Chris Mackintosh — Product designer and builder

Designing since 2004.

2004–2018

Boulder, then my own studio

I started at Sterling-Rice Group, an ad agency in Boulder, in 2004. In 2006, I left to freelance for startups. One-off projects grew into year-long retainers, then into indiegraphic, the product design studio I founded. I worked with bootstrapped startups and Fortune 50 companies across Denver, Boulder, San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Austin, Toronto, Bangalore, and Singapore. Working across languages, cultures, and time zones called for patience, careful listening, and checking my understanding before moving ahead.

2018

Menlo Park or Denver

Facebook flew me out to Menlo Park to meet some teams. At the same time, Verizon called about a stealth project in Denver. I chose Denver for the 0→1 work, and that project became Visible.

2018–2021

Visible (Verizon)

I led design across growth and member experience, from ecommerce and eSIM activation to Party Pay and Visible's first design system, and some of that work carried over into Verizon. Senior, then Principal. Later I moved into Verizon's wider design org and spent a year leading a Verizon design team in India, keeping work moving across opposite time zones.

View work

2021–2023

Synack

I designed workflows for Synack’s FedRAMP-authorized penetration-testing platform, connecting enterprises and federal agencies with vetted security researchers to find and validate vulnerabilities. I worked closely with my product manager to build a team where people could challenge ideas, give honest feedback, and bring their own thinking to the work.

About Synack

2023–now

State of Colorado

Design lead on myColorado, the state's official app, with more than 2 million registered users. I work across product, brand and digital identity, on a design system I built from scratch for iOS and Android, with WCAG 2.2 AA as the design target. I helped our team unblock a long-running mobile driver's license initiative and bring it to launch. I was invited to DIA with the team for the governor's announcement.

Shipped

Mobile driver's license: accepted by TSA at more than 250 airports
Digital ID Verifier: so businesses can spot counterfeit IDs
mDL Reader: which checks age from Apple, Google and Samsung wallets, highlighted by Google Wallet

Evenings and weekends

Rendered Intent

My ongoing exploration of how AI changes product work. Rendered Intent keeps the reasoning next to the work, in a project brain that people and AI tools can build from. This site is the working example: I shape it with Claude and ChatGPT, Claude Code and Codex build it from the brain, and it'll keep changing as I learn.

renderedintent.com