Sr. Product Designer → UX Manager
At SumTotal Systems I started and built the UX team and discipline from scratch. I changed the company culture to be much more user-centered and greatly improved all SumTotal products across the board. Won the Power of One team award for special achievements by the UX team.
SumTotal Systems provided e-learning and performance management web applications to enterprise customers. When I joined, there was no dedicated UX function. I started the first UX team at the company from scratch, building the team and discipline while changing corporate culture to be more user-centered.
I hired and managed a team across the US and India, establishing UX practices that would improve all SumTotal products.
POWER OF ONE TEAM AWARD
Won the most prestigious employee award at SumTotal for special achievements by the UX team
Redesigned the core talent development platform with a focus on task-based workflows, clear information hierarchy, and modern visual design.
Designed the training assignment and tracking experience to help employees and managers stay on top of required and optional learning.
Created comprehensive interfaces for 360-degree feedback, performance appraisals, and career development planning.
Designed rich HTML email notifications that brought key information and actions directly into users' inboxes, reducing the need to log into the application for simple tasks.
Designed features for managers to track team progress and for employees to collaborate with peers.
Established user research practices and gathered customer feedback to drive design decisions.
Led innovation initiatives and rapid sketching sessions to explore new product directions.
"Daan is simply the best in his field. His natural flair for imagination and creativity, coupled with superlative business adaptation and teamwork makes him a perfect leader for User Experience. He created the UX team at SumTotal and induced a dose of UX culture in the entire company."
"With his leadership, the design team quickly became a visible and driving force in the company. Daan has a way of kindly pushing his team to stretch, innovate, and design products that wow management and please customers."
"If you're looking for the best User Experience designer available, Daan is it. He has deep knowledge of the interaction design process and an outstanding sense of visually pleasing design. He has taken the company's products in a whole new direction, greatly improving user experience and customer satisfaction."
"Daan excelled at selling user experience and changing the culture across the company. He built out his team, established effective processes and standards, and produced highly innovative designs for new products as well as incremental improvements to existing product lines."