Bret Schwalb

Frequently Asked

Design Process & Strategy

How do you balance user needs with business goals?
In partnership with Product and Engineering, I focus on aligning end-user goals with business KPIs early by defining shared success metrics. At Capital One - Discover, I balanced strict enterprise compliance and speed-to-market with developer usability by building a standardized, WCAG-compliant design system. This reduced compliance risk while accelerating product launch cycles by 20%.

Walk me through a complex problem you solved. What was your role?
As Principal UX/UI Product Designer at Discover, I led the experience modernization of a fragmented legacy partner portal hosting 100+ APIs. I created a responsive, mobile-first design system with modular content templates. This allowed teams to rapidly migrate legacy APIs with minimal design intervention while fully meeting global legal standards.

How do you know when a design is ready to ship?
A design is ready when it passes usability testing, meets business requirement criteria, satisfies technical constraints, and achieves 100% WCAG AA accessibility compliance.

What data or metrics do you look at to measure success?
I measure quantitative operational metrics (launch cycle speed, task completion time, conversion rates) alongside qualitative user feedback. For example, at Alight Solutions, success meant a 20% drop in call center volume and reducing mobile benefits enrollment time to just 15 minutes

Teamwork & Communication

How do you present a controversial design to stakeholders?
I anchor design proposals in user research data, analytics, and business outcomes rather than subjective opinions. I bring stakeholders into research findings and design concepts early through interactive prototypes and co-creation workshops, transforming skeptical partners into collaborative allies.

Tell me about a time you disagreed with a product manager or engineer.
At Strata Decision Technology, engineering felt the UX design process would slow down delivery. Instead of pushing back, I embedded lightweight UX practices directly into their existing Agile development workflow. This improved overall product quality with zero loss in development velocity.

How do you handle design feedback or harsh criticism?
I treat criticism as data about the design, not a personal reflection. I ask clarifying questions to uncover the root business or technical concern, then use that input to iterate collaboratively. With my team, I model this mindset by asking guiding questions and allowing the designer to own how they adjust the work.

How do you mentor or support junior designers on a project?
I empower designers by separating the work from the individual, holding regular team critique sessions, and defining clear growth paths. At Allstate, I mentored a cross-functional UX/UI team, fostering strong camaraderie and a collaborative environment.

Execution & Craft

How do you keep your design skills sharp while managing tasks?
As a hands-on learner, I actively build side projects involving emerging technologies. Recently, I architected and deployed Career Camp (an agentic AI career tool) and ListShot (a computer vision/LLM app) using custom prompt engineering and AI logic.

How do you manage your time when you have too many projects?
I prioritize ruthlessly based on business impact, risk, and dependencies. I establish reusable component systems and design tokens to handle routine UI work efficiently, freeing up time to focus on complex, strategic architectural challenges.

What tools do you use in your daily workflow?
Figma (design tokens, variables, atomic design), Sketch, InVision, Adobe Creative Suite, Google Analytics, and AI development frameworks. I am also fluent in front-end technology, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, and Java. At Capital One, I helped my team integrate Claude Code into Figma Make to build a comprehensive educational tool explaining how the networks operate (Discover Global Network, Diners Club International, and PULSE), the software powering each network, and the specific user journeys within them.

How do you design for accessibility and inclusion?
Accessibility is foundational to every design, not an afterthought. I build WCAG AA accessibility compliance directly into design systems and their component libraries. At Discover (now Capital One), I successfully unified six legacy design systems into a single WCAG AA-compliant enterprise system that was later adopted company-wide.