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What happens when UX leaves the screen?

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Focus Areas

GenAI, Enterprise, Product Design, UX Strategy

Year

2025-present

The longer I traveled with the same products, the less interested I became in first impressions and the more interested I became in adaptation over time.


Airports, overnight trains, crowded cities, and everyday routines became testing grounds for understanding how physical products perform beyond short-term use. While most reviews focus on specifications or isolated impressions, I became interested in how usability evolves through repeated real-world use.


What began as personal documentation evolved into an ongoing research practice exploring travel gear, mobility systems, and everyday carry. Over the past year, this work has grown into collaborations with brands, longitudinal evaluations, and editorial storytelling reaching more than 1M readers across travel communities.

Featured work

  • Winter in Iceland with a 35L bag
    A cold-weather field study exploring layering systems, mobility, and one-bag travel across Iceland. ~200K+ views


  • Bellroy Transit Workpack Evaluation
    An 8-page longitudinal product evaluation analyzing organization systems, comfort, and usability over extended daily use.


  • Cross-country Vietnam with Pakt
    A longitudinal travel study documenting mobility, organization systems, and adaptation across trains, buses, scooters, and dense urban environments.

What began as personal documentation evolved into a body of work reaching more than 1M readers and collaborations with brands including Pakt, Bellroy, and Wool & Prince.

Research approach

Most travel gear is evaluated through short-term impressions: a few days of use, controlled conditions, or isolated feature testing. My process combines observational research, longitudinal testing, photography, diary-style field notes, and in-the-moment documentation collected across changing environments — from dense urban transit and airports to remote travel and everyday routines.

Project 1/ Pakt


Design evaluation, Field report, Photography

Most travel gear is evaluated through short-term impressions: a few days of use, controlled conditions, or isolated feature testing. My process combines observational research, longitudinal testing, photography, diary-style field notes, and in-the-moment documentation collected across changing environments — from dense urban transit and airports to remote travel and everyday routines.

Founder of Pakt:

“Chris applied UX research principles to physical products, bringing a structured, human-centered lens to product design. His work shows a clear understanding that products are part of a broader system that complements human behaviors, not isolated objects.”

Next Up

Powerplay

All Projects

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Project 2/ Wool & Prince


Product testing, Travel

Winter in Iceland with Wool & Prince

A cold-weather field study exploring merino layering systems, mobility, and one-bag travel across Iceland. ~200K+ views →

Project 3/ Bellroy


Design report

Evaluating the Bellroy Transit Workpack

An 8-page field study documenting how organization, comfort, and access patterns evolve through repeated daily use.

Closing thoughts

This project began as personal documentation, but evolved into a broader exploration of how products integrate into movement, routine, and everyday life over time.


Across months of travel and repeated daily use — from airports and overnight trains to grocery runs and city commutes — I became increasingly interested in how perception changes through repetition. Features that seem important at first often fade into the background, while details around comfort, access, and adaptability become essential.


By applying longitudinal research methods outside the screen, this work became an ongoing study of how products are experienced in the real world: not in isolated moments, but through the routines and environments people move through every day.