A close-up of a gold-colored chain necklace with a circular pendant containing a small cross.
Me in dark glasses standing on a foggy beach

Christopher Kobar

Human experiences for an AI-fluent world

Staff Product Designer with 15+ years shaping complex systems — from architecture and flows to pixels and swipes.

💼 Currently open to new opportunities

↪ Selected work

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Breaking the 3 Year Stalemate

Shipping Oracle's first Redwood mobile experience by bridging product vision and design system compliance — and strengthening cross-functional partnerships

enterprise saas b2b mobile fintech
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Slashing ERP Onboarding Cost 60% with AI

enterprise saas b2b ai nlp fintech

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DCAC diagnostic platform unified workbench interface

An Expert Tool for Expert Users

Unifying Five Legacy Diagnostic Tools into a Single Workbench

I led the design of a diagnostic platform that consolidated five legacy tools into a unified workbench—built for the engineers who keep customers' on-premise systems running.

Consolidated five legacy diagnostic tools into one unified platform

Designed for expert users with 20–30 years of domain experience

Shipped within one year of design handoff; became the primary diagnostic tool for on-premise support

AI Vibe Coding Exploration

“Hey, Claude! Let’s make a Disney-like immersive mobile experience that brings the magic of a park visit to wherever you are.”

A fun project to explore vibe coding and its implications for product design, while producing a proof of concept for where IP-driven parks experiences can go next.

↪ My groove

Systems

Enterprise & complex platforms

Regulated tooling

AI-integrated experiences

Problems

Stalled products

Cross-functional misalignment

Vision-to-execution gaps

Method

Constraints → Framing

Framing → Alignment

Alignment → Shipped outcomes

Culture

Cross-functional partnership

High autonomy and accountability

Clarity over consensus

↪ On my mind

↪ About

How I Work

I started as a designer who coded my own front-ends in a browser before anyone thought to separate the two. That instinct never left. I still think about whether a layout breathes, whether a transition earns its milliseconds, and whether the structure underneath can hold what the surface promises.

I care about craft as much as I care about systems. I've never understood why the industry treats those as different jobs. A component that looks right but behaves wrong is a failure. A system that works but feels like a chore is also a failure. I want both. And people deserve both.

I always design close to the material — whether that's working in Figma, extending a design system into territory it hasn't covered, or building a working prototype with AI-assisted code. The tools will always change. My approach doesn't.

I imagine the best possible experience. I learn. I explore. I design. I code. I test. I ship. I repeat.

Who I Am

Before design, I worked everywhere from restaurants to Congress to a zoo. I served in the Navy Nuclear Power program. I've spent decades devising RPG systems, rules, worlds, and consequences. I published ten books. I dabble in weird fiction, podcasting. Sometimes I still pick up my guitar.

I've picked up some stories. I've been detained by the Syrian and Lebanese military. Had an awkward encounter with a U.S. president. Wiped out on a motorcycle at 95 mph. Busked in the NYC subway. Danced flamenco. Played a Secret Service agent in a Spielberg film. Saw a UFO. And got my piece of the Berlin Wall the old fashioned way. All true. Buy me a cider sometime.

I have a teen daughter, a Utah wife, and two cats who have never once been impressed. I studied philosophy at UConn — Phi Beta Kappa — and learned a few things at NYU, the University of Mannheim, and the Connecticut School of Broadcasting. I've lived in ten states, but I'm back in Connecticut, a stone's throw from the submarine base where I was born.