Daniel T Wood
Verified Expert in Design
Designer
Portland, OR, United States
Toptal member since June 7, 2024
Daniel is a UX design and strategy expert with 25+ years of experience bringing products, apps, eCommerce, and websites to life. By molding ambiguity, asking hard questions, and championing data, he helps teams design more usable, accessible, and delightful products. Daniel has worked with many of the world's top brands (including Adidas, Walmart, Samsung, and Capital One), B2B SaaS (Salesforce, HP, Asana), and early-stage startups, helping them find better ways to meet and exceed expectations.
Experience
- Design Leadership - 20 years
- UX Audits - 20 years
- User Experience Design - 20 years
- Design Strategy - 20 years
- UX Design - 20 years
- Team Mentoring - 15 years
- UX Research - 15 years
- Accessible Design - 15 years
Portfolio
Web Museum and Magazine Launch
eCommerce Redesign for Accountant Courseware Hub
Web Launch for Private Equity Tech Team/Fund
Work Experience
Design Strategy Lead
Self-employed
- Led the strategy and oversaw the design that sped up PayPal's customer integration time by 50%, spurred $30 million of incremental payments lift, and inspired a patent.
- Improved Peddle.com's average end-to-end efficiency by 26%, raised sales conversions by 6%, and improved customer satisfaction by 19 net promoter score (NPS) points following research and redesign efforts.
- Defined and operationalized cross-functional 'Test and Learn' experimentation programs with Asana, Brightspeed Internet, and Peddle. Early design tests delivered up to 49% improvements.
- Managed the team that launched sites with perfect 100 Google Lighthouse accessibility scores and led Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) #a11y audits for Silicon Valley Bank, Walmart, and John Deere.
- Helped Instrument (agency) win five awards, including Fast Company's 2023 "10 Most Innovative Companies in Design," with my contributions to EamesInstitute.org and BankBlackUSA.org.
- Worked for clients: Airship, Asana, Advent Tech, BankBlackUSA, Brightspeed Internet, Capital One, Conversa Health, Eames Institute, Four Hands, Grammarly, HP, John Deere, Optum/UHC, Motorola, PayPal, Peddle, Samsung, Silicon Valley Bank, and Walmart.
Principal Product Designer
Salesforce
- Applied and extended the Salesforce Lightning Design System (SLDS), the world's largest open-source enterprise design system, with additional components and icons.
- Broke the record for quickest onboarding and ramping to produce valuable contributions while designing low-code features for Lightning Application Builder on a three-month contract, enabling Salesforce admins to do more independently.
- Met bimonthly with the Accessibility Team to weigh trade-offs between design approaches.
- Concepted Salesforce integration designs with Slack before the official acquisition.
VP, Digital Experience
Liquid Agency
- Raised Thomson Reuters' conversion rate by 32% following my research, audit, UX redesign, and two waves of user testing for their accountant education marketplace.
- Drove the award-winning experience design for Walmart's benefits annual enrollment of 1.5 million associates, boosting satisfaction 29% higher YoY while saving Walmart over $4 million through digital transformation and personalization innovations.
- Co-facilitated product innovation workshops with clients, including The Vitamin Shoppe, which piloted a new subscription service that garnered over 600,000 customer signups in the first six months.
- Drove operational efficiencies by evangelizing the adoption of modern design, prototyping, presentation, and proofing software. Wrote proposals that secured over $4 million in new business.
- Led teams of digital strategists, UX designers, information architects, copywriters, product designers, producers, and developers on anchor accounts while defining the XD practice and defining and piloting over a dozen new service offerings.
- Coached two direct reports and mentored the broader staff on empathy-centered UX, accessibility, design thinking, and measurement techniques.
- Got promoted in 2018 (and brought in-house) following five phenomenal years of servicing all key agency accounts as the principal design strategy director in a freelance capacity.
- Worked for clients: Christian Brothers Automotive, DMC/DynaEnergtics, Eenotech, Entertainment Partners, Ernest Packaging, Hitachi, Roche, Thomson Reuters, The Vitamin Shoppe, Walmart, etc.
Digital Strategy Director
Tenfour Agency
- Conceptualized and oversaw the design and development of six award-winning viral products, delivered 43x ROI campaigns for Hawaiʻian Airlines and over 50 apps for Samsung/Intel.
- Generated 100+ news stories, attracting Adidas, Coca-Cola, TMZ, Google Labs, Starbucks, and a Diageo acquisition offer, following our creation of the Tweet-a-Beer viral mashup app for Southwest Film Festival (SXSW) 2012.
- Led the digital transformation of a 30-year-old traditional agency to become a recognized leader in social and mobile application creative, design, and development. Guided teams of up to 14 strategists, UI/UX designers, writers, IAs, and developers.
- Extended digital practice and service offerings across social campaigns, community management, video, and mobile application development through outside partnerships. Grew necessary skill sets in-house, reducing costs by more than 50%.
- Co-pitched and secured business from Adidas, Amazon Fresh, Air New Zealand, Cisco, Hawaiʻian Airlines, Intel, Microsoft, The Coca-Cola Company, and Toshiba.
Education
Postgraduate Coursework in Design, Animation, and Coding
Pacific Northwest College of Art - Portland, OR, USA
Bachelor of Arts Degree in Fine Art and Urban Sociology
San José State University - San José, CA, USA
Skills
Tools
Jira, Usertesting.com, Slack, Google Optimize, Google Workspace, Lightning Design System, Adobe Analytics, InVision, Google Slides, Maze, Adobe CC, Axure RP Pro, Google Analytics, Apple Keynote, FigJam, Confluence, Adobe Creative Suite, Miro, Asana, Tableau, Sketch, Airtable, Zeplin, Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), Ektron CMS, Balsamiq
Platforms
Userlytics, Web, Figma, Salesforce, Iterable, WordPress, Mobile, iOS, Android, Tizen, App Builders, Marketo
Industry Expertise
Consumer Products, Marketing, Travel & Leisure, Government
Other
Design, Writing & Editing, Web Design, UX Research, UX Design, Usability, Framing problems, Strategy, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), Communication, Design Systems, Digital Product Design, User-centered Design (UCD), User Research, Remote User Testing, Ideation, Content Design, UX Audits, UI Audits, Experience Strategy, User Experience Design, Experience Maps, UX Wireframes, Annotated Wireframes, UX Prototyping, Journey Mapping, Aesthetics, Color Theory, Layout, Conceptualization, Design Principles, Taxonomy, Navigation Design, Accessibility, Web UX, Web UX Design, Competitive Analysis, User Experience (UX), Competition Research, Benchmarking, UX Testing, Design Validation, Heuristic Review, Heuristic Reports, Heuristic Analysis, Heuristic Evaluation, User Testing, Task Analysis, Qualitative Research, Quantitative Research, In-depth Interviews, IDI, Stakeholder Interviews, Web App Design, System Design, UX Strategy, Ethnography, Ethnographic Studies, Ethnographic Interviews, Mobile UX Design, Research Synthesis, Design Thinking Facilitation, Card Sorting, Survey Design, IA Strategy, User Journey Maps, Design Management, eCommerce UI, eCommerce UX, Mobile eCommerce, Training, Partner Management, Onboarding, User Onboarding, Rapid Prototyping, Low-fidelity Prototypes, Stakeholder Management, Cross-functional Design, User Flows, Logic Design, Forms, Web Accessibility, Accessible Design, Key Performance Metrics, Personalization, DataViz, Data Reporting, Mobile App Design, Mobile App UI, WCAG 2, Product Design, UI Design, Design Strategy, Product UX, Agile, Agile Sprints, Annotations, Design Leadership, Collaboration, App Design, Mobile Apps, Mobile Design, User Experience Strategy, User Interface (UI), Web App UX, Web Portals, Employee Experience, Research Reports, Landing Pages, Landing Page Design, User Validation, Research, Data Visualization, Data-informed Visual Design, Presentation Design, Graphic Design, UX Writing, Agile UX, UX Flows, UX Review, Design Documentation, Responsive Web Apps, Dashboards, Usability Testing, User Interviews, Interviews, Mockups, Personas, Style Guides, UX Consulting, Wireframing, B2B, User Personas, User Stories, Mobile UI, Interactive Design, Web App UI, Design Sprints, Qualitative Analysis, Logo Design, Complex Application User Interfaces (UI), Presentations, Facilitation, Team Mentoring, Project Management, Pitch Decks, Product Management, Video Editing, Ideation Workshops, Service Design, Notion, ChatGPT, Content Strategy, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Workshop Facilitation, Design Workshops, Schemas, Analytics, Team Management, Mobile Prototypes, Motion & Animation Design, Prototyping, Rapid Interactive Prototyping, Art Direction, Finance, Fintech, Product Strategy, Salesforce Lightning, Documentation, Lightning Network, Responsive Web Design (RWD), Portal Design, Service Blueprints, Lean UX, Responsive Design, Branding, MVP Design, Social Networks, Workshops, SaaS Design, Online Course Design, eCommerce, Management, Customer Experience, Instructional Design, Conversational Design, Product Launch, Brand Architecture, Adobe Creative Cloud, Humor, VWO, Email Template Design, Illustration, Social APIs, RSS Feeds, Advertising Technology (Adtech), Information Architecture (IA), User Journeys, Requirements, System Requirements, Multilingual Websites, CX Strategy, Lookback.io, Voice of the Customer (VoC), Active Listening, Contextual Inquiry, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), Visual Design, E-learning, Product Owner
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