ISAAC WOOTENIsaacWooten
At Google, I lead design.
On my own, I build companies.
Either way, I ship.Sr. Staff UX Design Manager for BigQuery and Google Cloud’s AI tools. Founder of Digital Pool, HangarX and Northlit.
I grew up on a farm in Alaska with no electricity, where if you wanted something to exist, you made it.That became twenty-seven years of building: an agency, four companies and twelve years designing Google Cloud. I’ve never been able to direct work I couldn’t build, and I’ve never built anything worth shipping alone.
My storyHow I work
Selected work
Five stories about building from zero, inside Google and on my own. Each shows the problem, the calls I made, and what I’d do again.
-
Sr. Staff UX Design Manager
Google
I took over a team at a hard moment. What fixed it was direction, then visibility, then process, in that order.
Case study
-
Co-Founder & CTO
HangarX
An applied AI lab. Cortex, the knowledge engine, came first and runs two portfolio companies. Northlit is what we build now.
Case study
-
HangarX
Northlit
The AI design suite. Explore directions, pick one, build it. This site was designed with it.
Case study
-
Founder & CEO
Digital Pool
The scoreboard for competitive pool. 105,450 tournaments, native apps, custom hardware and live broadcast.
Case study
-
Co-Founder & CDO
LunarCrush
Social and market intelligence for crypto. Brand, product and the first Galaxy Score™, built from zero.
Case study
Archive
Forty-four earlier projects, 2004 to 2013.
How I work
Player-coach. Close enough to ship, far enough back to set direction.
Grow the team
Grew Google’s Data Analytics UX team from five to eleven. One measure: people leave more senior than they arrived.
Design from zero
Seven products designed from zero at Google, from Cloud Logging and Trace to Managed Kafka and Flink. Inside an org of thousands, the work lands by making the case.
Run the company
Levid Media for fifteen years, LunarCrush, Digital Pool and HangarX. Digital Pool runs thousands of tournaments a month on a team of seven.
Stay technical
I read the code and the Figma, and I still build: this site, Northlit, Digital Pool’s stack. I know what a thing costs before I ask for it.
Experience
1999 to now. One agency, three companies and twelve years at Google.
- 2024Now Co-Founder & CTOHangarX Cortex first, then Northlit. All of the lab’s engineering.
- 2018Now Founder & CEODigital Pool Zero to 105,450 tournaments. Team of seven, ~19M ad impressions a year.
- 20172022 Co-Founder & Chief Design OfficerLunarCrush Brand, product and a team of two. Still growing with its co-founders.
- 2014Now Sr. Staff UX Design ManagerGoogle Cloud · BigQuery and AI data tools Senior designer to Staff lead to manager. Team of 5 to 11, an org in the thousands.
- 20052014 Design and engineering rolesNintendo · RED Digital Cinema · Gaikai · AKTA · Kaleo · Column Five · Metagenics Gaikai acquired by Sony. AKTA acquired by Salesforce.
- 19992014 Founder & CEOLevid Media · design agency Fifteen years. Nintendo, RED, Coca-Cola, Gaikai.
Writing
Notes on designing when software acts for you.
Essay · AI · Agents · 2026
Designing for
the Agentic Era.
When software acts on intent instead of waiting for clicks, design moves from the screen to the loop, from polish to legibility, from control to trust.
Read the essayTestimonials
Contact
Let’s build
what’s next.
That’s the hard version of the problem, and the one I find most interesting: what trust, interruption and recovery should feel like when software does things in your name. If that’s what you’re building, say hello. I’m in Northwest Arkansas, run a team across three countries and four time zones, and travel for what needs a room.