I’m Dassi, a product & UX design leader who loves turning the messy into magic 🪄
I help companies ship cohesive, modern product experiences by applying research judiciously, scaling design excellence, driving measurable business & customer outcomes, and keeping empathy, curiosity and creativity at the center.
My philosophy
Great design begins with empathy, scales through systems and works best when people are empowered.
I’m passionate about building inclusive, creative design cultures and digging deeply into product challenges. It’s important to balance vision, orienting to a North Star, with a focus on execution—allowing teams and individuals to have room to accelerate forward, to deliver outcomes that matter. I take a pragmatic approach, integrating research with business strategy while applying clear standards and AI to reduce complexity and improve decision-making along the way.
Selected case studies
BigCommerce is a SaaS ecommerce platform that powers over 40k stores globally
Scaling UX quality & Platform Design; shaved 20% off dev time
Establishing design systems as core & strategic
Challenge: We were building in siloes so there was inconsistency across domains. Third party app developers were building app integrations without guidelines. Even our own designers didn’t know which patterns to use.
My role: I drove the UX cross-functional quality initiative and formed the Platform Design Team as part of our developer experience strategy. This gave us clarity to rebuild our design foundations while providing the business rationale we needed.
Results: Over ~30 released products / features utilized these patterns and foundations. We logged 700+, resolved 290+ UX debt tickets, and contributed to a 20% improvement in developer efficiency for common patterns. BigCommerce patterns and component guides downloaded by over 2,500 people on Figma community.
Improving customer experience for 120k merchants; reduced support tickets 26%
Admin panel redesign
Challenge: The control panel was a daily pain point for 100,000+ merchants, but it had no ownership or roadmap priority.
My role: As Director, I advocated for this to be a redesign, helped stand up the team, and ensured a user-centered approach from concept to launch for strong design decision making. I shared a blog post internally to demonstrate the value of design and research, clarifying what made this a quality release.
Results: We shipped a modern, intuitive control panel with a unprecedented 94% customer opt-in. Post-launch we had a ~26% reduction in navigation-related support tickets. This project demonstrated how utilizing user centered approaches could be successful; because of this project, we received BC’s first Quality ISO 9001 certification that was an important competitive differentiator.
Driving product design innovation; building AI into product experience
Design offsites to drive creative vision
Challenge: Teams were stuck in delivery mode with little space to envision longer-term product futures or align around shared north-star direction.
My role: I created the structure, facilitated a hybrid design summit, and coached designers to develop bold vision concepts that influenced the product roadmap.
Results: Dedicated design-led vision work aligned teams and sparked product innovation. Produced and gave visibility to north-star concepts later used including User Permissions, B2B Quote generator, AI Copywriter, and Catalyst.
Blurb is a self-publishing platform that allows photo book makers and creative professionals to create, publish, sell and distribute books and magazines in both print and digital formats.
Drove onboarding redesign; increased conversion by 90%
Reduced friction in book creation
Challenge: An outdated, confusing site and broken onboarding that forced downloads on page load were hurting conversion to book creation.
My role: As Director of UX, I led the redesign effort, drove vision and execution across design and engineering, and ensured the new experience lowered barriers to getting started.
Results: Rebuilt the site with a modern UI, improved onboarding, refreshed Help Center content, and eliminated thousands of legacy pages, improving conversion to book creation by 90%. Despite this being done in 2016, the core of this redesign has not been changed to this day.
Case studies in progress
UX research influenced strategy; drove rearchitected product strategy
Challenge: High SMB churn and unclear enterprise needs were limiting growth, impacting decision-making.
My role: Led a multi-part research program that:
1. revealed root causes of SMB churn
2. clarified enterprise customer expectations, presented to executive leadership
Results: Informed product strategy in addressing problem areas, directly shaping the “Brilliant Basics” strategy and guiding roadmap decisions. Research findings played a strategic role in shaping product direction.
End to end multi-currency & multi-storefront; unlocked $600m GMV
Challenge: BigCommerce lacked the multi-currency and multi-storefront capabilities needed for merchants to compete and expand globally.
My role: As an IC/Manager, I designed the end-to-end multi-currency experience and drove a multi-storefront alignment summit that helped establish the foundation for BigCommerce’s global commerce capabilities.
Results: Updates to the experience enabled sales to grow in Europe and international markets, unlocking revenue stream of $600m GMV from international sales.
Testimonials
“Dassi doesn't just hire great people, she also fosters an environment and processes that enable them to produce some of the best work of their careers.”
— Derrek Pearson, Director of Product Management, BigCommerce“Dassi kept the focus on value: what each feature would add to the user experience, how our processes could reduce UX debt, and what research was needed to meet the needs of a wide range of customers.”
— David Linke, Sr Manager Product Design, direct report, BigCommerce“Dassi’s focus on customer satisfaction is truly outstanding… this data-driven approach, coupled with her collaborative spirit, was instrumental in elevating the overall quality and usability of our product.”
— Susan Philips, Sr Director, Cybersecurity, BigCommerce