ABOUT / PRACTICE
I’m Dwayne Johnson, a Product & UX Designer working at the seam between environments and interfaces. My focus is wayfinding, interactive kiosk systems, and touchscreen navigation — where clear language, hierarchy, and behavior matter more than decorative noise.
Who I Am
Twenty years in design — starting in graphic design, then moving through motion graphics, environmental design, and branded digital environments — led me to the space I specialize in now: wayfinding and interactive systems that work in the real world. Screens people touch, in buildings they're standing in, simple enough for anyone to use on the first try.
Most of my work lives in a space most product designers never touch: physical, public, interactive systems — kiosks, campus wayfinding, hoteling apps — where the "user" isn't sitting comfortably at a desk. They're a first-time visitor standing in a lobby, a student trying to find a classroom before it starts, a family member unfamiliar with the building layout. That constraint changes everything about how I design: information has to be legible fast, interactions have to be obvious without instructions, and accessibility isn't a feature — it's the baseline every screen gets built on.
That work has picked up recognition along the way — Davey, AVA Digital, Hermes Creative, and MarCom Awards among them — though the part that actually matters to me is simpler: does it work for the person standing in front of it.
How I Work
I start with discovery, not assumptions. Before I touch a screen, I want to understand what the client actually needs, what the people using the system actually struggle with, and where those two things might not agree. Because sometimes they don't — and part of my job is holding the line for the user even when it means a harder conversation with the client. The best outcomes I've shipped came out of that tension: a workable compromise that kept the core experience intact instead of a design that looked right in a deck but broke down in front of a real person.
From there, it's iterative: wireframes before high-fidelity screens, drafts that go back to stakeholders for real feedback, and revisions that respond to that feedback directly rather than defending the first draft. I'd rather ship the fifth version of something that actually works than the first version that just looks finished.
Lately that also means designing with AI, not around it. On a recent capstone project, that looked like running raw AI-generated interface ideas through a judgment pass — every color, font, and shape choice re-checked against the actual brand system rather than accepted at face value. AI is fast at first-pass exploration; it has no real judgment about brand fit, and no innate sense of intellectual property — a lesson learned directly, when an early AI-generated direction used real console branding without ever flagging the risk. The speed is genuinely useful. The judgment stays mine.
Outside of work
Away from the screen, I'm usually deep in a UX podcast, sketching on my iPad, playing Marvel Rivals, or watching a documentary about space. I like understanding how things work and how they're built — whether that's an interface or the universe.