About

& Biography

As a Product Design leader based in New York the past two decades, I’ve shaped products and brands across startups, newsrooms, and scaled platforms, including nearly eight years at The New York Times and, most recently, as Principal Designer at Resy, where I worked across the full product suite from consumer to operator.

I’ve spent my career in the fuzzy overlap between product, editorial, brand, and implementation: evolving brands, shaping experiences, and understanding how they’re built. Along the way, I’ve moved between Individual Contributor and People Leadership roles, helping teams build trust, alignment, and shared ownership.

Black-and-white portrait of John Niedermeyer — The author, shot digitally and processed with nostalgia.

Philosophy

The best teams I’ve worked on shared ownership across disciplines. Designers contributed product ideas, Engineers shaped the user experience, and Product Managers influenced the craft. Titles mattered less than curiosity, trust, and a shared commitment to making the work better. I’ve found that the strongest products emerge from the same conditions: clear thinking, thoughtful collaboration, and a willingness to stay close to both the people using a product, and the people building it.

Process

Years ago, I helped develop a design process at BuzzFeed built around defining problems, exploring possibilities, refining solutions, building, and learning from what shipped. I still work that way today, though less as a framework and more as a reminder that good design is iterative. The goal isn’t to follow a process perfectly: it’s to learn quickly, make progress visible, and keep improving the work.

Today

Right now, I’m working independently while exploring what’s next. I’m drawn to complex product ecosystems, collaborative teams, and environments where design can influence not just the interface, but the strategy and systems behind it. The work is important, but so are the people doing it.