I grew up on tour buses. My mother was a travel host who planned niche tours around the world for senior citizen square dancers, and I’d leave school for weeks at a time to join the group. It gave me a strange, sideways way of looking at things that never really went away, which is probably why, twenty years later, I still can’t sit still inside one job title.
These days that shows up as design leadership, systems thinking, and hands-on technical execution, all under one name, because splitting those apart never made sense to me.
I’ve spent twenty years as a senior designer and developer, which means I’ve watched a lot of platforms arrive and leave. Flash, Drupal, custom CMSes, Squarespace, WordPress, the headless wave, AI-native tools. The platforms change. The fundamentals don’t. Clear Design Guidelines, sensible information architecture, and content that knows what job it’s doing hold up regardless of where the work gets built next.
How I got here
For years I led an effort to bring water to a Tanzanian village too small to be on most maps. Over about three months we dug a hole 170 meters deep that, with solar power, now supplies water to seven points around the village. I lived there for the build and documented the process and the life around it. I saw hunger and joy in the same afternoon, determination and frustration in the same conversation, and I found a drive in myself I still can’t fully explain.
I came out the other side knowing myself better. I know when to say yes, and I know when to say hell no. That’s not a small thing, and it’s shaped every project I’ve taken on since.
It’s also where the patience for foundational work comes from. A well doesn’t work if the plumbing underneath is wrong. Neither does an online experience.
What I do
The work goes beyond producing an online experience. It’s about shaping how the whole thing functions: how structure, content, and interaction come together with clarity and intention, and how the result evolves over time rather than needing to be rebuilt every few years.
Anyone can build an online experience now. Tools and AI have made that part easier than it’s ever been. What’s still difficult is building it on a foundation that holds up through the next platform change, the next tool change, the next time the team grows or the brand shifts. That’s where this work sits.
I close two gaps: the gap between strategy and execution on the design side, and the gap between what AI can do and how organizations actually adopt it. The thinking and the making happen in the same place, with the same person.
Outside of work
I build interactive music installations shown at festivals and residencies. I graduated from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and Hit the Road, a travel project close to my heart, earned Webby recognition several years running.
I’m curious about almost everything, with a soft spot for British Columbia and a bigger one for good food, good coffee, and the kind of people who don’t quite fit anywhere else. The weirdos, the eccentrics, the ones who are a little bit random. I’m one of them too.
Why twenty years matters
This is also what makes a foundation work for AI. Design Guidelines with proper tokens, voice rules, and documented components are exactly what an AI workflow needs to produce on-brand output. The same foundation that runs the online experience is what plugs in alongside it. Build it once, build it well, and it carries forward.
How I work
Two tracks, depending on what fits the engagement.
Day-rate work, for defined and repeatable scopes: Design Guidelines, online experience builds, hosting migrations, focused sessions of refinements. Most engagements start here.
Solution engagements, for scoped, outcome-based work that doesn’t fit a day-rate: larger custom builds, systems redesigns, tailored digital products. Priced by the problem being solved, not the days required.
Both tracks involve working closely together, often in real time. That suits someone who wants to be part of the process and understand how the pieces come together. It’s not the right fit for someone who wants to hand everything off and return to a finished product. Saying that early saves both sides a bad engagement.
Guest lectures, workshops, and mentoring on design systems and tool-agnostic workflows happen alongside both tracks, on request.
Tool-agnostic workflows
Building flexible systems so designers aren’t handcuffed to a single software platform. Instead of training students to be Figma experts or Adobe experts, this is about teaching the underlying thinking: how to structure a workflow, use design tokens, and set up systems that move with them as the industry shifts. It also opens the door to talking about code, because building tool-agnostic systems means understanding how design and development actually connect, not just handing off a file and hoping for the best.
Agile and living design systems
Teaching students to build design systems that aren’t static, one-and-done deliverables, but living systems that grow and adapt as new tech emerges. Instead of treating a design system as something you finish and file away, this session shows how to use it actively: running real-time experiments to test what works, and just as importantly what doesn’t, so the system keeps evolving alongside the tools and the industry.
More on the way
Additional topics in progress.
Past workshops and guest teaching
- Workshop facilitator, Dress for Success
- Workshop instructor, Vancouver Film School
- Interactive music tech workshop, elementary school program
Get in touch
Email: lara@larakroekerinteractive.com
