Feridoon “Doon” Malekzadeh

Vice President of User Experience | Head of Design

I have years of expertise in both consumer (B2C) and enterprise (B2B, SaaS) product landscapes, with a track record of fostering high-performance design cultures and leading the delivery of delightful, innovative, and business-impacting customer experiences.

I am looking for opportunities to work with a focused group of like-minded individuals who are passionate about making a big impact on people and the world. 

I am in Seattle and available for full-time opportunities.

LinkedIn | PDF download

Experience

Independent Head of Product Design
Product Strategy, Design Leadership & Team Building
Seattle, WA (USA) – September 2022 – Present
Consulting growth-stage startups (e.g. Serve Robotics) and companies (e.g. Amplitude) on net-new strategic initiatives, iterative product fixes, hiring design talent, finding/briefing/managing external agencies, building/scaling design capabilities, and designing for AI.

Amplitude – Head of Design
San Francisco, CA (USA) – May 2023 – September 2023

Quickly assessed the opportunities for improving the Amplitude product experience, brought in a holistic vision to the customer experience, provided interim leadership to the design team as the product organization restructured.

https://www.amplitude.com

Serve Robotics – Head of Design
San Francisco, CA (USA) – September 2022 – November 2022

Joined Serve Robotics team to support their efforts around delivering a safer driving experience for pilots and a better experience for customers.

https://www.serverobotics.com

Vice President of Experience Design
Smartsheet, Bellevue, WA (USA) – August 2020 – August 2022

Reframing, restructuring, refreshing, and rebooting a skilled team of 50+ designers, researchers, writers, and analysts in order to build the next generation of end-to-end experiences for Smartsheet.

  • Retooled and reorganized the team to better align with business goals and processes while driving changes to product development processes.
  • Reduced attrition from 24% to 1%, doubled team size from 30 to 50+ in 18 months.
  • Defined and implemented processes and accountabilities for better design representation and authority in Agile teams.
  • Spearheaded initiatives on Analytics, Information Architecture, Persona-based design, Acessibility (a11y), and Design Systems

Associate Vice President of Design – att.com
AT&T, Seattle, WA (USA) – June 2019 – July 2020

Led a team of 150 talented UX designers, researchers, usability experts, content strategists, copywriters, videographers, prototypers and more through a journey of digital transformation within AT&T. Heading up the work to reimagine att.com and the myATT app.
▪ Set vision and defined charters for the strategic and day-to-day functions of the overall design organization
▪ Defined and drove processes and accountabilities for better design representation and authority in Agile teams
▪ Established partnership model of collaboration with design across product organization

Head of Design
Helm (formerly Privacy Labs), Bellevue, WA (USA) – April 2017 – June 2019

  • Designed complete, end-to-end experience and all collateral for ground-breaking new data security product.
  • Drove branding, industrial design and packaging design with 3rd parties and insured cohesive visual language and brand voice. Developed marketing assets, created all materials (booklet) for reviewer program.
  • Led product strategy, refined feature roadmap, and defined, designed and delivered all elements of iOS and Android mobile applications (wireframes, prototypes, copy, visual design) along with supporting collateral.

Independent UX Consultant
Seattle, WA (USA) – August 2015 – April 2017

  • Worked independently as designer, strategist and “hired-gun” creative director.
  • Led the Seattle Best Buy UX team to better define their team accountabilities, design methodology and delivery process.
  • Defined, designed and delivered design concepts, prototypes and design specifications to clients

Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer
OrbSense Technologies / Cluck, Seattle, WA (USA) – July 2015 – December 2016

  • Designed and developed new connected device, Cluck, for the kitchen and connected home, Internet of Things (IoT) space. Lead all key aspects of the brand development and product definition.
  • Led product vision, roadmap, positioning and definition, market research, identification of target demographic, crowd-funding preparation, social media marketing, patent application writing and filing.
  • Developed branding and logos for company and product, logo development, UX and UI design for smartphone application, field testing and user research, content development for website and all social media platforms. Solely responsible for development of crowd-funding presence: http://www.malekzadeh.net/cluck

Senior Director of UX & Design
Samsung USA, Seattle, WA (USA) – April 2014 – April 2016

  • Delivered wildly successful redesign of Samsung+ customer loyalty application. Dramatically increased active and engaged user base (+12M MAU) while maintaining 80% retention.
  • Drove broader, omni-channel Design Thinking and approach to deliver seamless, world-class customer support experiences.
  • Articulated and presented vision, design objectives, strategy and creative executions to senior leaders and executive management across the organization.

Principal Design Manager
Microsoft, Seattle, WA (USA) – February 2012 – April 2014

  • Lead multi-disciplinary UX teams at Bing to conceptualize, specify and develop ground-breaking user-centric product and service designs
  • Led Social Incubation program, encompassing a group of designers charged with researching, creating and delivering innovative solutions for integration of social data (from Facebook and Twitter) into Bing.
  • Articulated and presented the vision, design objectives, strategy and creative executions to senior leaders and executive management across the organization; developed value proposition and defined core use cases.
  • Led a small group of designers to redefine cross-product and cross-team monetization experiences for Bing Ads with a focus on Small Businesses (SMBs).

Design Director – UX Design & Usability
T-Mobile USA, Seattle, WA (USA) – August 2008 – January 2012

  • Defined and drove the creative design and delivery processes across product teams (User Research, Product Development, Tech, and Industrial Design).
  • Managed intake, project and resource prioritization, capacity planning and forecasting. Managed/mentored team of 25 UX designers/researchers (15 FTEs and a contractor team of 10+).
  • Provided creative leadership and best practices for key initiatives while advocating design value internally.
  • Spearheaded design effort and team in delivering the first franchise device on the Android platform, the MyTouch 3G.
  • Redefined the product development process between the design, development and program management teams to successfully deliver T-Mobile’s first franchise device on the Android platform.
  • Provided creative leadership and best practices for key initiatives while advocating design value internally.

Earlier Experience

  • frog design inc., Creative Director, Seattle, WA (USA)
  • Vodafone Holding GmbH, Senior UX Manager, Düsseldorf (Germany)
  • Sapient Corp., UX Manager/IA, Munich (Germany)
  • Kabel New Media, Digital Art Director, Munich (Germany)
  • red ant media, Senior Designer/Information Architect, Munich (Germany)
  • conception (now Reaze), Web Designer, Siegen (Germany)

Skills Summary

Product Design

  • Interaction Design
  • Information Architecture
  • Rapid Prototyping
  • Usability Testing
  • User Research

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Prompt Engineering
  • ChatGPT / OpenAI
  • Anthropic / Claude
  • MidJourney
  • Perplexity
  • Pi

Software

  • Adobe Creative Suite (XD, Fireworks, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere)
  • Figma / Sketch
  • Balsamiq, Gliffy, Visio, Pencil
  • ChatGPT

Leadership

  • Leadership, Mentoring & Coaching
  • Spearheading Design Strategy
  • Team Collaboration & Facilitation
  • Project Planning & Estimation
  • Organization & Prioritization

Education

SAE Technology College, Cologne (Germany)
Multimedia Design/Production

University of California in Irvine (USA)
Bachelor of Arts in Humanities

Career Interests: AI-related roles and roles calling for digital transformation in their industry (e.g. consumer electronics, edtech, fintech, pharmatech, healthcare, etc). I also love working on products with a software/hardware interface.