San Francisco · Bay Area
Ryan Harper

Building products & writing music

Meaning as form

By Ryan Harper · Bay Area, California

Building products and writing music have always felt very similar to me. In both cases, you're working, either alone or with a team, to create a new experience with the goal of providing some value to an audience, be that utility, an evocation of an emotion or insight, or simply a way, as Shklovsky would have it, to "make the stone stony." Both products and music are an expression of structure and form, and both articulate a vision of an imagined order.

Ryan Harper
Ryan Harper · San Francisco Bay Area
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Selected Work · Tech

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Adobe Express search
Principal PM · Adobe · 2025–

Adobe Express, Search

Leading search and discovery for Adobe Express, an app that makes design and content creation accessible to everyone through digital editing tools and AI.

Search · AI · Consumer
data.census.gov
Group PM · U.S. Census Bureau · 2023–25

data.census.gov

Led the product team behind the public face of U.S. federal statistics. Co-author of the Department of Commerce's guidance on Generative AI and open data.

Civic · Data · Open API
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Selected Work · Music

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01
2024
02
2021
03
2019
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Index — Past Work

All projects →
2018–23
City Builder by Citi
Citi Ventures Studio
Social impact · Data viz
2021–23
Worthi by Citi
Citi Ventures Studio
Workforce · Consumer
2015–18
Condé Nast Entertainment Video
The New Yorker, Vogue, WIRED
Media · Platform
2014–15
iHeartRadio for Android
iHeartMedia
Mobile · Streaming
2012–14
WebMD
WebMD
Health · Mobile
2012
Kubrick
LACMA
Museum · Mobile
2010–12
Newquill
DreamIt Ventures
Music tech · Startup