About
A designer for high-stakes moments
I’m Christian Eckels, a product designer in Los Angeles. I’ve spent over ten years working on products used by many people: internal tools and consumer platforms at Nasdaq, the first design system at Eversource, and elections, articles, and personalization at CNN. In 2025, I co-founded Backlit, an AI company building an iOS app.
01
Profile
I also teach interaction design at Santa Monica College and mentor designers at Designlab and the Interaction Design Foundation. Teaching and design use the same muscle. As I tell my students: make the reasoning legible, not just the artifact.
02
Experience
Senior Product Designer
CNN (Skydance)
2021 to now
Co-founder, product and UX lead
Backlit
2025 to now
Adjunct Professor, Interaction Design
Santa Monica College
2025 to now
Senior Design Mentor
Designlab and Interaction Design Foundation
2021 to now
Senior Product Designer
Eversource
2021
Product Manager
Goldstar Events
2018 to 2020
Senior Product Designer
Nasdaq
2014 to 2018
03
Education
MFA, Parsons School of Design.
BFA, Webster University.
04
Teaching and mentoring
Fig. 1 · Interaction Design Studio
IxD 330, Interaction Design Studio
Microinteractions, patterns and responsible use of AI in the studio.
BUILD / PAUSE / QUESTION
Who is it for? What are we asking people to trust?
Fig. 2 · Vibe Coding Workshop
Vibe Coding workshop
Students build a working web app with AI, pausing three times to ask who it was designed for and what we are asking people to trust.
Fig. 3 · Mentoring at Designlab
Mentoring at Designlab
One-on-one mentoring for career changers in UX Academy and the AI for UX and Product Design course.