What colleagues say.

Joe is a highly experienced product and design systems designer. He has that rare combination of interaction design sensibility coupled with deep technical expertise. He led transformation of design systems for Hotels.com resulting in a huge raise of the bar for design and engineering quality and productivity. Joe would be an asset to any team.

Joe is rare unicorn with excellent design taste and instincts coupled with deep technical and code understanding. He’s perfectly suited for creating both agentic AND human product solutions. Adding in his years of expert systems design on the Hotels.com and then Expedia Group Design Systems multiplies his ability to deliver solutions that actually work at scale. He was a leader for our team and a hilarious and joyful person to see on a daily basis.

I had the pleasure of working with Joe at Expedia Group, where we collaborated on a "Product Academy" presentation in Fall 2023. We led multiple sessions together, teaching Designers and Product Managers how to effectively leverage a wireframing tool. Joe brings a strong design thinking mindset to his work, always emphasizing user needs, clarity, and practical application. Joe is not just knowledgeable, but he’s also an exceptional teacher who knows how to meet people where they are and bring them along in the learning process. As a presenter, Joe is engaging, confident, and thoughtful. He created an environment where people felt comfortable asking questions and had fun throughout! I’d highly recommend Joe to any team!

I’ve worked with Joe for over seven years across various projects at Expedia Group while I was working there as a developer. He is very passionate about ensuring quality is always at the highest level, particularly when it comes to design systems and customer-facing products. Joe has consistently looked for ways to improve processes and education around the design system. For example, he built Figma plugins that could easily convert designs into different brand themes, something that was widely used across the business. Additionally, I’ve seen Joe run Figma learning workshops where he helped non-designers understand how to use features such as animation, prototyping, and auto-layout. During my time working with Joe, I often leaned on him for help and support. He is always approachable, happy to help, and great to bounce ideas off. I would recommend Joe to any company or team. With his passion for design, design systems, knowledge sharing, and process improvement, he would bring great value and expertise to any team. Any organisation would be lucky to have him.

Joe and I worked together at Hotels.com building a new UI platform and design system from scratch. What I valued most was how Joe engaged with the engineering teams - not just delivering specs, but taking the time to understand the technical challenges of implementing a complex design system and using that to inform his work. Work that he continued to champion through example whilst at Expedia Group. That kind of design and engineering alignment is hard to find, and any team building or scaling a design system would benefit from having Joe bring that to their work.

I had the opportunity to work alongside Joe in the EGDS design system at Expedia, and he consistently stood out for his leadership presence and positive, solutions-oriented mindset. He worked closely with engineering to help move initiatives forward and was often the one willing to speak up in meetings to help leadership align on clear direction. He was actively involved in conversations around strategy and future direction, bringing thoughtful input grounded in a strong understanding of how our mobile apps function and the capabilities of the underlying components. He balances strategic thinking with technical awareness, which makes his contributions both ambitious and practical. On top of that, he brings a consistently positive attitude that elevates team dynamics. I would confidently recommend him to any team looking for someone who can drive alignment, contribute to strategy, and collaborate effectively across functions.

I had the pleasure of working with Joe at Expedia, where he quickly became one of the people I relied on most to move complex work forward. He has that rare mix of strong product and UX judgment with a very pragmatic, engineering‑friendly mindset - he doesn’t just talk about good experiences, he helps figure out how to actually ship them. Joe consistently took ownership of gnarly problems, connected dots across teams, and asked the questions that kept us aligned rather than building in silos. On top of that, he’s an empathetic, grounded teammate who shows up for people in the hard moments and brings exactly the right amount of humor to keep a team feeling human. I’d jump at the chance to work with Joe again and would strongly recommend him to any team looking for a thoughtful, high‑impact collaborator.

I worked with Joe on the Expedia Group Design System (EGDS) for many years. This is a system that serves components for tens of millions of users every day. Joe is a design leader gifted at building components and, perhaps more importantly, processes that ensure design system health, and continued enhancement, at scale. Joe is an expert at reaching out to design and technology teams, then taking them along on the journey to craft systems and processes that ensure high-quality design output and reliable experiences. Joe is confident leading collaborative design activities and large documentation efforts. He consistently engages with the community to ensure that large and diverse teams are empowered to build unified products that are elegant expressions of their purpose. Joe is a thoughtful, meticulous, and industrious leader who brings a fine blend of enthusiasm and composure to a high-performing team.

Joe is an experienced designer and systems thinker, and was a key member of the team delivering a complex enterprise-level design system that supports multiple Expedia Group brands. Joe’s proactive and collaborative approach to problem solving drove the development of Figma plug-ins to support design system use. He is a natural leader and very willing to jump in and help teammates, whether it’s providing thoughtful feedback and guidance on the work, tracking down issues, or championing new tooling features. Joe was a delight to work with would be an asset to any team looking to level-up their design system capabilities.

I had the pleasure of working closely with Joe during our time at Expedia Group, particularly on Project Kes - a complete rebuild of the Hotels.com platform into a progressive web app, rearchitecting the entire experience from the ground up across search, property, pricing and beyond. Joe was the lead designer on both the end-to-end experience redesign and the design system that underpinned it - running both in parallel, which is no small feat. What stood out most was Joe’s ability to navigate complexity - and on a project of that scope, there was no shortage of it. We regularly faced decisions with real trade-offs - performance vs. flexibility, consistency vs. speed to ship - and Joe consistently brought sharp reasoning to those conversations. He had a rare ability to hold both a systems-level view and a pragmatic "how do we actually ship this" mindset at the same time. That combination is genuinely hard to find, and on something like Kes it was essential. Beyond the work itself, Joe was incredibly collaborative and easy to work with. Detail-oriented without being precious, always open to debate, and the kind of person who makes the whole team better. I’d jump at the chance to work with him again.

Joe is an expert product and systems designer. He initiated the first design system at hotels.com and helped merge that with other internal design systems at scale to create the Expedia Group Design System. He takes the initiative to up level his skills whenever he has the opportunity. The diversity ranges from diving into facilitating workshops, creating Figma plug-ins to fill theming and discovery gaps for our design system, and transitioning the systems team to be customer centric rooted in research and observation. He is an exceptional team mate easy to collaborate with and focused on supporting his peers.

I had the pleasure of working closely with Joe Newman for several years at Expedia Group, and he’s one of those rare designers who naturally thinks in systems. Joe was a lead designer on our design system team, but his impact went well beyond designing components. He has a knack for spotting friction in how designers and engineers work together - and then turning those observations into thoughtful solutions. While we were part of the design system’s "Infrastructure" pod, Joe and I spent a lot of time brainstorming ways to make the system easier to use in the real world. That collaboration led to two Figma plugins we built together: Auditor and Discover. Joe also partnered closely with engineers on initiatives like Figma Code Connect, helping bring design and code closer together in practical ways. Beyond the work itself, Joe is simply a great collaborator - creative, thoughtful, and someone who genuinely enjoys solving complex problems with a team. Any team looking for a designer who can think beyond the artifact and improve the system around it would be lucky to have Joe.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with Joe on design systems. He cares about design craft and quality and has a strong systems mindset. He’s great at bringing structure and clarity to complex challenges. He’s also incredibly thoughtful, collaborative, and just a genuinely kind person to work with.

I really enjoyed working with Joe as a senior designer on the Expedia Design system team. He’s great at digging into the details, researching options, and genuinely understanding how our product works for customers. When we were exploring ways to improve our customer support processes, Joe was thorough in evaluating both existing and new platforms, and his recommendations always reflected real customer needs. On a personal level, Joe is a very supportive teammate. He listened to my ideas, helped me refine them, and gave clear direction without ever shutting things down. I’d be happy to work with him again and strongly recommend him for any senior designer role.

I’ve worked closely with Joe across our EGDS and platform tooling work at Expedia Group, and they quickly became one of the people I trust most to turn messy, cross-team problems into clear, workable plans. Joe has a rare mix of systems thinking, strong communication, and a calm, grounded presence that keeps conversations moving toward outcomes instead of getting stuck in ambiguity. What I appreciate most is their ownership and follow‑through. Joe shows up prepared, thoughtful, and collaborative. I’d happily work with Joe again and recommend them to any team that needs a steady, high‑impact partner to drive clarity and long‑term systems health.

I worked closely with Joe on the Expedia Group Design System team, where he played a key role in bringing together the various design systems across the company into a single multi-brand, multi-platform system and ensuring it was easy for teams to use. Joe has a great ability to combine design craft with systems thinking, along with a strong technical understanding of how design systems are actually used by teams. Joe is also a great teammate. He’s always willing to help, share ideas, and support others across the team. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve gone to him for input or a second opinion, and his perspective is always thoughtful and valuable. Any team would be lucky to have him.

I had the pleasure of working with Joe for several years at Expedia Group on the design system team, and he consistently stood out as one of the most forward-thinking designers in the team. He constantly pushed himself to explore new tools and technologies, especially in the rapidly evolving space of AI. What makes Joe especially strong is his ability to connect design thinking with real technical understanding. He also brings a rare sense of humility and generosity to a team. He consistently recognizes the work of others and creates an environment where people feel supported and encouraged to do their best work. I’m confident Joe will make a meaningful impact wherever he goes, and I wholeheartedly recommend him.

Really enjoyed my experience working with Joe at Expedia Group. He’s a multi-disciplinary designer who worked hard to deliver results for the people who rely on our design system. He was always open to help, always learning, and always asking great questions. My personal highlight working with Joe was when we traveled to offices around the world, teaching classes on design. Joe was such a great teacher, helping people feel welcomed into the class and capable of learning the material, even if they were new to the things he was teaching. Any team that gets the chance to work with Joe should take it.

I wholeheartedly endorse Joe as an exceptional designer and an outstanding teammate. He possesses cutting-edge skills in crafting the most intricate Figma design system, which caters to over 15 publicly recognized brands. Joe’s remarkable success in designing components, each driven by tokens with its own sub-themes and dark and light modes, was a testament to their expertise. I highly recommend him without hesitation.

Joe’s been awesome to work with on our design system. He’s a full stack designer supporting product teams, writing clear, usable docs, and building out components. His deep front-end know-how means he’s always pushing on the best way to build things as well as evolving the system itself. He’s always experimenting with AI to speed workflows and improve consistency. Dependable, collaborative, and full of useful ideas, Joe has made a real impact on our team.

I worked with Joe in the experience design team in Expedia Group. He’s a classic all-round lead designer with a great design eye and deep technical and design systems knowledge. He’s always learning, immersed in new innovations in our field before everyone else, and keen to share those learnings so that his peers can benefit too. I’ve been grateful to tap into his brain as the AI revolution explodes. Joe stands out as one of the natural makers and doers. He just gets on with solving problems in whatever pragmatic way will most quickly improve the product experience. He’s the kind of designer everyone’s thankful to have in their team and a lovely funny bloke too.

Joe is a natural leader and one of the most genuinely delightful people I’ve worked with. At Expedia Group, he consistently elevated our design practice through his own work and through the way he engages others in thoughtful, systems-level discussions. He also has a remarkable intuition for tools and technology. If a design tool like Figma ships a new feature, Joe has a reputation as someone who will take the initiative to understand it and share it with the team. Beyond his skills, Joe brings humor, empathy, and positive energy to every interaction. I strongly recommend Joe for any role that values design leadership, systems thinking, and forward‑looking craft.

Joe is a highly skilled and creative user experience designer. He has an exceptional eye for detail and uses his robust user centered design methodology to create engaging and innovative user interfaces across multiple platforms and devices. Joe is able to tailor his approach to any design challenge to suit timescales and budget restrictions. His ability to interpret and implement business requirements through stakeholder and user engagement was particularly impressive. Joe is also a very likable person who has endeared himself across the business. He will be missed both personally and professionally.

Heeran and Joe with a supporting cast of many, many people across UX, dev and product embraced, challenged and evolved those early ramblings and delivered the robust design system that we have today and that we will all be working with and evolving going forward. I don’t say this lightly, this is a fantastic piece of work that they have sweat blood, tears and a significant amount of alcohol over. Great job Heeran. Great job Joe.