I build things.
In college I spent my breaks framing houses. Years later I added a bathroom to my own place, doing everything but the plumbing, and then rebuilt the deck. The work I do now is the same kind of work, just in software. I figure out how the thing holds together, find what's actually broken, and fix that part.
I started out as a front-end developer, so I care how a product works under the hood as well as how it looks. For 12 years, 4 months I've been at The Home Depot. I started on QuoteCenter, the app store associates use to order building materials the store doesn't carry. Now I'm a principal designer for Home Depot's professional customers: contractors, remodelers, and builders. I know the customers and the associates, and I know why things ended up the way they are. I started on Cinco de Mayo on purpose, so every work anniversary comes with a party.
I tend to spot problems early. I'll raise one, get polite nods, and then watch it become a priority a year or two later. So I write things down and keep building toward the fix anyway.
Off the clock
The house keeps me busy. I've got more houseplants than I can count, and a few of them eat bugs. There's a summer garden, blueberries and strawberries in the spring, and hops in the fall. I use a sauna and cold plunge every week (the goal is more), and the grill gets used more than that.
I collect records, but only from artists I've seen live. That's over 200 so far. I also root for the Padres and the Broncos, and I play more Diablo 4 than I'd admit in an interview.
Lately I've been building my own tools with AI. You'll find them under Things I build.
Portland native. Oregon State grad.
FAQ
What is cirsh, and how do you say it?
Say it "sir-shh." It's the letters of "chris," rearranged.
I came up with it after college, when I needed a name to put my design work under. I wanted something short, easy to remember, and tied to me. "Cervo" is what most people call me, but that name was already taken online, and I wanted to keep work and personal life a bit apart back then. So I rearranged my first name. Still me, seen a different way.
The logo and colors have changed over the years. The name hasn't, and it won't.
What does a UX designer actually do?
UX stands for user experience. The job is to find out what people actually need before a team spends time and money building the wrong thing. I talk to the people who will use a product, look at how they use it now, and turn that into something the whole team agrees on: what's broken, what matters most, and what to build next.
What's an "intro-graphic"?
A tool I named by accident. A coworker and I had a tight deadline and needed to show the leaders on the project who they were building for, but we couldn't get time with real users.
So we pulled usage data from a few sources and built small, data-backed profiles of each trade: what they buy, how they order, where they get stuck, shown as simple charts. It was half infographic, half persona. I jokingly called it an "intro-graphic," and the name stuck. We still make them when we need a quick picture of users and can't get in front of them.
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