Allie Goodson
Meet Allie
Allie Goodson leads with an artist’s eye for form, color, and craft, bringing Maiven's philosophy of "simple, lovable, complete" to life across the homeowner app, Trade Pro Portal, and brand identity. Grounded in a BFA in digital media and a design background spanning healthcare and SaaS—including roles at Decision Frontier and GlassHive—she excels at turning chaotic, back-end complexity into elegant, harmonious interfaces. Allie designs with intentional empathy for everyday people and veteran contractors rather than tech savants, ensuring every interaction feels inviting, effortless, and practical. Her work turns tangled energy rebates and efficiency measures into delightful experiences that deliver genuine value to homeowners and the planet. Ultimately, she creates quiet, beautiful support systems where the design feels so natural it almost disappears—and when she's not creating miracles at Maiven, she can usually be found out hiking
Q&A with Allie
How She Got into Design
What were you doing right before you figured out design was a job?
I was a receptionist at Kaiser Permanente. They rolled out a new program that was somehow harder to use than the clunky old one it replaced. When they asked for feedback, I wrote a giant list detailing how call center receptionists actually worked, what the old system got right, and what the new one should do instead. The outside engineering team wasn't especially receptive, but somewhere in writing that list, I realized this was a job: you can just design products so they're usable, useful, and actually solve the problem in front of someone. I quit, took the Google UX certification, and that was that.
Did you always know design was a job?
I always had a decent idea of what design was, I just didn't know you could get paid for it. Somebody has to make the call on how a thing looks and how it feels to use. When nobody does, you can tell. The product comes out rushed or purely utilitarian—like a dev made it (no offense devs 🫶).
What did you make as a kid that nobody asked you to make?
Art, mostly. Nobody has to ask a kid to make art, but I was the kind who liked form more than meaning. I've always had a good eye for color and shape. I wanted my hands on every medium I could get—clay, chalk, even welding. I took second place in the first chalk art contest I entered. My parents let me get into whatever I could, which was lucky.
What She Loves About Design
Was there a specific thing that made you go "someone decided every part of that"?
I see it everywhere, down to the easing on a curve. Somebody intended that. It's more of a blessing than a curse because it means you notice the quiet design too—the kind that's so good you hardly register it's there. You just get what you needed, and the design is the quiet support holding it all up.
What's the part of the job people assume is boring that you actually like?
You have to think really hard all day. Sometimes it's thinking really hard about color. Sometimes it's about an interaction. Sometimes it's whether a rectangle shudders when you move from one screen to the next. People probably think that's an annoying thing to think about. I love it.
How She Vibes with Maiven
What about Maiven's mission do you resonate with?
I wanted to land somewhere I’d deeply care about the product, the outcome, and the experience. Maiven's mission lines up with what I actually value. Literally anyone could find a use for this app, and using it makes things a little better for them, their community, and the planet.
What's something you can do here that you couldn't do at a bigger company?
Blessing and a curse, but mostly blessing: I get to touch all of it—the brand, the tone, the way everything feels. You don't get that kind of reach most places. I have a direct line to our CEO and an open conversation with her about what users need, which just isn't possible at a big company. You can feel how much she cares about the mission, and it rubs off.
What did you expect to be fine that turned out to be hard?
The energy part. Matching a homeowner with the right measures, rebates, and programs is absolute spaghetti, and there's so much of it. That's welcome though, because that's the whole product. We're here to turn the spaghetti into a nice carbonara.
Who do you picture when you're designing?
My friends up here. I'm from the Bay Area and was in tech a long time before moving to the mountains. You meet a lot of people who have never worked in tech and don't know anyone who has. I picture them using the app and what they'd actually get out of it. Designing for people outside the tech bubble is a challenge with my background, but it's one worth taking up.
What's the difference between designing for a homeowner and designing for a contractor who's been doing this 25 years?
Terminology, mostly. With contractors you can go inside baseball—they know the terms and you don't have to tiptoe or hang a tooltip on everything. With homeowners, it's not that I don't want to explain, it's that I want to be sure they understand what applies to them and why we're asking for it. People are smart. If they want to be informed, it's on us to inform them.
What's a problem you've been chewing on lately?
The brand voice. I'm trying to find the line between too wacky and too safe. I want people excited about improving their home and their bills, and about doing something good for the earth and their neighbors in the middle of an ordinary day. This is genuinely interesting stuff. If I can get people as into home energy as I am, that's where the brand lands.
When you're not working, where can we find you?
Usually out hiking and generally enjoying my favorite planet.
