Marrowfield Design
About Marrowfield Design

Hi, I'm Della — I design software people don't have to fight.

I started out as a frontend developer, which means I learned the hard way how a careless design decision turns into three weeks of someone else's engineering pain. That's shaped everything I do since.

The short version

For the last nine years I've worked on the unglamorous middle of products — the setup screens, the empty states, the form that's almost right but somehow nobody finishes. I'm less interested in award-winning visuals and more interested in whether the thing actually works for the person staring at it on a bad Monday.

Most of my clients are small. A founder and two engineers. A product manager who inherited a tangled app and wants it to make sense again. I like that scale because decisions happen fast and I get to see the impact of the work, not hand it off into a void.

"Good design is mostly subtraction. My job is to remove the steps that were never doing anyone any good."

What I'm actually good at

Untangling complicated flows is the thing I'm proudest of. Give me a journey with a dozen branches and quiet drop-off points and I'll come back with something a new user can finish without a tutorial. I also test obsessively — I'd rather find out a button confuses people on a Tuesday prototype than after launch.

What I believe

Evidence over taste

My opinion is a starting point. What real users do in testing is the deciding vote.

Ship, then learn

A smaller thing in front of users beats a perfect thing in a folder. Always.

Respect the engineers

I design with build cost in mind and hand off specs that don't start arguments.

Plain language

If a label needs a glossary, it's the wrong label. Clarity is a feature.

A quick path through the years

2017 — present

Independent designer, Marrowfield Design

Partnering directly with founders and small product teams across healthcare, fintech and logistics. One engagement at a time, start to finish.

2014 — 2017

Senior product designer, in-house

Led the redesign of a scheduling platform used by clinics, and built the first proper design system the team had ever had.

2011 — 2014

Frontend developer

Wrote the interfaces other people designed — and slowly realized I cared more about why a screen existed than how to style it.