Collaborative. Empathetic. Adaptive.
My Work
With such a diverse career in the UX design space, my work spans many different companies in many different capacities. For the last 12 years, ZENxd has been my home and passion. Over time, my work has moved upward and away from directly producing, focusing more and more on directing outcomes. A snapshot of my work history can be found below, highlighting several long-term professional relationships and the kind words of colleagues and clients.
ZENxd
ZENxd is a boutique experience design agency based in Santa Cruz, California. Co-founded in 2008 with Brian Tharp, we are a collective of like-minded design and research experts, focused on creating inclusive, insight-driven digital products and services. Operating as a fully distributed team since 2014, we have developed methods and processes that enable us to thrive in a remote capacity, being highly productive and efficient in both cost and speed.
Over time, our team has continued to grow, as have the size of our projects and the duration of our client relationships. ZENxd has worked with many notable companies over the years, to name a few:
Agilent Technologies
Over 5+ years, ZENxd has worked with Agilent as an extension of their internal team, acting both strategically and tactically as their outsourced UX design organization. While we focused largely on the digital touch-points of the customer journey, our work included a broad range of design and research projects centered around enhancing and optimizing the eCommerce experience of Agilent.com.
Areas of Focus
- Concept/Product Visioning
- UX Strategy
- UX Design
- Visual Design
- Voice of Customer Research
- Usability Research
- Competitive Analyses
- Concept Validation Research
- Content Marketing Strategy
- Design Systems & Governance
- Content Publication Frameworks
- Team Augmentation
Design Projects
- MyAgilent Project
- Marketing Storytelling Framework
- Guided Selling & Selection Tools
- Instrument Parts Finder
- CrossLab Content Publication
- Chemical Standards Expansion
- Consumables & Kits Expansion
- PPD & PNP UX Improvements
- Homepage Redesign (China)
- Contract eRenewals Project
- Agilent University Improvements
- President’s Club
VoC Research Projects
- Products Hierarchy & IA
- Services Research, Hierarchy & IA
- Solutions Research
- Support Research (US)
- Support Research (China)
- LC Product Purchase Research (US)
- LC Product Purchase Research (China)
- Content Marketing Research
- Price-per-Slide Pathology Research
Testimonials
“Working with Bill Daggett and the ZENxd has been a great experience. The relationship was highly collaborative... from initial visioning to final delivery. ZENxd consistently delivered high quality on the agreed timelines. We worked together as one highly effective team. ZENxd helped us understand our customer’s requirements through voice of customer and worked closely with us to align our business goals to our customer’s pain points... We strongly benefited from ZENxd's on time deliveries and their adaptability as new requirements surfaced.”
Pete VegetoSr. Director, eCommerce and Service Enablement
“I’ve worked with ZENxd for over 5 years across numerous web design projects. The projects ranged from small to large, and ZENxd has always shown an ability to expand or contract as needed. From UX design to UI design to user testing and beyond, ZENxd has been able to meet our needs and show a nimbleness that is not available with large, multinational conglomerates. Communication, design knowledge, productivity, and on-time delivery have always been a mainstay of ZENxd projects. The design staff is very adept at mixing quality visual design with real-world functionality. They have a wonderful approach to delivering digital experiences that actually look great AND work well. Agilent’s user success KPIs/metrics have increased in the time we’ve been working with ZENxd.”
Mike MihojevichOnline Experience Manager
Entertainment Partners
The relationship between Entertainment Partners and ZENxd was a long-term partnership, which evolved over nearly 5 years. What began as primarily execution support, expanded into deeply into customer and usability research, visioning and innovation workshops, UX strategy across various product lines, UX process and methodology integration, and culminated by developing an internal UX practice and mentorship of a team of 10 practitioners. EP was acquired by TPG Capital in 2019.
Areas of Focus
- Concept/Product Visioning
- UX Practice Development
- UX Strategy
- UX Design
- Visual Design
- Persona Research
- Usability Research
- Concept Validation
- Ethnographic Research
- Educational Team Workshops
- Design Systems & Governance
- Team Augmentation
Design Projects
- Vista 5 Redesign
- TimeTrax HTG Redesign
- Mobile Time Capture App
- MovieMagic Budgeting
- MovieMagic.io
- EP SmartStart
- EP Central Casting
- EP Travel Authorization
- Crew & Talent
- PCard
- Design Pattern Library
- EP Design Principles/Guidelines
UX Research Projects
- Vista 5 Usability
- TimeTrax HTG Usability
- MTC Validation
- EP Persona Research
- Customer Workflow Field Studies
- EP SmartStart Validation
- EP Travel Auth Validation
- Crew & Talent Workshops
Testimonials
“Bill has an uncanny knack for providing enough space to hear everyone's views and ensure that everyone can be an active contributor to the process in order to help bring them along in the UX journey. He welcomed everyone into the tent, even the skeptics and was able to help shift the view that UX is just UI and brought in at the tail end of the process. This mindshift within our company is still happening but we have him to thank for being a catalyst for that change.
He and Brian were great partners for us when EP was just starting on our UX journey and they helped shepherd many of the design thinking ideas into the company that I still see daily from the push to establish strong design principles to helping me come up with our own Charter once we migrated from an outsourced model to within our organization. They were consummate professionals who were more interested in our success as an organization than how they could benefit as consultants (which happens all too often these days with consultants).
I personally enjoyed many a working session with him where we learned and iterated through the process to bring several products to market and miss having his daily guidance on all things UX.”
Kirsten ThayerDirector, User Experience
SideStep
I came onboard at SideStep during a critical time in the company’s evolution. Having began as a browser toolbar-based business, SideStep was rapidly expanding with the intention of dominating the discount consumer travel space. My role as Director, User Experience was to lead a team of designers to create a world-class travel search experience, one that brought the most competitive travel offerings directly to the customer’s desktop. SideStep paved the way for Kayak, which ultimately acquired the company in late 2007 for $200M.
Testimonials
“Bill is a passionate advocate for the user, a highly talented user experience designer and a results-oriented and focused business person. He easily scales from thoughtful contribution at a strategic level to zooming in with confidence and skill to address implementation needs with excellence and speed.
A superior communicator and relationship builder, I witnessed a leadership and management style that was highly effective in collaborating across the organization to not only drive quality results quickly, but to smooth and strengthen internal relationships in the process.
Understated in his manner and humble about his talents, Bill is a pleasure to work with, a person of unquestionable integrity, and simply an extremely talented and intelligent individual one can trust as an outstanding business partner.”
Nancy White RamamurthiChief Marketing Officer
“Bill was wonderful to work with at SideStep. He did a great job tackling both interaction and visual design issues, and was as comfortable exploring larger longer-term projects as he was cranking out mock-ups on short notice with imminent deadlines. Bill also a good manager, and his team grew into a high-bandwidth design team under his stewardship. On top of it all, Bill is an extremely nice guy to work with.”
Jim RaineyGroup Product Manager
“Bill is a pleasure to work with on a number of levels. He is able to woo people with outside-the-box designs and mockups but does it with a sense of pragmatism and a sensitivity to engineers' concerns. He can deliver quality mockups in what seems like an instant! As well as driving and owning the creative process, he communicates so very well with everyone on the project team, including managers and developers alike. He is also a well respected boss and a genuinely nice person. I would definitely work with him again if the opportunity arises.”
Nick AtkinsArchitect