Dashiel Neimark
I am a Senior Product Designer at a business and technology consultancy and I use design to connect people, product, and business
M.S. HCI | M.S. IDS | UXC | Northwestern Alum
Some of My Past Clients
From startups to Fortune 500s, I’ve worked with a variety of clients with different products/services, team structures, & goals
My Process
Empathize & Understand
Core to my process is understanding who I am designing for and why. That includes defining the underlying business and user needs and the current state of the experience.
Then, to close the gap, I employ various empathy methods depending on the specific situation, from interviews, surveys, and workshops, to contextual inquiry, competitive analysis, and so on. I aim to align methods with the goals, timeline, and budget for the project.
Ideate & Prototype
I believe in failing early and often in a safe, prototypal environment. Early on, I like to start low-fidelity and sketch / whiteboard ideas with the team. Through the "yes, and" method, we brainstorm unfettered. After initial ideation, I then consider feasibility and timeline, refining ideas and taking a shortlist to a higher level of fidelity, creating and testing interactive prototypes with internal and external stakeholders.
Areas of Expertise
UX Design
UX design stems from a balance between business goals, user desires, and feasibility. Through an iterative process, I aim to create useful, usable, and delightful experiences that drive business goals while fulfilling the desires of the user simultaneously.
UI Design
Once the experiential level details are in a good spot and concepts/features are validated, I proceed with high-fidelity design. From Gestalt principles to color theory, I manipulate elements in a way that creates a visual hierarchy that leads users down the right path.
Information Architecture
The disparity between a person’s mental model of the experience and the way it actually works can make or break an interaction. Designing based on the way that users expect your experience to be organized leads to faster, more intuitive exploration.
UX Research
I like to collaboratively define success from a business perspective and determine how we will learn what success looks like for our target users. UX research helps us know what our users need, where we currently stand in meeting those needs, and what remains to be done.
Usability Engineering
Effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. These are the building blocks of usable interactions. I kickoff the usability engineering process through various exercises such as heuristics evaluations, cognitive walkthroughs, and expert evaluations, quickly moving towards directly involving users.
Data Driven Design
Informed design should receive influence not only from traditional UX methodologies, but from data analysis as well; the two disciplines are synergistic. My process involves creating segmentations, diving into heat maps, and analyzing how users act and flow.
My Toolkit
Some of the technologies I've enjoyed using in past projects
My Publications
Articles I've written to further explore my ideas, work I'm doing, and topics I'm passionate about
Digital Power Structures: The Whispered Secret to UX
Power structures: the dynamic which describes who is really in control of the experience. Do users have enough leverage to demand a particular interaction? Or are companies dictating the experience they have with the product?
Second-hand UX: The Social Implications of Tangible Tech
The experience of the target user is not isolated from the experience of the indirect user. Whether it happens immediately or eventually, the two experiences affect and influence each other.
Vital Accessibility Design Principles
Designing for users with specific physical/mental needs requires that we pay special attention to their unique attributes. In this column, I discuss some of the more critical accessibility design principles to keep in mind for your next project.
XR Design: Imagination, Immersion, and Presence
Designing for AR/MR/VR requires an understanding of how and why to define goals for level of immersion and presence, both experience-wide and at an interaction level. This article discusses how to define and pursue those goals.
Constraint-Driven Innovation
Conventional wisdom tells us that in order to be creative, we must be unfettered. Thinking outside of the box entails an intellectual environment that is boundless. But is shooting for the sky without considering constraints always effective?
Death by Micro: Feedback Loops and Knowledge Management in User Experience
Measuring an interaction or a particular experience in a vacuum can be misleading. Even if you measure an experience using the proper methods, the perfect sample size, and all the right tools, you still might find that you’ve done yourself and your product a huge disservice.
Check out the rest of my publications
View All Publications
Case Studies
Chase Mobile
iOS App
A discovery and design engagement to create a new mobile app for Chase that allowed customers to analyze spending and saving, transfer money, check up on bank accounts and credit cards, make in-store payments, and more.
Chase Mobile
iOS App
A discovery and design engagement to create a new mobile app for Chase that allowed customers to analyze spending and saving, transfer money, check up on bank accounts and credit cards, make in-store payments, and more.
Nike Discovered
Responsive Web App
Creating a digital experience that could creatively increase value-driven, targeted brand representation at scale by discovering new talent in the amateur athlete world.
Nike Discovered
Responsive Web App
Creating a digital experience that could creatively increase value-driven, targeted brand representation at scale by discovering new talent in the amateur athlete world.
Vimeo Mobile
iOS App
Creating a mobile experience for Vimeo’s content creators to better enable performance analysis, goal setting/tracking, money management, and other core tasks.
Vimeo CC
iOS App
Creating a mobile experience for Vimeo’s content creators to better enable performance analysis, goal setting/tracking, money management, and other core tasks.
Check out the rest of my case studies
Nine case studies across various industries and products
Work Examples
Testimonials
A few words from folks that I've worked with
Dash is an extremely talented and passionate UX professional. He knows how to effectively integrate UX into various situations - from fast-paced Agile teams to lengthier discovery and validation projects. His ability to collaborate with developers, business analysts, PMs, and various other stakeholders is highly appreciated here at Slalom and we hope to have him as an asset for years to come.
I really enjoyed working with Dash. He is very talented and capable of leading UX on a large scale engagement. His deliverables are rock solid and he added major value to our overall delivery. I would be more than happy to work with him again in the future. Dash created high quality documentation and more than met the expectations of the client and the project team. He is very analytical and obviously experienced in multiple UX disciplines. He has a strong grasp of all the major UX tools and understands when to utilize each tool to achieve a client need.
Dash is an outstanding User Experience Consultant and Designer. He brings a sense of curiosity to his work. He is adept at working with different types of technology and develops an easy rapport with his clients. I have enjoyed working with Dash and look forward to the next project. I especially enjoy the sense of fun he brings to his work.
Dash walked into a difficult and sometimes politically charged environment where the client had asked for a new designer to join the team. Dash was that new designer and right out of the gate he was 'under the microscope'. Dash was able to quickly establish trust with the client CIO and members of the executive leadership team including the CEO. His flexibility in work style and knowing just how much to advise and just how much to push for what matters most was noted repeatedly by the CIO as something he valued in Dash's approach to design.
I appreciated and was impressed by Dash's ability to connect with the client as well as manage multiple streams of feedback sucessfully. His willingness to dive into a project that otherwise could have been at risk of not being completed on time was very helpful.
Dash's friendly demeanor meant that the rest of the team felt at ease, especially when 3 new team members were trying to retroactively absorb 8-9 months of prior work. Although I joined this project (a product cataloging app for CDW) very late, he managed to make the weight of learning all the ins and outs for the project light, which is a trait I really admire. Our other XD team member who onboarded late was also able to get up to speed right away thanks to Dash, which cut our expected onboarding time in half.
Located in Seattle
A great place to design in between selfies at the Space Needle & other cliché PNW newcomer activities
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Seattle
Contact Me
Using design to connect people, product, and business
Follow Me
Email: dash@alum.northwestern.edu
Phone: +1 312 478 7147