# Ben Niehues IV — bennieiv.xyz

> The personal site of Ben Niehues IV, a product architect based in Kansas City, Missouri. A place for thinking in the open about architecture as a way of shaping the systems people live inside — applied to a life, and to the products he builds.

Ben Niehues IV leads User Experience at CommunityAmerica Credit Union. He started as a front-end developer and grew through product architecture into UX leadership. Alongside that, he designs and ships his own products, holding the whole thing himself from understanding through design and engineering. One habit runs through his writing: the real thing is always one floor down — look past the surface of a thing to the truer thing underneath. He can be found on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bennieiv.

## Manifesto
- [What is architecture?](https://bennieiv.xyz/manifesto): Ben's definition of architecture, and why he calls his practice "product architecture" — intentionally shaping a system so people can inhabit it, whether that system is software, a business, or a life.

## Practice
- [How I Work](https://bennieiv.xyz/practice): Not a résumé. How Ben works — a generalist who learns by building, breaking, and coming back, and the practice he's working on now: actually finishing.

## Notebook — essays
- [What We Build After](https://bennieiv.xyz/notebook/what-we-build-after): Six months after his dad died, he realized he'd been happy, and building. On grief, a farmer father, and saying good morning to him on the drive to work.
- [The Day I Signed with the Kansas City Chiefs](https://bennieiv.xyz/notebook/the-day-i-signed-with-the-chiefs): The summer he went to Chiefs Fantasy Camp, signed a one-day contract, and ran out of the Arrowhead tunnel as number 4.
- [Ten Days](https://bennieiv.xyz/notebook/ten-days): Ten days alone while the family was in Colorado — the freedom he'd been quietly waiting for. Nothing changed.
- [He Showed Me](https://bennieiv.xyz/notebook/he-showed-me): The eulogy Ben read at his father's rosary. "He didn't tell me how to work. He showed me."
- [The Chicken Coop](https://bennieiv.xyz/notebook/the-chicken-coop): An essay on building a chicken coop by calling his dad for every step — choosing the human call over the frictionless answer.

## Notebook — other forms
- [Field Notes](https://bennieiv.xyz/notebook/field-notes): Short observations, jotted and kept.
- [Margins](https://bennieiv.xyz/notebook/margins): Gathered quotes and passages, a commonplace book.
- [A prayer for my father](https://bennieiv.xyz/notebook/a-prayer-for-my-father): A prayer, set as a litany.

## Studio — systems Ben has shaped
- [Studio](https://bennieiv.xyz/studio): The index. Projects and systems Ben has architected — some his own, some at CommunityAmerica.
- [This website](https://bennieiv.xyz/studio/this-website): Built understanding-first, with AI as the building material and the design system as the source of truth.
- [Built for agents](https://bennieiv.xyz/studio/built-for-agents): Serving AI agents a clean, structured version of the site through content negotiation, Markdown twins, and this curated guide, instead of leaving them to scrape the page.
- [Cellopack](https://bennieiv.xyz/studio/cellopack): A portable trust profile for collectors who trade across platforms, so a stranger can tell you're legit before money or cards change hands. Live at https://cellopack.xyz.
- [College Cost & Compare](https://bennieiv.xyz/studio/college-cost-compare): An honest college net-price tool for members, built to cut through sticker shock and hand off to a human planner.
- [Life Plans Pilot](https://bennieiv.xyz/studio/life-plans-pilot): Proving a personalized nudge could actually change what a member does, measured against a real control.
- [Member Insights Playbook](https://bennieiv.xyz/studio/member-insights-playbook): Bringing member context and the first in-branch soft credit pull to the frontline.
- [Digital Banking Migration](https://bennieiv.xyz/studio/digital-banking-migration): Keeping trust intact while two member bases migrate from two old platforms onto one new one, without members losing their footing.

## Connect
- [Contact](https://bennieiv.xyz/contact): Start a conversation.
- [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bennieiv)