I first met Elijah when he attended my “Twyla’s Design Sprint Story” presentation at the Austin Design Sprint meetup. Eli had fond memories of his first Design Sprint while at ManageLife and was excited to connect with other Design Sprint practitioners and gain insights from experienced facilitators. I took the audience through the Design Sprint structure while layering in stories and lessons learned from Twyla and other clients.
As a designer, Eli is passionate about working to align and empower cross functional teams to work more effectively and to ultimately realize high quality creative services. Eli founded Reagent Design, a design consultancy focused on rapid prototyping and software product design. He has also worked in augmented reality, 3D rendering, and modeling physical spaces. Eli holds a Bachelors of Environmental Design from Texas A&M University and is pursuing his Master of Architecture at the University of Texas Austin. Currently Eli a Designer at the Austin Public Works department where he recently ran a Design Sprint.
Eli started to attend the meetup every month and volunteered to help me with the quarterly Design Sprint Essentials workshop that I host free for the community. I was impressed by Eli’s passion for his work and how he is committed to public works and improving our community.
He first ran a design sprint while co-founder at ManageLife, an app working to deliver on-demand home services for consumers. Keith Pattison, his co-founder, gave him a copy of Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems in 5 Days. The company had received negative responses to the initial version of their app and they were stuck. New customer growth had stalled and they were struggling to prioritize their development backlog based the resoundingly lousy feedback from their customers. Keith thought a Design Sprint might help them gain a better perspective on the customer and how to improve their solution.
After reading the book, Eli knew that they had to run a Design Sprint, and although he was a bit nervous, he immediately asked the team for permission to facilitate the week long exercise. They ran the sprint, began iterating on the product and were extremely pleased with how aligned, motivated, and excited the team was post-sprint.
When not building prototypes for Voltage Control, Eli defines and produces new realities for his clients across physical and digital products. He uses various exercises from the Design Sprint method to help his clients better understand and communicate their vision, articulate scope of work, and define concrete requirements.
“Voltage Controls’ external perspective and views independent of organizational bias are a catalyst for teams looking to tackle a huge problem. After seeing Douglas in action at Fidelity I’m even more elated to be a part of the gang. I’m convinced more than ever of the importance of an external professional facilitator to keep the team aligned without the distraction internal dynamics” — Eli Wood
I’m pleased to have Eli join the band here at Voltage Control. His startup experience, creative and inquisitive mind, and passion to build community make him a perfect ally for the future I have planned for Voltage Control and I’m sure we will continue to greater and greater things together.
