SINCE 2026
Spring Health
Staff Product Designer
- Making products more human
- Design for care
- AI experience for mental health
- Information designer who ships product
Staff Product Designer · Spring Health · Portland, OR
Jess Hopkins
Portland, Oregon
She designs how AI shows up to people in crisis — and where it defers to a human.
Jess Hopkins is a Staff Product Designer at Spring Health, where she leads AI design strategy for the mental-health member experience. She trained as a graphic designer, took a master's in information design, and cut her teeth on commerce products at Turo, Wayfair, and Salsify before turning to healthcare at Firefly Health in 2020. For four-plus years she taught information design at Northeastern alongside those jobs, and she holds trauma-sensitive yoga teaching credentials — the same care instinct, off the clock.
- Staff '26Staff Product Designer, Spring Health
- 4.5 yrsat Spring Health, her longest single stretch
- 4 yrsadjunct professor at Northeastern
- 5 jobsheld while teaching, 2017–2021
HAPPENING NOW
STANDING TODAY
HOW SHE THINKS4 BELIEFS
Four beliefs, one direction: toward the human on the other side of the screen.
THE IMPACT
Every place she designed, and what each one demanded.
EVERYTHING ELSE · 2 WORKS
THE TIMELINE
A graphic designer who kept narrowing toward care until it became the whole job.
The whole record, newest first – tap any moment and Aster tells the story.
2020–PRESENT
Designing for care — first primary care, then AI in mental health
Jess joins Firefly Health in 2020 to design virtual-first primary care, then moves to Spring Health in 2021 and stays. She owns the member experience for five-plus years, pivots to AI design strategy in 2025, and is promoted to Staff Product Designer in 2026 — shaping how AI shows up to people seeking mental-health care.
“I shape the intersection of design, technology, and care, building products that are innovative, ethical, deeply empathetic, and grounded in real human needs.”
2018–2020
Marketplaces and commerce — range across very different users
For two years Jess builds product-design range across three business models: trust between strangers on Turo's peer-to-peer car marketplace, a design-management title on Wayfair's enterprise side, and data-heavy B2B SaaS at Salsify — where product-experience management is information design at commerce scale.
2016–2018
Consulting by day, teaching information design by night
Out of her master's, Jess joins Slalom's UX and Design practice, delivering across client engagements — breadth, short cycles, and stakeholder range. In 2017 she begins the adjunct professorship at Northeastern she will hold for four-plus years, teaching the very discipline she studied while building an industry career.
2010–2016
Graphic-design roots and information-design training
Jess trains as a graphic designer at Champlain College, then retrains toward information design and visualization at Northeastern. A HealthDataViz internship gives her a first taste of healthcare and data visualization — the two themes that will later define her whole career.