Resume
I have spent 23 exciting years working in the field of User Experience, leveraging an academic background in Media Psychology and Human-Computer Interaction. I also have extensive training from Experience Dynamics, an award-winning, internationally recognized UX and services design agency. I am capable of delivering any sort of user-centered design deliverable, including richly interactive web and mobile app prototypes, wireframe sketches, user research reports, usability testing, personas, and journey maps. In addition, I am familiar enough with the latest web/mobile development technologies to effectively communicate, negotiate, and collaborate on design implementation with Product Owners, IT Managers, and Principal Developer Leads. I have a strong interest in digital wellness, emotional design, meaningful social interaction, and integrated media technologies, as well as new media politics and technology-enabled civil engagement.
Specialties
Contextual inquiry and behavioral field studies • Constructing personas and user scenarios • Product requirements gathering and prioritization • Rich, interactive prototyping, wireframing, and dev-ready specifications. • Design studios • Full-scale usability testing • Expert usability reviews (heuristic & competitive evaluations) • User-centered design training workshops
Media Psychology
Information & Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work
Psychology, Memory Research, Philosophy
As a senior leader within the Digital Experience Transformation group at Unum, I am heading up the UX research and design strategy for our holistic consumer member experience, including management of claims and employee leaves. In addition, I led the early design strategy during the launch of Unum's first comprehensive Human Capital Management (HCM) digital platform for employers and employees.
I am helping our Digital Experience team build mature, consistent user-centered design processes, methodologies, and assets, including a customized UxD and UxR software tool stack, a longitudinal user research insights knowledge base, a well-established design system, and numerous reusable templates/assets. Within our Digital Experience organization, UX is maturely integrated with Adoption, Product Marketing, and Analytics to successfully drive users to leverage our digital properties while continuously measuring KPI success.
Experience Dynamics is an award-winning, internationally recognized UX and services design agency that uses grounded, real-world research to help Fortune 500 clients engage, improve and innovate UX designs for digital experiences. We help marketers, product managers and technologists achieve higher levels of user engagement, efficiency and conversion.
I worked side-by-side with Experience Dynamic's founders, leading UX design, usability testing, and contextual field studies for numerous clients across a diverse range of industries. I also conducted UX certification and other training workshops.
Presence was a digital wellness startup whose mission was to make the UX of the World Wide Web and social media more efficient, intentional, and health-centric. We aspired to build a paradigm-shifting info gathering tool that empowers users to take control of their own digital experience, thus requiring a massive upgrade to the fundamentally outdated UX that has been available to all of us since the first web browser emerged almost 3 decades ago. Rather than browse and consume endless feeds of irrelevant content, manually scanning for what you care about most, Presence would offer the opportunity to privately and securely engage with info on your terms by proactively curating just-in-time content and automating routine tasks. In other words, a web that works for you, providing only what you need, when you need it. To achieve this, Presence would strategically leverage an encrypted, decentralized Personal AI engine, powered by constant analysis of real-time conversation and activity. We called it "big data of one."
As a Co-Founder, I recruited a dynamic team of 10+ industry veterans to help develop the product concept, marketing, brand, and investor pitch, culminating in media appearances and a presentation at one of the largest blockchain conferences in the world.
As CXO, my primary role was to champion empathy and contextual awareness in design, as well as lead the construction of a cohesive, best-in-class User Experience for Presence's users and partners. It was critical to our mission at Presence that we elevate the field of UX by incorporating Digital Wellness as a third pillar, alongside Usability and Desirability. This means that everything we built into our products and services must be centrally focused on maximizing utility, efficiency, purpose, meaningful social engagement, and a sense of calm, satisfying delight. Meanwhile, it must minimize overwhelm, distraction, and harmfully addicting interactions that lead to digital domination over one's life.
Toast is an all-in-one point of sale and restaurant management system. Built specifically for restaurants on an affordable cloud-based platform, Toast offers advanced functionality including tableside ordering, quick menu modifications, real-time enterprise reporting, online ordering, and labor management on an easy-to-use interface. Toast's full-featured POS platform is used nationwide by restaurants, cafes, nightclubs, and enterprise franchises.
I oversaw Toast's User Experience department, including UX Architects, Product Designers, Researchers, and Visual Designers. I built this Digital Experience program, quadrupling our team's size in less than 9 months, by rapidly recruiting and developing UX design, user research, and visual design talent.
KEY ACHIEVEMENTS
- Produced a roadmap for end-to-end user experience across the entire Toast suite of products, including activation, onboarding, and the entire user journey.
- Strategically built a comprehensive, mature usability program, implementing a user-centered design process that integrates user research and validation activities into all product management and development projects.
- Tactically provided expertise and recommendations, based on continuously collected user data and feedback, in the form of personas, wireframes, interactive prototypes, and various user research summary reports.
- Designed specialized tools, deliverables, metrics, and usability training programs.
- Organized and led multiple hackathon project teams, envisioning a revamped, streamlined ordering screen for servers and overhauling the information architecture of the customer-facing backend administrative configuration for Toast's POS system.
* NaviNet was acquired by NantHealth at the beginning of 2016. I came over to NantHealth through this acquisition, retaining my same leadership role.
Built NantHealth's User Experience department from the ground up, overseeing a high-performing team of UX Architects, UX Designers, and Visual Designers.
My team and I ran a usability program that extended across the entire company. I strategically designed and implemented a UCD process, integrating user research and validation activities into all product development projects, including customized delivery solutions. This included coming up with specialized tools, deliverables, metrics, and usability training programs.
We also tactically provided expertise and recommendations, based on continuous user data, in the form of personas, wireframes, interactive prototypes, and various research summary reports.
Worked as a senior UX consultant inside the IBM iX® global experience transformation practice, which is devoted to building comprehensive, optimized customer experiences for prominent Fortune 500 and public sector clients across many different industries.
In addition, I served as a lead UX Design Strategist within the IBM Sports & Entertainment Consulting Division, constructing cutting edge, web and mobile experiences powered by Watson's AI-driven insights. Our partners included iconic annual global events such as The Masters, U.S. Open, Wimbledon, The GRAMMY Awards, and The Tony Awards.
While at IBM, I was nominated to participate in their 12-month-long intensive Leadership Excellence Program.
As a Usability Engineer within the Storage Systems division of IBM, I facilitated customer studies and authored UX specifications for mid-range and enterprise-level storage device management interfaces, while also successfully filing several patents.
KEY ACHIEVEMENTS & ROLES
- I participated in multi-site strategy sessions and workgroups to develop a unified style guide and set of widgets for all IBM storage interfaces.
- I acted as the Storage Systems representative on the ID/UX Council to improve and standardize the iterative UCD design process across all of IBM.
- I developed a web application that combines contextual collaboration and tracking tools with interactive prototypes and detailed specifications to produce a unified, richly interactive environment for managing usability deliverables.
Provided usability consulting services such as training workshops, heuristic evaluations, full-scale usability testing, and field studies to a diverse set of clients, including Microsoft, Intel, Key Bank, Oregon Health & Sciences University, Whitepages and Rentvillas.
KEY ACHIEVEMENTS
- Conducted a web navigation usability study of 100 websites to identify and determine best practices in navigation usability.
- Co-wrote a published paper on the temporal aspects of tasks and authored product reviews for Newsfactor.com.
Working within Qualcomm's Intellectual Property department, I led a large-scale project to design and implement a web-based document management system for the company's vast number of patent files.
I produced a business solution for organizing and standardizing all the department\'s electronic documents, while designing the UX and authoring the user manual. As part of this business solution, I developed a unique, homegrown web application for initiation and registration of new patent applications.
Collaborated with UC Irvine and MCC's web development team to produce a plan that would efficiently extend clinically-based screening tests to a broader online audience.
I conducted analyses of the overall market, target audience, competitors, while also identifying usability issues relating to the website and newsletter. I then designed, implemented, and analyzed online surveys, providing strategic recommendations based on the results.
Daniel had shared with us his concept for a streamlined keyboard based excerpting and coding system as a Dedoose user. He generously dedicated some time to both design and functionality and followed by sending a stunning and articulate presentation of his vision. A few weeks later our tech team released the new feature for the benefit of all Dedoose users. Awesome vision, a pleasure to have worked this through with him, and we love the new feature. I can only imagine the great value he brings to the rest of his work. Thanks Daniel..
Daniel has a wealth of knowledge as a user experience manager at NaviNet and displays a never ending willingness to share his knowledge. I have personally learned a lot about moderated testing and the tools that can be used throughout the process. He is instrumental in enabling NaviNet to effectively and efficiently conduct user research activities. Daniel is a visionary, innovator, and is always up to speed on the latest and greatest technologies that can be leveraged. As we transition into a product company I am confident that Daniel’s contributions will be far reaching and his ability to deliver time and again is appreciated and impressive. I enjoy working with Daniel and consider myself lucky to have him as a colleague.
Daniel is a co-worker than can be counted on to provide innovative ideas that improve the customer experience. He is always current with the latest technologies and is able to communicate about them in a way that everyone can understand. Daniel is someone that can be trusted to complete every assignment with passion and as a team player.
Daniel is an out of the box thinker, and an asset to every meeting and project…he has regularly offered new ways of looking at user research data and fresh new ideas for designing new functionality. Daniel is a solid usability professional and a dedicated consultant. He is a highly valuable team player and his flexibility and creativity make him fun to work with.
I enjoyed working with Daniel in the Human-Computer Interaction lab, as well as on several graduate student projects, in the areas of user-centered design, mobile computing, and organizational collaboration. He combines a positive and energetic attitude with impressive technical skills, solid work, and a strong understanding of the social context of technology. Daniel certainly stood out in the ICT group at UC Irvine and his enthusiastic participation in our program has placed him at the cutting edge of this dynamic field from a research and academic standpoint. Furthermore, Daniel has a good business sense and I firmly believe that he knows how to effectively apply his skills in a corporate setting, realistically evaluating designs and markets and ultimately creating compelling user experiences for his clients’ customers.