Digital product studio · Philadelphia
Hartzell Design builds the products that make AI actually useful inside a business — and runs the campaigns that get people using them. Strategy, design, build, and launch, from one person who spent fourteen years shipping software inside a Fortune 500 financial firm.
Four teardowns a month. No pitch, no call required.
summarize which of my client accounts need attention this quarter
Certainly! To help identify which client accounts may need attention, I'd generally recommend reviewing several key factors. Consider looking at accounts with declining balances, reduced contact frequency, upcoming life events, or shifts in risk tolerance. You may also want to segment by…
ok but which ones
Same model. Same data. One of these gets opened on a Monday morning; the other gets closed.
01 / The gap
Nearly every business you compete with has AI now. A subscription, a chatbot on the site, a few people quietly pasting things into a prompt box. What almost none of them have is AI that anyone depends on to do their actual job.
That gap isn't a model problem or a budget problem. It's a design problem. AI keeps arriving as a tool — a blank box, a raw capability, a workflow that breaks in week three — when what a team can actually use is a product: something shaped around a real decision, with the judgment already built in.
Closing that gap is the whole job here.
A capability nobody opens is worth exactly nothing.
US small businesses and AI, 2026
Share of firms, by depth of use
Sources: US Chamber of Commerce; Census BTOS; Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses, compiled 2026.
02 / What we do
Three services, in the order they actually happen. The campaign work is always downstream of something real — this studio doesn't sell social media management.
The AI-powered tool, workflow, or interface your team will open every day. Researched, designed, built, shipped, and documented — not prototyped and abandoned.
Research · UX · UI · front-end · integration
Positioning, the landing experience, and motion work that earns attention — plus a content system your team can keep running after I'm gone. Adoption is a campaign, whether the audience is customers or your own staff.
Positioning · web · motion · ad creative
A working session that leaves your team using AI on their real files, in their real workflow — the difference between a tool everyone has and one anyone uses.
Workshops · playbooks · internal rollout
03 / Why here
Fourteen years as a senior UX strategist and technical product owner in regulated financial services — currently running the enterprise demo and sales platform its teams use daily. I know what compliance kills, what users abandon, and what actually ships. Most of this field is learning that on a client's money.
Interaction design, animation, and motion — the part of the work that signals a person who is good at this made this. In a market filling with generated sameness, it's the fastest trust you can buy, and it's the discipline most consultancies quietly don't have.
Strategy through launch without briefing three vendors or reconciling their deliverables. AI does the labor here so the judgment stays senior — which is why an engagement costs what a mid-level contractor does and produces what a team used to.
04 / Engagements
Most engagements start at 01 and stop there until both sides are sure. Nothing here requires a discovery call to get a number.
05 / On the bench
No invented case studies and no logo wall. These are the pieces in progress right now — you can judge the work by them, or by the teardown, which costs you nothing.
A prototype of a two-sided demo experience: a buyer-facing walkthrough that adapts to who's watching, and a seller-facing view that tracks what reps actually use. Built from fourteen years of running the real thing at enterprise scale.
An end-to-end design for what an advisory firm's quarterly book review looks like when AI is shaped as a product rather than bolted on. The hero panel at the top of this page is one screen from it.
Positioning, copy, design, motion, and build — start to finish, by the same person who'd do yours. If it reads like a template, that's a fair reason not to call.
06 / Studio
I'm Chris Hartzell. For fourteen years I've designed and shipped digital products inside a Fortune 500 financial firm — as a senior UX strategist and a technical product owner, which is an unusual pair of hats and the reason this works. I've spent that time leading an enterprise demo and sales platform, which means I've watched, at close range, what makes internal software get adopted and what makes it get ignored.
I taught graduate UX and product strategy for two years, which is why the workshops are good. I've worked in animation and game design, which is why the work moves. And I've spent my career in an industry where "move fast and break things" gets you a regulatory finding, which is why I'm careful with the parts that matter.
Hartzell Design is the studio version of that. Small on purpose — you work with me, not an account manager.
07 / Start
Tell me what your team does. You'll get an eight-minute teardown back within two business days: three specific opportunities and one designed mock. No call, no deck, no obligation — if it's useful, we'll talk about 01.
You'll have the teardown within two business days. If anything else would help me look at the right thing, just reply to the confirmation.
Digital product studio · Philadelphia