I'm Jesse Hammond, a designer and product manager working at the intersection of complexity and human need. I help organizations understand who they're building for and how to help.
I work on the hard problems. The ones that need someone who can hold the research, lead the team, and make sure something real gets built.
Senior Designer — Code for Canada
Co-founder — Civic Tech Montréal
MSc Digital Experience & Innovation — University of Waterloo
Secure & Responsible Tech Policy — Toronto Metropolitan University, 2025
Knight Arts Challenge Grantee
Top 100 UX Research Mentor — ADPList
I'm a designer and product manager based in Montréal with six years experience delivering digital services at scale. This includes Canada's National Cybercrime and Fraud reporting systems for the RCMP used by tens of thousands of Canadians, water dispatch systems serving thousands of residents in Canada's north, and leading platform consolidation across thousands of pages and complex stakeholder ecosystems. These are high-stakes projects where the people who most depend on the system are the last ones consulted in designing it.
I bridge research and delivery. I lead user studies, run workshops, manage sprints, and make sure what ships reflects what was learned. I'm equally comfortable leading a design team, owning a national research programme, or running the full product engagement end-to-end. Every organization I've worked with has left with more capability than when I arrived.
Projects that changed how organizations serve people.
Justice & Public Safety — RCMP · National Cybercrime Coordination Centre
UX DesignAI/MLUser ResearchProduct Lead
RCMP · Code for Canada · May 2023 – Sep 2024
Designing an AI Model to Triage National Cybercrime Reports
Led the end-to-end design of an AI triage system for the RCMP's Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre — where 200+ fraud and cybercrime reports arrive daily and a database of 350,000+ records had outpaced what staff could manually review.
The Design Change
Early interviews revealed staff weren't skeptical of AI — they were skeptical of wrong answers. A miscategorized report meant investigative time down the wrong path. That shifted everything: the model didn't need to be confident, it needed to be auditable. Staff had to see why it suggested a category, not just what it suggested.
Outcomes
~70% reduction in time per report review · AI model designed for 350,000+ records and 200+ daily reports · Prototype handed to CAFC internal team · First reusable user-centered AI/ML framework within the RCMP
Data inputs: fraud & cyber datasets, police reports, public reporting — shaped by analyst feedback loops.
Actions
Conducted 25 staff interviews and 8 workshops to map workflows, AI sentiment, and automation opportunities
Led experience mapping to identify the highest-impact point in the report review process
Designed a "suggest, don't decide" prototype — AI surfaces a category, analyst confirms or overrides
Led design and accessibility across the full NCS platform to WCAG standards
Developed a repeatable AI/ML design methodology — handed off for reuse by internal RCMP teams
The 25 interviews made one thing clear: analysts didn't distrust AI — they distrusted inaccurate categorization. A wrong call meant investigative hours down the wrong path. We shifted from designing a system that decided to one that suggested, with enough context for an analyst to agree, push back, or override.
Experience mapping with CAFC staff showed that categorization was where confidence broke down — not at the reading stage, but at the moment of committing to a label. That's where the design focused. Before handoff, we validated the model logic directly with the CAFC data team, iterating on what "auditable" meant in a law enforcement context.
Live at reportcyberandfraud.canada.ca — tested with 75 Canadians, brought to WCAG 2.1 AA.
User ResearchUsability TestingCapacity Building
RCMP · Code for Canada · Oct 2022 – May 2023
Taking Canada's Fraud & Cybercrime Reporting Tool from Beta to Live
In 2023, 41,000 Canadians reported fraud and cybercrime with $554M and $3B in losses — yet the reporting tool had never been tested with real users or brought to accessibility standards.
The Design Change
The 75-person study kept surfacing the same pattern: the Canadians least able to navigate the tool were the ones most likely to need it — fraud victims in distress, older adults, people for whom English was a second language. Usability wasn't a design metric. It was a question of who actually gets to report.
System Usability Scale — before & after
Before
68OK
↓
After
87Excellent
Ran a national inclusive study with 75 participants — fraud victims, CAFC staff, and RCMP leadership
Introduced a metrics-based testing framework, tracking SUS scores across iterative design cycles
Achieved WCAG 2.1 AA compliance — the first accessibility testing with real users for RCMP NC3
Facilitated workshops with RCMP staff to build lasting internal design capacity
The sampling strategy was built to reach the people the tool was failing — not just available volunteers. That meant recruiting across age, language, and geography, with deliberate effort to include older adults, people reporting in a second language, and those unfamiliar with digital forms.
Three testing rounds tracked the same tasks across the same participant profiles, so we could see exactly where confidence improved and where it didn't. The most meaningful fixes weren't cosmetic — they were to form language, error messaging, and the sequencing of information that determined whether someone understood what they were being asked to do before they gave up.
Outcomes
SUS 68 → 87 (OK to Excellent) · 75 Canadians shaped the design · WCAG 2.1 AA — a first for RCMP NC3 · Live nationally
Stakeholder and partner ecosystem map — surfacing adjacent sites, content overlaps, and org relationships across NS.
Agile PMService DesignStakeholder Strategy
Workers' Compensation Board of NS · Oct 2024 – Dec 2025
Redesigning Nova Scotia's Workers' Compensation Website
WCB Nova Scotia's digital presence was fragmented across 12+ standalone sites and 2,200+ pages on an end-of-life platform. Administrative costs were 42% above the Canadian average. A full redesign became a CEO-level strategic priority.
The Design Change
It looked like a content problem — too many pages. But card sorting kept surfacing something else: users couldn't find what they needed because the site was organized around WCB's internal departments, not around what workers actually needed to do. The information architecture had to be rebuilt from the outside in.
Led agile delivery across 28 bi-weekly sprints with a cross-functional team of 10
Facilitated card sorting, concept testing, and usability testing with workers, employers, and service providers
Consolidated 12+ legacy sites into a unified Drupal platform organized around user journeys, WCAG 2.2 AA
Embedded agile practices into WCB through paired delivery, coaching the internal product owner and scrum master
The live wcb.ns.ca — launched Oct 2025 after consolidating 12+ sites into a single user-journey-organized platform.
Card sorting ran with workers, employers, and service providers separately — because their mental models diverged and we needed to see where. The navigation that came out of it organized everything around what someone needed to do next, not which internal team owned the content. That shift sounds small but required rebuilding the IA from scratch.
Delivery across 28 sprints ran feature work, content migration, and bug triage in parallel, with a 15-person partner team who needed to stay aligned on priorities week to week. Agile coaching ran inside the delivery — the internal product owner and scrum master were active participants in every ceremony, not observers. By the time we launched, the team was running the backlog themselves.
Outcomes
12+ sites → one platform, Oct 2025 · 189 pages across 28 sprints · 817 tasks tracked · WCAG 2.2 AA · WCB team iterates independently
Project ManagementDesign Co-LeadCommunity Research
Kativik Regional Government · Oct 2024 – Aug 2025
Piloting a Digital Dispatch System for Water Delivery in Canada's North
Kuujjuaq's 2,800 residents depended on truck-delivered water with no formal dispatch system — requests coordinated through shortwave radio, Facebook, and phone. A matter of public health, not just logistics.
The Design Change
On paper it was a dispatch efficiency problem. In Kuujjuaq it became clear it was a trust and visibility problem — residents had no way to know if their request had been received, drivers had no way to prioritize urgent stops. The solution wasn't a smarter scheduling algorithm. It was a shared status layer that gave both sides the same picture.
2,800
Residents served
600+
Households covered
160k+
Requests logged
Traveled to Kuujjuaq for in-person engagement with residents, drivers, and KRG staff
Co-designed with KRG staff and drivers, navigating remote geography, limited connectivity, and Inuit governance structures
Managed the pilot from discovery through to a live app used by 24 active drivers
Established plans for regional scale across Nunavik with KRG
Being on the ground in Kuujjuaq changed the brief. What looked like a scheduling problem from the outside was a communication problem from the inside — drivers didn't know which stops were urgent, residents didn't know if they'd been heard. The 15,000 unplanned urgent requests in the data bore that out: nearly one per household per week, invisible to any prior analysis.
Design constraints were real: limited cellular coverage, three working languages (Inuktitut, French, English), and a community with no reason to trust a new digital tool until it worked. The pilot was built to prove itself within Kuujjuaq first — a trust-building strategy as much as a technical one — before asking for broader adoption across Nunavik.
Outcomes
24 active drivers · 160,000+ requests logged · 15,000+ urgent unplanned requests surfaced · Regional expansion across Nunavik underway
Workshop session with the Grey County AI working group.
AI / MLAgileWorkshop DesignFacilitation
Grey County · Aug – Oct 2024
AI & Agile Workshop Series — Grey County
Two separate working groups, two different needs: one wanted to responsibly explore AI for public services, the other needed to adopt agile for a small development team. Four workshops, designed and facilitated from scratch.
The Design Change
Pre-workshop surveys showed staff weren't resistant to AI or agile — they were fatigued by training that never spoke to their reality. Every prior example used startups and retail. Redesigning the workshops around government-specific scenarios — real service constraints, real procurement realities — changed the room.
"
Understanding perspectives of different departments... exploring the use of personas as tools.
— Post-workshop participant feedback
AI Series (10 staff)
AI primer and Options Analysis framework for evaluating tools against real service needs
Hands-on exercises grounding AI exploration in resident outcomes
Agile Series (8 staff)
Two interactive remote workshops on agile as a mindset, not just process
Practice methods built around a real project the team was already working on
Framework used to surface AI opportunities from user pain points — repetitive tasks, emotionally sensitive interactions, context-dependent needs.
Surveys went out after each session — not to evaluate the facilitator, but to sharpen the next round. For the agile series, the scenarios were built from real data the County provided. We took their actual project backlog and broke groups into estimation exercises and mini-planning sessions, so the practice was grounded in work they were genuinely accountable for.
Bringing staff from different departments into the same sessions was intentional. The cross-functional mix surfaced assumptions that siloed teams had never had to say out loud. What the group kept coming back to was that the time spent communicating upfront was being repaid downstream — decisions made in the room didn't need to be revisited later. That's the case for agile in their own words.
Outcomes
NPS of 8 · Confirmed increased AI/ML knowledge and design thinking appreciation · 18 staff equipped with practical frameworks · Reusable materials left with the County
Every project I work on starts with understanding — not assumptions about what to build, but genuine curiosity about what's broken and why. I spend time in the system before I spend time at the screen. Who are the people caught in it? Where does friction build? What does the system ask of them that it shouldn't?
Once I understand that, I get visual. I map the process with my team — where the product or service fits within the broader ecosystem people are already navigating. I look for the moments where evidence is thin and go find it. Small validations, quick tests, things that either confirm the direction or change it before it's too late to change.
From there I move fast — sketches to prototypes to working code, using AI tools to compress the gap between idea and something you can actually test. I bridge research and development deliberately, making sure the people building the solution understand the problem as well as I do. That shared understanding is what makes the difference between something that ships and something that works. Once it's live, I go back and check: has the tension eased? Has the experience improved for the people who needed it most? If not, there's more work to do.
Projects, Ventures & Past Work
Work beyond the case studies.
Tools I've built, organizations I've founded, and roles that shaped how I work.
Tools & Frameworks
Tool
RFP & Tender Prioritization Tool
AI Model Design & UX — with external developer
Monitors 8 government procurement platforms daily, scraping RFPs, bids, and tenders and scoring each against fit criteria through an AI model. Used by procurement teams to surface relevant opportunities without manual searching. I designed the model logic, scoring criteria, and end-to-end UX. Client work — details anonymized.
Tool
Digital Maturity Assessment Framework
Solo — strategy design & framework development
A structured framework for assessing the digital maturity of projects and teams across service design capability, agile adoption, data practices, and accessibility. Produces a clear baseline and prioritized path forward. Built from patterns across six government engagements and actively in use.
Tool
Government Open Data Aggregator
Solo — product & design
A single-source application that pulls and synthesizes data from 27 Canadian government data sources into one place — cutting the time researchers and policy teams spend hunting across fragmented portals.
Built a multinational freelancing network delivering brand, platform, and data application work for early-stage startups. Designed scalable design systems and bespoke user experiences across a distributed team.
Founder
Civic Tech Montréal
Co-Founder & Organizer · 2024–Present
Co-founded and organizes Civic Tech Montréal — a community bringing together technologists, designers, and public servants to work on civic problems. Runs regular events, workshops, and project-based volunteer sessions.
Past Work
CompTrak (now HRSoft)
UX Designer & Front End Lead · 2021–2022
Led a team of four developers across 10+ client implementations in the private sector. Designed scalable interfaces and managed organization-wide adoption of a central design system, reducing time to delivery across clients.
Speaking & Recognition
2025–26
Value Collective — Workshop Facilitator
Facilitating workshops for the Value Collective, working with participants on design, strategy, and public interest technology.
2025
Apathy is Boring — 20th Anniversary Panel
Panel member at the civic engagement organization's anniversary event, speaking on technology and youth political participation.
2023
Apathy is Boring — Ambassador
Served as Ambassador for Apathy is Boring, connecting the organization's civic engagement mission with communities in Montréal.
2022
My One Question Is — Podcast
Guest with Denise Harrison and Laura Fong, discussing civic design and public sector digital transformation.
2022
Knight Arts Challenge Grant
Recipient of the Knight Arts Challenge Grant, Akron, Ohio — supporting innovative approaches to community and civic engagement.
Writing
2025
How to Ethically Use AI in the Public Sector
A primer on approaching AI responsibly in government — covering machine learning, LLMs, generative AI, and a framework for ethical implementation. Published on the Code for Canada blog.
A case study on helping Grey County's Digital Service Working Group understand and responsibly apply AI to municipal service delivery. Published on the Code for Canada blog.
The best work happens when design leads from the start. I'm looking for product and design leadership roles where that's the expectation, not the exception — in public sector, civic tech, or any organization working on problems that matter.
