load and make visitors feel comfortable from their very first interaction.

Check out the photos on the right to see how I implemented comfort to teach visitors about perspective in painting for the Rufus Porter Museum.

Designing for Comfort means...

Building complete user flows in Figma before visual design
Using familiar interaction patterns that reduce learning time
Guiding attention with animation and visual hierarchy
Simplifying complex educational content into approachable experiences
Designing for visitors of different ages, abilites, and technical comfort levels

Rufus Porter

For the Rufus Porter Museum, I illustrated a background and magnets for visitors to learn perspective painting, something Rufus Porter was an innovator in.

The interaction is intentionally familiar, magnets on a wall work the same way magnets on a fridge do. No instructions needed, no learning curve. That familiarity creates immediate comfort, lowering the barrier to engagement.

The museum reports it as one of their most popular exhibits, consistently bringing out cross-generational interaction, which is always a goal I have for museum exhibit design

Confident

Experiences should inspire confidence that they're doing what you asked it to do. Confidence comes from clear feedback, predictable behavior, and interfaces that make it obvious what is happening and what will happen next. I design interactions that reassure people their actions have been understood and the experience is responding accordingly.

Check out the photos on the right to see how I implemented this idea in a NASA museum exhibit.

Designing for Confidence means...

Providing immediate visual, audio, or tactile feedback for every meaningful interaction
Designing interfaces that clearly communicate system status and progress
Making the results of user actions visible and predictable
Reinforcing cause-and-effect so people know the experience understood their input
Using prototypes to refine interactions before development and eliminate uncertainty
Creating consistent interaction patterns that build trust over time

EcoTarium

For the EcoTarium's NASA rocket launch exhibit, I designed a mission control flow where visitors check in with six NASA scientists before clearing the rocket for launch.

Each completed conversation returns the visitor to a selection screen showing who they've already spoken to with a clear visual checkmark, a log of who you have talked to, and a countdown timer updates with each interaction so visitors always know where they are in the sequence and how much is left.

Once all six scientists are cleared, the launch button turns green, a simple but powerful signal that the visitor has done everything right and the experience is ready to respond.

After you press the green launch button, the physical launch sequence that follows, projection mapping, platform vibration, and the rocket glow, confirms that their actions had real consequence.

Delighted

After people feel comfortable and confident, delight is what makes an experience memorable. My background performing improv comedy for over ten years has taught me how small moments of surprise, humor, and personality can create genuine human connection. I use animation, illustration, and playful interactions to create experiences that people enjoy, remember, and want to share.

In the prototype videos for Maine State Museum on the right, visitors drag and drop artifacts into a missing scene to reconstruct a historical moment. We could have simply transitioned to the next screen once items were placed correctly. Instead I animated the figures responding with personality to make sure moments like these land with the right timing, warmth, and humor to make visitors smile and remember the experience

Designing for Delight means...

Creating moments of surprise through thoughtful animation and motion
Using illustration and personality to make technology feel more human
Rewarding curiosity with playful interactions and discoveries
Designing memorable moments people want to share with others
Bringing warmth, humor, and wonder into educational experiences
Turning functional interactions into engaging stories

Let’s create experiences that are felt, not just seen

See full project list

Contact Me