The Bio:
Hi, I’m Cole Daly, an Experience Design Specialist, though that title never feels like it encapsulates it all..
At heart, I’m a connector. I see patterns across disciplines and love finding how one field’s solution can unlock another’s problem. That curiosity has taken me from building furniture in college studios to designing digital systems used by millions.
I grew up in Atlanta, studied Comprehensive Design at Indiana University, a degree built around design thinking, and now work at Accenture, helping large organizations make their systems more human. Along the way, I’ve lived in Bloomington, Chicago, San Francisco, and New York City: collecting perspectives, friends, and a deep sense of how context shapes design.
Each place, each project, has taught me the same thing: good design isn’t about aesthetics alone. It’s about understanding how people move through the world and making that movement a little smoother, smarter, and more meaningful.
The Work:
[ 01 ]
Vessel Design Systems
2022-25
Tags
Design Systems, UX / UI, Adoption Strategy, Design Ops, Cross-functional Collaboration, Component Architecture
Problem Set
For one of the largest healthcare organizations in the US (Reporting short of 700M web visitors in 2023) digital consistency isn’t a luxury, it’s operational stability. Yet their design system, a loose 1.0, was incomplete, poorly adopted, and unreliable enough that most teams simply skipped it. At this scale, the client needed a system designers could trust. Something dependable, scalable, and capable of replacing the heavy lift of custom design work with a stable, unified foundation.
[ 02 ]
Iris Design System
2025-26
Tags
Design Systems, UX / UI, Research, Omnichannel, Multi-brand, Web, Component Architecture
[ 03 ]
Center for Client Success
Tags
Experience Strategy, CX Research, Organizational Design, Change Management, Stakeholder Alignment
Problem Set
The firm delivered world-class CX work for clients but had no system for measuring its own. Multi-million-dollar engagements ended with no structured reflection, no feedback loop, and no way to understand how we were actually performing. Building that system meant more than crafting surveys or dashboards. It meant asking the most politically powerful people in the company to invite critique, navigating deep ego dynamics, and pushing an experience-driven mindset upstream through an organization of more than 800,000 employees.
[ 04 ]
The Nature of a Seat
2019-20
Tags
Sustainable Design, Material Research, Bio-materials, Furniture Design, Life Cycle Analysis, Systems Thinking, Prototyping
Problem Set
Everyday objects hide complex supply chains, and even the simplest furniture can carry an invisible environmental footprint. A bar stool is chrome-plated screws, petroleum-based foam, chemically tanned leather, industrial adhesives, and agricultural systems stretched across continents. I wanted to make that footprint visible. And then I wanted to see if I could make something better. Not perfect, just better.
[ 05 ]
3D Printing in Rwanda
2018-2019
Tags
Human-Centered Design, Research, Prototyping, 3D Printing, Design Thinking, Community-Driven Design
Problem Set
In Ruhengeri, Rwanda, daily life is resourceful and resilient, but the community’s remoteness creates gaps in access to specialized tools. Local artisans and beekeepers rely on improvisation when supply chains fall short, often adapting or repairing equipment that was never designed for their context. The challenge was to use design thinking and HCI methods to understand these lived constraints directly — to listen, map needs, and identify where small, locally fabricable interventions could meaningfully support their work.