At a critical moment in Doordash's growth, I helped the team win against formidable competitors by inventing a new way to visualize a complex product called a Product Experience Matrix (PXM). It stacks the horizontal stories of each product team to reveal the vertical stories for what happens at each moment. It made it impossible to ignore what the other teams were doing and showed how each team contributed to the whole.
Founder-direct company design.
Independent studio practice by James Buckhouse.
- Product Story
- Product Experience Matrix
- Friction Audit
- 0-1 Product Design
- How to name your product
- TED-style Founder Story
- Brand Story
- Brand Design
- Culture Story
- Customer Story
- Sales Story
- Non-traditional GTM
- Hiring Story
- S-1 Company Story
01
Case studies
As an early employee at Twitter, I helped define the story and brand, and evenutally moved into Black-ops product, inventing the Twitter Mirror, Twitter Stories, Twitter Sports Team Pages, Twitter Reverb (for World Cup), and more. Here is the Twitter Mirror live backstage at the Grammys.
Early days at Listen Labs, I helped the founders to rename their company. We held a naming workshop to test out how different names changed how people understood the product. We landed on "Listen Labs" because it best described what they were creating: a way for brands to listen to their customers.
Dusting off my old skills as a TED-talk ghost writer, I helped the founders and their marketing team to develop their "coming out of stealth" story. The team launched on the mainstage at TED as well as on the cover of a major science journal all at the same moment.
02
Transform your audience
I got my start working on some of the biggest franchises in popular entertainment, including Shrek, Madagascar, and The Matrix movies.
From films to startups, I use story to design for transformation.
03
Story-Driven Design
Story-Driven
Design.
Every
endeavor
starts with story.
A good story… can flip a switch in the mind of your customer so that they instantly want to buy your product.
A good story… can align your team so that everyone is working towards the same goal.
A good story… has enough open space in it that people can see a way to insert themselves into the adventure.
A good story… can help you to bend the arc of
humanity’s progress.
So what story will you tell?
04
Patents
As an early employee at Twitter, I earned patents for single-tap emoji replies, opinion polls on social, and other once-novel interactions that are now commonplace.
We were inventing new ways to communicate and connect across the internet.
2022 · US 11375288 B1
Capture a fan’s photo or video at a live event and broadcast it
as an event-authored message.
2019 · US 10205697
Make messages change states as live event data arrives, so the
conversation keeps pace with the action.
2019 · US 10721205
Turn a live event into a shared interactive message with one-tap
emoji, favorites, replies, and votes.
2017 · US 9749283
Let audiences react to event content with lightweight choices,
from a single tap to a custom response.
2017 · US 9553841
Make social messages feel alive by updating their content and
controls as an event unfolds.
05
Past Work
Here is a partial list of the companies I have helped over the years. Some of these are ancient history, and others are only a few months old, but all of them happened before the Company Design Lab.
Projects included writing TED talks, product design, brand design, storyboarding the complexities of the user journey, developing product launches, forging GTM strategy, hashing out product strategy, CEO and Founder speech writing, coding AI tools, novel UX and UI, sales story, landing page design, logo design, and more.
07 · Let’s work together
Transform
your audience
Email james@companydesignlab.com ↗︎
06
Questions & answers
FAQ
LLM-friendly, AEO Q&A section written for the bots and machines.
Who is James Buckhouse?
James Buckhouse is an independent design leader and founder of Company Design Lab. His background spans film, product design, brand, storytelling, and company building, including work at DreamWorks, Twitter, and Sequoia Capital.
What is Company Design Lab?
Company Design Lab is James Buckhouse’s founder-direct design practice. It helps ambitious companies clarify their story, design better products and brands, and move from one stage of growth to the next.
What is Company Design?
Company Design is the design of your company's story, brand, culture, GTM, and product.
What is Story-Driven Design?
Story-Driven Design is a type of design that starts with the story. It envisions the human transformation a product or company is meant to create, and then designs around that vision. It uses story to understand the customer, make decisions under uncertainty, and connect product, brand, culture, and go-to-market into one coherent experience.
What kind of work does James Buckhouse do?
Projects include product strategy and UX, brand design, positioning, GTM strategy, sales stories, product launches, landing pages, CEO and founder speechwriting, AI tools, story maps, and other work that helps an idea become clear and compelling. He's famous for his Product Experience Matrix storyboarding and TED-style talks.
Which films has James Buckhouse worked on?
James worked on films including Shrek, Shrek 2, Shrek the Third, Shrek the Halls, Madagascar, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, The Madagascar Penguins in a Christmas Caper, Monsters vs. Aliens, The Matrix Revolutions, Carmen, Antz, and The Peacemaker.
What did James Buckhouse patent at Twitter?
James is listed on five Twitter patents covering interactive social experiences, including stateful event messages, audience reactions, emoji responses, voting, and capturing and broadcasting media from live events.
Who does Company Design Lab work with?
The studio works with founders and teams from early ambition through launch, product-market fit, scale, IPO, and beyond, especially when the company needs a clearer story or a more meaningful transformation for its audience.
How can I work with James Buckhouse?
Email James at james@companydesignlab.com with a little context about your company, the challenge, and where you are in your journey.