Alan Baker
Alan Baker

I lead design for complex, multi-sided platforms.

Head of Design at CPM Educational Program. Previously led UX for a $50M platform serving 300,000 students.

One system across district admin, teacher and student experiences, built with engineering and executive leadership.

View my work
  • Ecosystem5 connected surfacesDistrict admin, teacher, student, Infinite Practice and agentic tools at CPM.
  • AlignmentCTO and CEO partnerDirect partnership at CPM. Owned the early-learning roadmap at Waterford.
  • GovernanceSystem, policy, standardsCPM’s design system on Material Design 3, its first AI usage policy for design, and WCAG 2.2 as the baseline.
  • Scale500+ school districtsUse CPM curricula, in nearly every U.S. state. At Waterford: 300,000 students on a $50M platform, plus $9M in grant funding I helped secure to upgrade it.

I work across the full range from hands-on product design to design leadership, currently functioning as Head of Design for a connected EdTech platform while directing design and partnering directly with engineering and executive leadership.

Where I operate

  • Design system governance

    Material Design 3 alignment, decision records, and naming conventions that hold across teams.

    Owns the CPM design system end to end, from component specs to naming governance across the platform.

  • Cross-functional alignment

    Curriculum, assessment, engineering, CTO, and executive leadership.

    Partners directly with the CTO and CEO, and proposed a company-wide meeting cadence now in use.

  • Design operations and AI governance

    The policies and knowledge base the design team works from.

    Authored CPM’s first AI usage policy for design and maintains the Design and Product knowledge space.

  • Accessibility by default

    WCAG 2.2 as the baseline for every redesign.

    Heuristic review runs before a single screen gets built.

“…a designer who can set design strategy, deliver outstanding hands-on work, and elevate the people and practices around him.”

Dan Randall, Ph.D.Director of Product Management, managed Alan directly at CPM Educational Program

“He is able to take the product vision and translate it into a user experience that not only meets customer needs but raises possibilities I hadn’t considered.”

Shelly GramajoProduct Manager, worked with Alan on the same team at CPM Educational Program

Selected work

Redesigned myCPM Home: a personalized greeting with a resume lesson button, classroom signals, Teacher Tools cards and CPM Resources links beside a course sidebar.

CPM Educational Program2026

Helping teachers find what CPM offers and see how their students are doing

Starting point
Teachers couldn’t find what CPM already offered, and couldn’t see what their students were doing.
What I did
Led one direction across eight groups: full navigation and search from almost every screen, a home that starts with what needs attention, student data brought in through Infinite Practice and Teacher’s Desk, and focus mode for the classroom.
Where it stands
In development, with beta versions out and data coming in to refine the design.
Design leadershipInformation architectureAccessibility
Read the case study
Design tokens for color and typography beside the Waterford Reading Academy reports screen built on the design system.

Waterford.org2022 to 2025

One design system, two audiences

Starting point
Components and colors were built separately with no single source of truth, so the platform changed with whoever built it.
What I did
Led the design and development of the system: Material components for teachers and admins, custom for students, tokens as one source of truth, and a student palette with mascots, with WCAG 2.1 AA built in. Then drove adoption through advocacy and training.
Result
In use across the products.
+62%development speed+80%code reuse−65%deployment time
Design systemsWCAG 2.1 AADeveloper handoff
Read the case study
New district administrator home: teacher and student license totals with percent assigned, integration status, course configuration, a notification feed and a contracts list.

CPM Educational ProgramELS Admin Console

An admin console for district administrators, and the CPM staff who help them

Starting point
District administrators had a developer-built tool that gave no clear next step, so without help they could not complete a task.
What I did
Brought design into an engineering-only build, designed the React console around role-based access with a CSM admin role, and set a shared vocabulary of licenses and persisted licenses for customers, sales and support.
Where it stands
Available to district administrators.
Role-based access controlTerminology
Read the case study
Teacher's Desk gradebook with a student search, an Assign assessment button, a legend for Exempt, Absent and Late, a table of student scores with a class average row, and a Submit grades to LMS button.

CPM Educational ProgramDigital Assessment Administration

A path from paper assessments to the gradebook, without entering grades twice

Starting point
Grading was entirely on paper, and teachers entered scores again in a separate district system.
What I did
Took the design from early drafts to the full flow, and made the case that sending grades to the school’s gradebook belonged in the first version.
Where it stands
In development. The Assessment Builder it builds on is live.
0 to 1 designLTI integration
Read the case study
Ophidian Interactive game UI on a laptop: the bee character Buzzby with Lives x 3, a Relics panel listing Hardshell, Resilience and Gut Check, a Booster panel, and an Items grid of weapons.

Ophidian Interactive2021 to presentSide project

Creating the world and characters of a retro-style bee knight platformer

What I did
Co-direct an independent studio’s game, ChivalBee, and created its world, characters, art direction, animation and promotion.
Where it stands
In development. The studio is building an audience on YouTube and Instagram.
Creative directionVisual identity
Read the case study

Independent client work

Selected engagements through Lightring Design, my freelance practice.

Independent client work: client, scope, deliverable and year
ClientScopeDeliverableYear
AmazonPresentation video production and Figma UI localizationLocalized UI for Brazil, the UK, Mexico and Japan2026
American Society of CinematographersLive awards broadcastZoom broadcast overlays2020
Food StarFood delivery startupMobile app design2019
PublixWebsite redesignProposal2018
Amcore SolutionsIT consultation firmWebsite and customer journey2017

About

Portrait of Alan Baker

I’m a design leader and Marine Corps veteran with a background in UX, product design and game development.

Today I direct design at CPM Educational Program. I set the standards across the platform, own the design system, built CPM’s AI policy for design, and work directly with engineering and executive leadership. Before that I led UX for Waterford.org’s $50M K-2 learning platform, serving 300,000 students, and helped secure $9M in grant funding to upgrade it.

ResumeLinkedIn
  1. Oct 2025 to present

    Lead Product Designer, functioning as Head of Design · CPM Educational Program

    Design across the district admin, teacher and student experiences, Infinite Practice and agentic tools.

  2. Mar 2022 to Mar 2025

    Associate Director of User Experience · Waterford.org

    Promoted from UX Designer (2022) and Senior UX Designer (2023).

  3. 2021 to present

    Director of UX and Co-Creative Director · Ophidian Interactive

    Independent game studio, alongside Waterford and CPM.

  4. 2017 to 2022

    UX Instructor and Curriculum Designer · Ridgeview Global Studies Academy

    Designed and iterated end-to-end curricula using performance data.

  5. Oct 2017 to Sep 2020

    Content Researcher and Script Writer · Theorist Media

    Game Theory and Film Theory, which together grew from 14M to over 22M subscribers.

  6. 2015 to present

    Freelance UX and Digital Media Designer · Lightring Design

    Independent client work, listed above.