Design & UX Leadership

Every product is a promise.

And I make sure that promise holds: putting the user back at the center, getting internal teams to own the mission, and never losing sight of the numbers. Most recently that promise has been in the mobile app space, where the business turns on consent, permissions, and optimizing adoption.

Areas of expertise: Mobile & SDK · Enterprise platforms · Early-stage growth

Case studies Get in touch

What I Believe.

People don't stay because a product is cheapest or most powerful—they stay when it reflects who they are. Product loyalty is covenantal; the brand promises to reflect audience values and beliefs, and the audience responds with dedication and trust. My teams align promises with expectations, creating relationships that last.

I came to that belief honestly: through fifteen authored books on design, an MFA from Bard, a fellowship from Yale, and years building practices from scratch and running national organizations.

I can support engineering timelines and business pressure without letting design leave the conversation. I hold the room when it matters, and I still care how the work actually lands.

Results

If it didn’t move a number, what was it for?

196M+

Arity — Potential MAU reach across Experian, Alarm.com/ADT, and SiriusXM/Pandora SDK partnerships.

+280%

Champion Gaming — Subscriber growth after product, mobile, and subscription-funnel redesign

0–370

Wipro Digital — Built the UX practice from zero to approximately 370 designers and contractors

6.1×

Sears Holdings — Email opens: 0.7% to 4.3%, our recommendation engine vs. Rich Relevance

Case Studies

Strategy in action

Three situations that map to where I work best: mobile and SDK products, early-stage growth, and enterprise platforms. How I read each one, and what I did about it.

Arity
Prototype gallery Working desktop prototypes built to demonstrate data integration and new-market use cases.
1/1 Click to expand

The Problem

Arity had built its business around insurance, translating driving behavior into risk models, telematics products, and pricing intelligence. Its data also had potential value in consumer finance, connected home, automotive entertainment, retail, and other markets—but prospective partners needed to see how that intelligence could become a useful product experience inside their own businesses.

The Approach

My responsibility covered two connected tracks. On the product side, I led experience strategy for the mobile SDK and publishing platform that partners could embed in their own applications. On the GTM side, I shaped the market story and led working prototypes that made each opportunity concrete. The prototypes gave sales something credible to demonstrate and gave product, engineering, analytics, and prospective partners an experience they could evaluate together.

The Method

I built an AI-augmented prototyping workflow that moved us from strategic concept to a functional demonstration in days rather than weeks. I established the product premise, used generative tools to explore initial patterns, refined the experience, and brought the strongest direction into code. Approved company knowledge, domain structures, and realistic data models gave the prototypes enough substance to support serious product and sales conversations.

The Outcome

The work helped advance product and sales conversations with Experian, Alarm.com/ADT, and SiriusXM/Pandora—opportunities representing more than 196 million potential monthly active users. Just as importantly, the prototypes gave internal teams a shared, testable model of what Arity could offer beyond its traditional insurance market.

Champion Gaming
Product screens EdjSports and Football Outsiders on desktop and mobile. Click to browse all views.
Click to expand

The Problem

Champion Gaming had respected sports-intelligence products and a loyal expert audience, but growth had stalled. The experiences were dense, difficult for new users to enter, and inconsistent across content, analytics, subscription, desktop, and mobile touchpoints. The challenge was to broaden the audience without flattening the depth that serious fans and bettors valued.

The Approach

I rebuilt the subscription path by cutting steps, clarifying the value of each tier, and reducing friction between discovery and purchase. Across Football Outsiders and EdjSports, I reorganized the product experience so mobile users could reach a useful decision quickly while desktop users retained the analytical depth they expected. I also connected editorial, matchup data, predictive analytics, and wagering information into a more coherent product model.

The Outcome

Football Outsiders subscribers grew 280% and revenue increased 22% year over year. Across EdjSports, pageviews increased 206%, session duration rose 279%, and bounce rate fell 35%. The result was not simply more traffic: people understood the offering, stayed longer, and were more willing to subscribe.

NielsenIQ

The Problem

Nielsen was splitting in two — a $6B divestiture. The consumer intelligence side was becoming NielsenIQ, an independent company. The product portfolio was sprawling: over 100 enterprise applications built or acquired over decades, no shared design language, duplicated features everywhere, inconsistent branding. Thousands of global clients in CPG, retail, and media depended on these tools every day. All of it had to be rebranded and brought into alignment while the company was being torn in half.

The Approach

I ran a 21-person org across design, UX, and research. First I overhauled the design system — modular code snippets, flexible design tokens, a shared repository that worked from design through to front-end dev. Then I connected with my VP counterparts in branding and corporate marketing and proposed a cross-functional governance body I called the Nielsen Design Collective. The CMO approved it and we presented to the board. From there we audited the full product portfolio, ran weekly sessions over several months to communicate the new standards, answer questions, and hand off changes to local app teams. Final step was inspecting what we expected — signoffs, decisions on the outliers, and making sure it stuck.

The Outcome

The design-system overhaul was completed by mid-June. The Nielsen Design Collective received CMO approval and was presented to the board in July. Weekly rollout sessions continued through the fall, with final signoffs in January. In twelve months, 112 applications were brought under a shared design language while the 21-person design organization remained intact and operational through the divestiture.

Design Examples

Process and outcomes

A closer look at how the work actually gets made — and the artifacts it leaves behind.

Synthesis dashboard — Jesse's Desk overview screen with category cards and key metrics
Design Workshop

Synthesis Turning enterprise data
into a decision workspace

A NielsenIQ workshop example showing how research, pre-work, team friction, concept development, and organizational alignment shaped a complex analytics product.

Practice

AI should raise the quality bar, not just move faster.

AI compresses research, exploration, prototyping, and refinement. I use it to test more directions and turn strategy into working artifacts faster. But the essential leadership work remains human: defining the problem, setting the standard, understanding the brand, and deciding what earns investment.

Frame

Clarify the audience, constraints, business objective, and definition of success.

Explore

Generate parallel directions, working prototypes, edge cases, and alternative product models.

Decide

Apply judgment across brand, usability, feasibility, organizational readiness, and business value.

The goal is not more output. It is better decisions, sooner.

Explore my AI practice

Approach

How I lead

What holds up, no matter where I go.

Align and extend

Every engagement starts the same way: get the business priorities, team capabilities, and product reality lined up before you commit to a direction. I've walked into a 112-application portfolio at Nielsen that had no standard, 8 competing brand experiences at Foot Locker, three acquired studios at Publicis — and the first job is never "start designing." It's getting everyone pointed in the same direction.

Align, then extend

U.S. Bank

Wipro / US Bank

The problem: A $73M, three-year engineering plan with one UX designer embedded downstream, and a March launch already on the calendar.

The move: Six weeks and $48K to build an experience model as proof that the product direction could hold.

The result: Delivered in late January, loved by the client, and converted into $3M in UX project work that kept a team busy for three years.

That is the pattern: align the business, team, and product reality first, then extend with confidence. When the direction is right, speed compounds instead of creating rework.

The organization has to outlast you

I don’t build organizations around a single leader. I build them around shared principles, clear operating models, and an understood reason for the work. At Wipro, I built the practice from zero to approximately 370 people. At AOL, I grew the team from 7 to 36. At Publicis, I led 76 people across nine offices. When the principles and decision structures hold, the organization keeps moving whether I am there or not.

Career

Where I've been

2023 — 2026 Director, Design Lead Arity (Allstate) — Defined mobile SDK experience strategy and led GTM design for Arity’s expansion beyond insurance. The work included consent and permissions, embedded partner experiences, driver-behavior segmentation, and functional prototypes supporting opportunities with Experian, Alarm.com/ADT, and SiriusXM/Pandora.
2022 VP, User Experience GreenPark Sports — Joined as GreenPark’s first UX/experience leader, bringing product strategy and end-to-end interaction design to an organization that already had 3D design and engineering capabilities. Partnered with the CEO on a pivot toward mobile community voice chat, runway-focused restructuring, NBA licensing, and MLS supporter-group micro-networks.
2021 — 2022 VP, Product Design & Dev Champion Gaming — Led product design and growth strategy across Football Outsiders and EdjSports, rebuilding mobile and desktop experiences, information architecture, subscription, and sports-intelligence products. Subscribers grew 280% and revenue increased 22% year over year.
2019 — 2021 VP, User Experience NielsenIQ (Nielsen) — Led a 21-person global design organization through a $6B divestiture, bringing 112 enterprise applications under a shared design language for products touching more than 40% of retail sales and distribution traffic worldwide.
2017 — 2019 Senior Director, UX & Product Foot Locker — Led 12-person UX org across 8 global retail brands, increasing conversion +7% through checkout redesign.
2014 — 2016 Digital Practice Partner Wipro Digital — Founded the UX practice from zero; grew to ~370. Reset a failing $73M engagement with a $48K POC that secured $3M in follow-on work.
2012 — 2013 SVP / Partner, CX Rosetta (Publicis Groupe) — Led UX nationally across 9 offices, 76 people. Unified UX culture across three acquired studios post-acquisition. ~25% pitch close rate across 43 presentations in the first year.
2008 — 2012 Director, Customer Experience Sears Holdings — Led UX for a strategic R&D group reporting to Chairman Eddie Lampert, building the experience layer for personalization, ecommerce, email, and the Sears Catalogue app. The broader program contributed to 20% online revenue growth while supporting a $41B store business.
2007 — 2008 Creative Director Razorfish (Microsoft) — Creative direction and eCommerce strategy for P&G, JC Penney, Navteq, DeVry. Key role in winning JC Penney's $25M AOR contract.
2006 — 2007 Interactive Creative Director Coldwater Creek — Led first site redesign in seven years for $1B retailer. +32% pageviews, reduced cart abandonment, 40% online conversion lift YOY. Grew design team 200%.
2001 — 2006 Director, Design AOL (Time Warner) — Defined the content and traffic strategy across Netscape, CompuServe, and AIM. Conceived the Netscape traffic catalyst that drove +4M sessions/mo to CNN. Grew team from 7 to 36.

Let's talk about what you're building.

I’m open to VP and Director-level product design leadership roles, transformation mandates, and focused advisory engagements. If the organization’s ambition has moved beyond its current product experience, let’s talk about what needs to change.

dgiordan@mac.com LinkedIn