UX Director. People leader. Curious human.
I bring clarity to complexity.
And bring out the
best in people.
I lead designers, researchers, and writers through complicated challenges. I get to know what drives them, give them clear direction, and create an atmosphere of trust, honest feedback, and high standards. One that helps them find their next great idea and do their best work.
Open to UX Director, Design Director, and Head of UX opportunities.
Leadership in practice / Anaconda
Three acquisitions.
A clear way forward.
I led the UX convergence strategy across desktop and SaaS, built shared design foundations, and shipped tools that helped teams move faster.
Read the leadership story ↓The full product integration was still underway when I left. The foundations and delivery plan were in place.
01 / My why
I care about how
people experience things.
A fresh perspective.
I’ve spent my career paying attention to people: what they need, what frustrates them, what makes something click.
A confusing interaction. An unnecessary step. A product that makes someone feel like they’re the problem. I feel those frustrations deeply. Good design can make someone’s day easier, and sometimes do a lot more.
That instinct shapes how I lead, too. I want to understand the person behind the role and help them find work that brings out something they didn’t know they had.
Seeing someone grow into a responsibility they once thought was out of reach? That stays with me.
02 / Product thinking
Beautiful is a start.
Useful is the point.
I like clean, intuitive design that balances what people need with what the business is trying to achieve. Getting there takes more than a good-looking screen.
What brought someone here? What are they trying to do? What happens next? I look beyond the screen to understand the whole experience.
AI helps us explore and move faster. But a convincing interface can still solve the wrong problem. Empathy, research, and judgment are what make it work for a human being.
The magic is in making something complicated feel simple, with a moment of delight along the way.
Inspiration doesn’t stay in one lane.
Travel, cooking, and experiencing different cultures give me fresh ways to think. I pick up ideas along the way and bring them into how I design, lead, and help people grow. These are a few that have stayed with me.
From everyday life / 01
A little better, every day.
Kaizen is a Japanese approach to continuous improvement. I bring that idea to my team: notice what’s working, learn from what isn’t, and get a little better each day. Progress doesn’t always need a big reveal.
From everyday life / 02
Give simplicity a purpose.
Kanso is a Japanese principle of simplicity. It reminds me to ask what earns its place, in a product or in how a team works. Remove what gets in the way so people can focus on what matters.
From everyday life / 03
Get your ingredients ready.
Mise en place is the French cooking practice of getting your ingredients and tools ready before you begin. I take the same approach to design: gather the insights, understand the constraints, and give the team the context to start well.
03 / How I work
Good leadership makes
great work possible.
Support that builds confidence. Standards that stretch it. I create an atmosphere where people feel comfortable enough to be honest and challenged enough to surprise themselves. Here’s what you can expect from me.
Ownership
Give direction. Give room.
I set the tone, the priorities, and the standard. Then I trust people to bring their expertise. I’m hands off, but I’m paying attention. I’ll help you get unstuck and course correct when needed. I won’t hover.
Communication
Say the thing. With care.
You’ll know where you stand with me. My feedback is direct, specific, and about the work. We need to challenge our own thinking before the work goes out into the world.
Decision making
Have a point of view.
Be willing to change it.
I want people to explain their thinking and question mine. My title doesn’t make my idea the best one. We talk through the tradeoffs, make a call, and move forward together. When new evidence changes the picture, we adjust.
Execution
Make the next step clear.
I help the team connect user needs with business priorities and understand what good looks like. Everyone should be able to stand behind their work and explain the decisions that got us there.
Research & partnership
Get close to the problem.
I want designers involved in research and close to researchers. Testing can humble you. Let it. Build relationships with stakeholders and listen to ideas from outside the team. Better products come from real partnership.
Experimentation
Take a chance. Learn quickly.
I look for blind spots and opportunities we might otherwise miss. I encourage the team to try things, test the thinking, and change course quickly when we learn something new. Being proven wrong is useful. Staying wrong is expensive.
Growth
Find the opportunity
that makes someone shine.
Skills can be taught. The desire to get better has to come from you. I get to know what motivates each person, then connect them with work that stretches them. Sometimes that means coaching. Sometimes it means opening a door and making sure they get the credit.
From someone who was there
“Managing more than a dozen people, he was able to check in, stay apprised of everyone's workloads, and still make it feel like we were the only direct report.”
04 / How I move a team forward
Find the opportunity.
Give people a way through.
A shared understanding of the problem. A direction people can act on. Evidence that helps us adjust. Here’s how that translates into practice.
Understand the problem.
Bring research, user needs, business goals, and constraints into focus. Map the whole experience so we can see the gaps and the connections.
Give the team direction.
Agree on what success looks like and what comes first. Give people ownership, with the context and support to make good decisions.
Challenge the thinking.
Invite critique, bring partners into the work, and test the assumptions. Ask the questions that help us catch a problem while it’s still easy to change.
Learn and adjust.
Use evidence to make the next call. Keep people informed, adapt the plan, and hold the experience to the same high standard as we move.
In practice / Anaconda
Leading three acquisitions toward
one connected experience.
Halfway through the year, a major acquisition changed the plan. We had different platforms, different design systems, and users with different ways of working. We needed a direction everyone could move toward.
Our goal was to bring three acquired products into a unified desktop application and SaaS offering. When Outerbounds joined the picture, the leadership team regrouped. I brought back a unified product vision I’d pitched in my first year and adapted those ideas to the new reality.
Make sense of the whole experience.
The acquired product ran on a different technology stack, and we had to adopt its platform. That meant rethinking the information architecture, terminology, and how people found and used their work. I led research, journey mapping, and gap analysis to identify overlaps and differences between the experiences.
With product management, leadership, and engineering, we shaped a phased convergence plan. Design worked through how new and existing features would appear across the offerings, including when to introduce paid capabilities in the free desktop experience. The user’s journey needed to guide those decisions.
Build a foundation people could use.
Two design systems and different backends added friction. I saw an opportunity to rethink our tooling and pitched a move from Kendo to shadcn/ui, with a shared component library and an approach designed to support AI-assisted prototyping.
We connected the design system to our internal Claude environment and documented our custom components, patterns, and implementation rules. People could turn an idea or sketch into a clickable prototype grounded in our product’s actual design foundations.
That changed the conversations. Instead of reviewing static Figma files, we could walk through an experience together, spot gaps, and refine the PRD before the initial development handoff. Engineering had something concrete to work from roughly a week and a half to two weeks sooner.
Across the workflow from idea to concept to development-ready designs, we saw a 30% efficiency improvement, supported by quantitative measurement and qualitative feedback. The shared foundations also made subsequent acquisition planning easier.
Researchers used AI-assisted analysis to distill raw interview data into first-round insights weeks sooner. Leadership and product managers could use those early findings to shape decisions and give design a clearer direction.
Make insight easier to reach.
I also designed and shipped Pulse, an internal tool that turned our research-backed personas and archetypes into agents connected to the research database. Product managers could explore a brief, surface gaps, and ask questions. Designers could use it to flag potential interaction issues before stakeholder review.
The agents were grounded exclusively in our own qualitative and quantitative research, with new findings updating that grounding as they entered the database. We set tight boundaries around what the agents could answer, keeping responses within the available evidence.
We reviewed data logs and ran internal evaluations every month to check accuracy and adherence to those boundaries. Agent responses helped us decide what to investigate; they did not establish how real users would behave. Interviews, surveys, and usability testing continued alongside the tool.
Bring design thinking beyond the product.
As Anaconda’s only leader with a design background, I was often pulled into decisions beyond UX: brand direction, website experiences, marketing materials, lifecycle email, and product-led growth. I partnered with teams across the company, offering guidance and helping connect those touchpoints into a more coherent experience.
Help a strong designer become a strong manager.
I saw natural leadership ability in an experienced principal designer and coached her into her first management role, overseeing the research team. We worked on the shift from doing the work to supporting the people doing it. She earned strong feedback from her team, and we gained another layer of leadership within the department.
Across my tenure, five people moved into expanded roles, and no one on the team left voluntarily. I’m proud of the growth opportunities and sense of belonging we created together.
Keep the team aligned while things change.
I established regular stakeholder updates and a change-management cadence that kept progress, decisions, and emerging issues visible. People knew what had changed and what to do next.
What was delivered, and what continued.
By the time I left in September 2026, the shared design foundations, AI-assisted workflows, and Pulse were in place. The full integration of all three acquisitions was still underway. Since leaving, colleagues have told me the team continues to follow the convergence plan and build on the foundations I established.
I’m proudest of how we responded: with shared foundations, clearer decisions, and tools people could use. That’s where I’m at my best, finding an opportunity in the chaos and helping a team act on it.
05 / The journey
The work changed.
The care didn’t.
First, a designer.
Hands on with the craftI sharpened my skills through hands-on design and mentorship from exceptional designers at places like Microsoft, Amazon, and Starbucks. Working across different products and perspectives taught me to question my assumptions, develop my eye, and understand the decisions behind the work.
Those years still shape how I lead. I know what it takes to turn an idea into an experience you’re proud to put in front of people, and how much the right guidance can help a designer grow.
Visit my earlier design portfolio ↗Then, a leader.
Senior Designer → Art Director · ResponsysAt Responsys, I moved from Senior Designer to Art Director. Alongside the creative work, I was helping people find their strengths, leading teams through demanding projects, and building trust with clients. My contribution was becoming as much about the people as the pixels.
A team, built together.
UX Director · Anaconda · 2022 to 2026At Anaconda, I built a centralized, fully distributed UX department nearly from scratch. Sixteen designers, researchers, and technical writers brought different strengths to a shared way of working.
The role grew beyond leading individual projects. I was shaping how UX worked across the company, developing new leaders, and connecting product strategy with the team’s everyday decisions.
06 / In good company
The team can tell you
better than I can.
Excerpts from recommendations by people I’ve managed and worked with.
“He has a genuine ability to form meaningful connections with his team and makes people feel supported, valued, and cared for.”
More from Erika
“He created such a supportive environment where our team was encouraged to learn, grow, collaborate, and bring creative ideas to the table.”
“He is thoughtful, encouraging, incredibly empathetic, funny, and just a real joy to work with.”
More from Idan
“He was quick to incorporate my team and make us really feel part of the UX department, encouraging cross-functional collaboration between our respective units.”
“He created a unique team environment that was both nurturing and empowering, where everyone felt valued and motivated, and where company objectives were balanced with team member wellbeing.”
More from Blythe
“Dana’s mentorship was foundational to my development as a designer - he coached me in visual design and project management, gave feedback on my designs, helped me build up to leading significant projects, and entrusted me with exploring and implementing my ideas while always providing support and guidance when I needed it.”
“As a manager, Dana helped me see where my strengths were, and led me to a direction where not only my ideas and work were most successful, but where I was happiest overall.”
“Dana works with great integrity and is not afraid to have a difficult conversation or tell someone something they may not want to hear.”
More from Jon
“If you have the opportunity to work with or hire Dana, you should seize it. I hired him once, and would again without hesitation.”
“I felt at home and empowered when I worked on his team, and I appreciate his approach to team management very much.”
07 / The next chapter
Your next challenge.
Our next conversation.
If you’re looking for a design leader who will care deeply about your people, ask hard questions, and hold the work to a high standard, that’s what I bring.
I want to understand your users, find the opportunities, and help a team turn them into something useful, thoughtful, and a little unexpected.
Seattle, WA
Open to UX Director, Design Director, and Head of UX opportunities.