Traffic comes in. Sales don’t. The product isn’t the problem.
People decide
in milliseconds.
I design for that.
Nobody is thinking
about your website.
Your visitors are filtering and deciding before conscious thought kicks in.
50 milliseconds. That’s all the brain needs to form a judgment (Lindgaard et al., 2006). Gut reactions they can’t explain are deciding whether they stay or leave.
I built a methodology around that gap. Five layers between a visitor and a conversion. Miss one and the rest don’t matter.
The receipts.
Simply Smart Home
Simply Smart Home made digital photo frames. Good product, steady sales. But “digital photo frame” sounds like a gadget from 2009.
I repositioned them as smart home décor. New brand system, new packaging, new web presence. The whole surface area. Same hardware inside.
Revenue tripled within the year. The partnership lasted four years. Disney licensed the brand.
“Stefan designed the brand, the packaging, and the product. Everything people see.”Simply Smart Home
Vacuum Sealers Unlimited. Ten years, same site. Incremental optimization, no redesign.
“The website Stefan built me helped put my 3 boys through college.”Owner, Vacuum Sealers Unlimited
Online ticket sales at iO Theater. New booking experience for a 40-year Chicago improv institution.
“Stefan made our site in half the time, and even better looking than the agency we hired before him.”Managing Director, iO Theater
Retail & licensing

Origin
I figured this out
in a nightclub.
~300 people on a busy night in Santa Barbara. Same last call song, house lights slam on, and I’m barking at people to leave. A sour note saying “get out” on an otherwise good time. Always felt off to me.
So I started walking tables at 1:10. “Hey, last call’s coming up. Good time to grab any drinks you want. Thanks for coming out tonight.” No urgency. Just information, a suggestion, and a thank you.
By 1:30, people were saying goodnight and heading for the door on their own. Happier than the old way ever got them. Bar sales went up in those last 20 minutes, and we closed 30 minutes earlier than usual.
Right information, right time, right tone, and people cooperated on their own. A psychology degree from UCSB gave me the language. Fifteen years of building websites gave me the laboratory. That pattern became Perception-First Design™.
What I build
What comes after Claude Design, and what Figma for LLMs looks like.
Spatial AI workflow canvas. 4 provisional patents. Open source under AGPL-3.0 + Defensive Patent Pledge.
Automated design thinking. Evaluate and generate with “will this make sense?” logic.
5-layer methodology. ~100 peer-reviewed citations. Open-source Claude Code skill + corpus-driven evals engine.
A 12-chapter book on Perception-First Design.
Free PDF + EPUB. Counterpoint to Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think.
I ship in weeks what agencies
quote in months.
Design, development, and hosting. One person, no overhead. You pay for the work, not the org chart.
Growth Infrastructure
$800/mo
Your site becomes my job.
And I pick up the phone.
Enterprise-grade hosting, sub-second load times, and security that’s always on. When something needs attention, I handle it before you notice.
- Hosting + daily backups
- Security monitoring + updates
- Performance optimization
- Same-day response, 7 days
Month-to-month after first year. Included with all site builds.
Strategic Partnership
from $3,000/mo
Your revenue is the scoreboard.
I move the numbers.
Everything in Growth Infrastructure, plus Perception-First Design applied to your entire surface area: your brand, your pages, your conversion paths. I figure out where you’re losing revenue and fix the perception causing it. Results compound.
- Everything in Growth Infrastructure
- Perception-First Design applied to your brand
- Ongoing design + strategy
- Your own dashboard: reports, invoices, and action items in one place
- Priority response, strategy calls
Month-to-month. 30-day notice.
Not sure which tier? Don’t worry about it. See full service details →
Start with a conversation. I’ll look at your site and tell you what I find. We’ll figure out if this is a fit.
Let’s talk →