Design Technologist

ROBERT SMOLENSKI

Design Technologist Prototype Engineer

San Francisco, CA • 415-***-**** • *********.***@*****.*** • smolenski.com • linkedin.com/in/bobsmo SUMMARY

Design Technologist who ships code, not mockups. I design and build interactive AI tools, product simulators, configurators, and learning experiences that turn dense technical content into things people want to engage with. Daily driver of Claude Code and other AI agents for rapid prototyping. Hands-on experience analyzing model behavior and RAG performance against production chatbot traffic. Two-plus decades shipping character-driven, dialogue-based interactive systems before LLMs existed. SELECTED EXPERIENCE

Design Technologist & AI Implementation Lead • SPAN.io Jan 2022 to Present Smart electrical panels and home energy intelligence

• PowerUp™ product simulators: interactive HTML/JS simulators that let prospects, installers, and Eaton sales partners experience SPAN's load-management behavior without hardware on the bench. Designed and shipped the load-shedding algorithm logic (non-Drive loads restore before Drive loads), thermostat PowerUp interaction, MLO 24 simulator, and the looping animation on the Explore page.

• SLD Builder: drag-and-drop single-line diagram tool that lets electricians design full-home battery backup layouts around the SPAN Panel's circuit-level control. Turns a complex code-compliant electrical design task into a visual, interactive workflow.

• AI product surface and model behavior: designed and shipped AI-powered search and chatbot trained on SPAN's technical docs, install guides, and product videos. Built an informal eval pipeline by analyzing production chatbot logs across multiple time windows, surfacing RAG knowledge gaps, low-confidence responses, no-doc deflections, and downstream effects of a model swap on response style. Fed findings back into content strategy and prompt design.

• Training library: produced 60+ educational videos for techportal.span.io, the install training platform. Built a branded NEC 2026 reference document for onboarding and partner training. Independent UX/UI Designer & Educational Technologist • ETR, dFusion, SFUSD, and others 1999 to 2022 Two decades of interactive learning systems for educators, researchers, and mission-driven organizations

• dFusion ("3T", "Trans Women Connected"): designed and built character-driven eLearning apps with persona-based dialogue flows that adapted to user input, creating natural and empathetic interactions, an early form of conversational interaction design before LLMs existed.

• ETR Associates ("About Us, A Healthy Relationship Program"): designed interactive dialogues and character-driven narratives for a teen sexual-health curriculum, with adaptive flows that personalized the experience to each user.

• SFUSD ("Adventures in Nihongo"): shipped a K-5 Japanese language eLearning app with interactive characters, scenario-based learning, and original animation, illustration, and games aligned to learning objectives.

Founder & Publisher • Cool Green Media Soft-launched 2026 Interactive clean-energy publication (coolgreenmedia.com)

• Pairing editorial coverage with hands-on tools readers use to run their own numbers, including a Backyard Solar/Battery ROI Calculator with PG&E TOU rate modeling and an EV-vs-gas cost comparison covering multiple vehicle models.

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Build: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, rapid single-file interactive prototyping, Figma-to-code, motion graphics, data viz, video production

AI-assisted development: Claude Code as daily driver, LLM integration via API, prompt engineering, RAG evaluation, chatbot log analysis, model behavior assessment Tools: Figma, Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite, video editing, scriptwriting EDUCATION & CERTIFICATIONS

B.S., Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL • AI Engineering Workshop • Private Pilot, FAA Mechanic