Eric Danas Email & Phone Number

Taking time to re-energize through strengthened social connections, travel, and some alternative design activities: * Development of a new UX product offering * Adjunct professor course development: UX for Immersive Environments (AR/VR) * Home-built eFatBike & related accessories * Home re-design

Greater Seattle Area

At F5, I had overall accountability for the UX strategy and execution focused on a strategic new product with C-level visibility. Integral to this, I drove multiple product re-design initiatives including remediation from a failed agency-led design effort. As a result, I was instrumental in turning a failing product into a winning success described by customers as “F5 finally gets it!”Organizationally, I successfully re-aligned my UX and documentation teams multiple times with rapidly… Show more At F5, I had overall accountability for the UX strategy and execution focused on a strategic new product with C-level visibility. Integral to this, I drove multiple product re-design initiatives including remediation from a failed agency-led design effort. As a result, I was instrumental in turning a failing product into a winning success described by customers as “F5 finally gets it!”Organizationally, I successfully re-aligned my UX and documentation teams multiple times with rapidly changing corporate objectives including team structure, deliverables and engagement model with development teams across multiple geographic locations. In 6 months, I grew the team by 100% in response to increasing team impact.As a collaborator, I was a key stakeholder and co-driver responsible for helping shift the corporate culture away from feature-centric development in silos to become a scenario-centric solution provider integrating efforts across all organizational departments.To improve both operational efficiency and product consistency, I drove development of a robust design system and pattern library with the goal of enabling developer self-serve while simultaneously shifting design resources away from feature mockup delivery to high impact strategic design activities.To improve customer satisfaction, I led an internal quality initiative to address usability issues with the core legacy product responsible for the majority of product revenue. The effort culminated in the establishment of a UX Community of Practice with company-wide influence across the Development, Product Management, Marketing and IT organizations. Show less

I joined Vertafore as their first-ever UX professional. With overall accountability for the corporate UX strategy encompassing 30+ distinct products, I introduced User Experience to a complex organizational environment and assumed responsibility for both internal and external evangelism of UCD principles and practices.Within 26 months, I had hired a world-class team of UX Researchers and Designers while also assuming leadership of all Documentation specialists bringing the overall team… Show more I joined Vertafore as their first-ever UX professional. With overall accountability for the corporate UX strategy encompassing 30+ distinct products, I introduced User Experience to a complex organizational environment and assumed responsibility for both internal and external evangelism of UCD principles and practices.Within 26 months, I had hired a world-class team of UX Researchers and Designers while also assuming leadership of all Documentation specialists bringing the overall team size to 24. The team supported agile development in locations geographically dispersed across 7 states and 2 offshore locations.Positioning the UX team for success, I partnered with Product Management and Development leadership to establish a UX vision that would unify a heterogeneous, legacy, product suite in alignment with brand objectives, business goals and user needs. Executing on this vision, I set the research and design agenda for this complex product portfolio and gained alignment among the senior executive leadership team including the on-going prioritization of resources. To measure success, I pioneered a data-driven approach where design and research efforts drove a 45% increase in customer satisfaction as measured by NPS (Net Promoter Score) in alignment with the broader corporate performance metric utilized at Vertafore.As an evangelist, I was a frequent presenter to the senior executive leadership team, industry analysts, at industry conferences, and to key customer accounts. Directly reporting to the CTO, I became a key stakeholder in technology & product platform decisions in order to ensure alignment with the UX strategy & vision. Show less

I led the APS Division UX team including setting budgets, hiring staff and establishing UX processes and checkpoints within the software development lifecycle. I joined the division as the manager of a small existing UX team and quickly doubled the team size. On a day-to-day tactical basis, my team was responsible for UX research and design activities across a variety of Microsoft products supporting digital on-line advertising. I oversaw all team design and research activities and mentored UX… Show more I led the APS Division UX team including setting budgets, hiring staff and establishing UX processes and checkpoints within the software development lifecycle. I joined the division as the manager of a small existing UX team and quickly doubled the team size. On a day-to-day tactical basis, my team was responsible for UX research and design activities across a variety of Microsoft products supporting digital on-line advertising. I oversaw all team design and research activities and mentored UX team members in execution and deliveryAt a strategic level, I served as a member of the Advertising Platform Architectural Advisory board to provide UX guidance on core platform architectural issues. I also defined the application strategy and roadmap for converging the User Experience of 70+ discrete applications/utilities. To guide product design and development I drove the establishment of a persona-based reference eco-system framework. Show less

Led UX research and design activities on next generation enterprise software for distributed application development.Created a Design Framework to plan and focus UX activities across a very complex information space. The framework unifies Value Propositions, E2E scenarios, CTQs (Critical To Quality), Core Customer Requirements and the Experience Domain and proved instrumental in aligning development and design efforts in a large tech-centric development organization.

I joined the newly formed OBA product group as the sole UX person tasked with establishing the UX practice while providing design and usability support to the larger product group. Beyond providing design support, I developed the overall UX vision for OBA and presented it at multiple senior executive reviews, including the final product approval review with Bill GatesAs part of establighing the UX practice, I assessed resource and schedule needs and hired a UX team, eventually growing… Show more I joined the newly formed OBA product group as the sole UX person tasked with establishing the UX practice while providing design and usability support to the larger product group. Beyond providing design support, I developed the overall UX vision for OBA and presented it at multiple senior executive reviews, including the final product approval review with Bill GatesAs part of establighing the UX practice, I assessed resource and schedule needs and hired a UX team, eventually growing it to 15 people. I defined the deliverables and the processes for interactions between the UX team and the Product development teams, created UI Design Guidelines and a process for test team assessment against the guidelines, and presented multiple UX Brownbags to inform and educate the product team on issues and topics related to user experience.Led the UX activities, both Design and User Research, on multiple, simultaneous, V1 products, including oversight of the creation of the 1st ever MSFT Usability Advisory Panel to address the unique needs of a large, complex V1 product.Discrete user experiences supported included:PerformancePoint Server – a new, V1, enterprise-class Corporate Performance Management (CPM) suite consisting of a multi-dimensional Business Modeling client, an Administrative Console, an Excel Add-in, and a Business Scorecard Builder. Individual contributions included the design and specification of all modeling tool components, the Business Modeler shell and navigation model, Persona definitions, the overall usability schedule and individual test plans.Duet – an award-winning suite of business applications hosted through the Microsoft Office suite of products. Duet was developed as a joint Microsoft/SAP project where the UX team I managed functioned as the focal point for the project. Integral to this effort, I managed the relationship with SAP’s UX team to ensure adherence to Microsoft’s UX standards. Show less

Design and user research support for applied research team focused on componentized application development

Ms, Virtual Environments - Advanced Interface Design

Ms, Geophysics

Bs, Mechanical Engineering