About Me
Update: Currently living in NYC.
Hey! I’m Dan and I recently moved to Seattle from Silicon Valley. I started my career as a web designer in Manhattan and have designed for museums, e-commerce, even TV, just to name a few. While I still appreciate and enjoy making things pixel-perfect, about 5 years ago I realized (and fell in love with) what user experience and the impact it has in people's everyday lives.
To me, UX design is not just a career, but how you perceive the world. (It's in the title: user experience design.) It’s also not just iterating away in Figma in front of the computer — UX is literally everything. It's how your pillow feels against your face when you go to sleep, it's how the strings feel in your hands when you play guitar, and it's the service you experience at a restaurant when you're out with friends. You can design clean interfaces all day, but if they're not serving a purpose or solving a problem, they mean nothing. And that’s why when people ask me what UX design is, I usually use the term "strategy design" followed by the analogy of UX being the blueprints of a building, and UI the interior design.
In my spare time, I'm also a freelance photographer and I’ve gotten to mingle with upcoming models and actors to give them awesome portraits for their own portfolios, which you can view by hitting the big button below.
Going to school and getting my start in NYC made me feel truly lucky to have landed there. It's really one of the most amazing cities in the world. I already miss riding the subway and observing how people use their smartphones. Since they don't get notifications or have service underground, their hand movements are pretty simple: tap-scroll, tap-scroll. Being in a city with such diversity was super helpful for research purposes. All I had to do was wear my student ID around my neck and start asking away about anything tech, be it the launch of iOS 12, how they felt about the new Instagram algorithm, etc. And while I was there, I gained two certifications from one of the biggest design schools in the country, Pratt.
While I miss NYC, I’m loving the vibes from the Bay Area, and I can't wait to see what the future has in store. When I’m not doing something with design or photography, you can find me doing something with music. I’m currently in a metal band working with which I have an EP on Spotify and a music video. We're also currently working on a full album.
