Who is Domestic Jones?

Domestic Jones

Product Design + Management

Photo of Dustin as a child with retro headphones

That’s a photo of me in 1986. Things haven’t changed much. I still wear headphones, overalls, and leer offscreen.

I’m Dustin. I’m a product designer and manager based out of Boise, Idaho. I’ve done lots of other things too.

I chose the name “Domestic Jones” because I made a photo sharing website for my family out of state when I had my first child 17+ years ago. Soon after my second child was born I realized that I needed to legitimize my business. Since I already owned the domain name and I worked from home, why not just name my business that?

With this company, I’ve done everything from building websites, spec + design of mobile apps, designing print, editing video, and anything to do with media production.

My Approach

There’s countless venn diagrams discussing how Product Management is a blend of User Experience, Development, and Business Process. These are all great, but the thing that these don’t directly address is discovering the user’s wants. Sure, UX and Business Process are adjacent to a user base’s wants and needs, but they’re not directly related.

Learning from the users’ perception exposes a gap in the market. From there, a point of attack can be crafted to fill that market need. Now the User Experience, Development Capabilities, and Business Process are focused around a simple, direct market goal.

Why waste time throwing features at something when you can provide direct value to users out of the gate with a small subset of very pointed and proven features? “Don’t waste time or budget” is my approach.

Agenda of Events

Work + Projects

Agency Leadership

  • Beta Canon

    2019 — 2023

    Partner • Product Manager • UX Designer

    betacanon.com

    An old boss had the idea to create a company specializing in startups. Soon after starting, he gained significant traction and needed help specifying these startups’ software concepts so they could be properly developed. I came in as a UX designer and soon after was offered equal partnership in the company.

    During my time at Beta Canon, I crystalized startup concepts drawn on napkins to full-fledged applications put out into the world. A handful of these applications survived the startup phase and are fully functional businesses still using the software I designed, tested, and developed.

    Due to the volatile nature of startups, we decided to wind down the agency and pursue more stable avenues of income despite our deep love of startups and problem solving for them.

  • Idaho Websites

    2019, 2023

    Product Manager • Ops Manager • Dev Manager

    idahowebsites.com

    Around the same time I started at Beta Canon, a very talented designer I had hired at an old agency decided to strike out on their own and they asked me for help getting started. I came in, helped define some process, built a few websites, very proudly built her current website which she still uses, and info-dumped all my knowledge of running an agency onto her and she sprinted with it. Within my time at Beta Canon, she had quadrupled revenue, but also quadrupled the work.

    As we were winding down Beta Canon, she decided to wind down her business as well. I stepped in to help close some open contracts so she could be a more bespoke agency with limited clientele.

App Design + Spec

  • Screenshot of the Braceline App on Desktop Screenshot of the Braceline Marketing Website on Mobile

    Braceline

    Product Manager • UX & UI Designer

    app.bracelinecalc.com
    • Architecture Calculator
    • Desktop App
    • User Subscription Membership
    • International Code Council vetted
    • Facilitated User Testing
    • Wireframes, Iconography & UI Design

    The founder of this app needed to cut down production time for creating a required, but cumbersome, document identifying additional bracing supports for wind shear factors on residential blueprints. It was taking his staff nearly 40 hours to use CAD software to create these drawings, not to mention the back/forth of iterating on these drawings once they were sent for official state and county approval.

    Braceline used Canvas and React technology to draw over high-res PDF of blueprints, place wall bracing, calculate whether there was enough wall bracing to support the blueprint designs, then print out a complex PDF with the drawing and calculation tables. Braceline takes what was a 40 hour process and shaves it down to just a few hours: saving over 90% in employee cost for curating these documents. With the savings in payroll alone, Braceline has nearly paid for itself.

    The app is currently in use by the founder’s architecture agency, but he is shopping it to marketing agencies and will be expanding to the open market with the recently built subscription functionality I designed, had built, tested, then implemented.

  • Screenshot of the High Call App on Desktop Screenshot of the High Call App on Mobile

    High Call

    Product Manager • UX & UI Designer

    app.highcallrodeo.com
    • Rodeo Entry & Winnings Management
    • Mobile App
    • Rapid Iteration Process
    • Built up through 4 Full Versions
    • Wireframes & UI Design
    • New Version Pending Release

    The owners of this app have deep connections in the Northwest and national rodeo scenes and they saw a big gap in the market: there is little to no technology leveraged in any of the rodeo management. Contestants had to pay cash in person at the rodeo, winnings were mailed out via paper check weeks after the rodeo was done, and even seeing the winners and placements of rodeo events had to be done by calling into the rodeo offices. Doing an all cash operation also meant the opportunity for a lot of shrinkage. Solving this problem with technology seems like a no-brainer.

    Since rodeos had been done by hand for so long, there’s a lot of nuance in operations that doesn’t lend itself to easy translation to a computer’s binary of yes/no operating. Contestants can enter events with friends, split payments, split winnings, get paired up with their friends, and many, many other edge cases that needed to be solved. The contestants/users were used to these kinds of accommodations in person so the app needs to do that and more for it to be accepted in the rodeo world.

    Taking only a very modest amount of entry fees processed in the app, High Call’s business model is incredibly affordable for the rodeo stakeholders, its contestants, and the app owners. High Call is currently in its third season of running rodeos and is pending a major update where a specific rodeo type, “Jackpots,” is supported.

Websites

Other Stuff