# Dassi Shusterman > Product, Design & UX Leader | Org Builder & Coach | User centered design / UX Research / IA & Systems design / Content Strategy / DesignOps | AI-accelerated, outcome-driven Location: San Francisco, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/dassi I’m a product design and UX research leader who builds high-performing teams and scales design impact across complex SaaS products. Prior to BigCommerce, I spent 10+ years designing and building consumer facing products. At BigCommerce, I built a high-performing team of product designers, UX researchers and UX writing, emphasizing values and approaches that allowed us to elevate our impact. My team's designs shaped core areas of the platform, delivering self-service & automation improvements across: user permissions, cart & checkout, product merchandising, onboarding, storefront creation, omni-channel and app integrations, navigation & search, payments, B2B, inventory and orders, pricing & multi-currency, data insights & analytics, shipping & tax workflows, abandoned-cart recovery, developer experience, mobile app, and more. Our work directly improved merchant/developer conversion, reduced operational effort, lowered support volume, and strengthened adoption of revenue-driving features across subscription plans. I also formed a Platform design team, establishing design system governance that improved product quality, reduced UX debt, boosted our mobile app rating to 4.3 and earned us a BigCommerce’s ISO 9001 certification because of our user centered approach to product work. Prior to BigCommerce, I taught and mentored 26 students as part of a full time UX immersive course. At Blurb, I designed hands-on and directed the launch of several B2C products, including releasing a new mobile app and a list of onboarding and product improvements, improving conversion from book creation to publishing. At Plaxo, I developed the first premium product for our connected address book. I start with business goals and user needs, then iterate toward measurable outcomes. I apply AI as a force multiplier - so teams can deliver better outcomes without compromising craft, empathy, or user trust. ## Work Experience ### Senior Director, Product Design @ BigCommerce Jan 2025 – Jan 2025 | San Francisco, California, United States Led an AI-driven, systems-led design org across US/EU; authored AI playbook and ran a team workshop. Built the business case + internal trial for Pendo Session Replay to speed diagnosis and reduce support load. Secured front-end support for the Platform Design team and ran a company-wide Product Design showcase rated by 93% as “very/extremely valuable.” ### Director of Product Design @ BigCommerce Jan 2023 – Jan 2025 | San Francisco, California, United States Design systems & product impact - Founded the Platform Design team, driving ~90% adoption of BigDesign libraries in <6 months, cutting FE cycles ~20%. Shipped 20+ components/icons and published Figma libraries & a data-viz guide (2K+ community accesses). Backed the Control Panel navigation redesign used by ~120K users (incl. partner co-brand), enforcing system adherence and supporting a smooth 100% migration with minimal escalations. Hiring, staffing + retention - Partnered globally to staff critical work; reorganized through layoffs/attrition (team 14 → 10). Hired first designer in Poland, directly managed 6. Research & insight to strategy - Championed ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) and Enterprise-operator studies; reframed company focus on “completion” and “migration,” presenting outcomes to the CEO and senior leadership. Launched “Study Groups” to build internal empathy and run lightweight usability tests across teams. Ops, process & tooling - Established PD stand ups, leadership syncs, and 100% design-feedback reviews; strengthened “Definition of Done” to require design/system/copy checks. Ran practice-level OKRs with annual themes and quarterly reviews—raising goal completion from ~40% to ~70% and publishing wiki dashboards for visibility. Built design tracking sheets and research roadmap to improve cross-org planning. Documented evidence of user centered design approach that helped BigCommerce pass its ISO 9001 quality audit. Quality & compliance - Created a UX-debt program (700+ issues logged; 287 fixes), defined UX quality criteria and evangelized need for consistency, better and more complete UX. Culture & growth - Secured annual learning budget; ran health-checks and team-values workshops to boost engagement. Refreshed career pathways for IC & Manager tracks to create clear growth paths. Org advocacy — Represented Product Design at the company strategy offsite (Austin), elevating 2024 design priorities to ~50 directors and above. ### Senior Product Design Manager @ BigCommerce Jan 2020 – Jan 2023 Built a high-performing US hub (design, research, first UX writer) and stood up research, content strategy, and design-ops practices; recruited a PD Manager to own BigDesign/DevX. Launched the Product Design Showcase (120–200 attendees), instituted practice-level OKRs, and created the UX-debt program (700+ issues / 287 fixes). Ran cross-functional summits (Multi-Storefront, User Permissions) that clarified design team vision and seeded roadmap work. ### Product Design Manager @ BigCommerce Jan 2018 – Jan 2020 | San Francisco, California Hired & ramped the first two SF product designers; created interview loop, challenge, and rubric adopted org-wide. IC designer for multi-currency v0, creating end-to-end design (introduced display vs transactional currency; validated static/dynamic FX)—contributing to an eventual ~$600M GMV unlock for international storefronts. Realigned Store Design vision and cadence, then returned ownership. Ran a 40-person workshop and a 5-day Multi-Storefront design sprint that cut roadmap debate 4–6 weeks; produced BigCommerce’s first SF Design Week talk. ### Senior Product Designer @ BigCommerce Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco Bay Area Designed Price Lists (bulk pricing) and Catalog (bulk edit); introduced beta usability testing to improve adoption—only ~1.5% of users opted out—while strengthening the research cadence. ### User Experience Design Instructor, UXDI Immersive @ General Assembly Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | San Francisco, California ### Director User Experience @ Blurb Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 | San Francisco, California Provided overarching vision, plan and implementation of redesign of responsive website. Onboarding redesign increased book purchase conversion by 10%. Strategic planning/road-mapping and development of consumer-facing web experience, creation tools, e-commerce and publishing tools. Improved design output of team through incorporation of research, understanding, testing, prototyping and Lean UX practices to strengthen the team’s user-centered approach and design output. Managed and guided team to create dozens of high quality improvements across the website and tools to enhance the user experience including fully responsive website, new pricing calculator, color picker, container behaviors, layouts + templates, product + profile pages, bookstore pages, mobile app, help center, and onboarding experience. Introduced and evangelized user centered design thinking to bring product and program management around to a more customer-centered, lean development process. Rolled out and managed third party services, including HotJar, Delighted for NPS, UserTesting.com to support team day-to-day design decision making. ### Sr. Product Designer @ Blurb Jan 2011 – Jan 2015 | San Francisco, CA Designed requirements and interactions for new product enhancements for self-publishing tools. Built interactive prototype to demonstrate end-to-end experience for new layouts. Optimized the end-to-end user experience beginning with converting a print book to an ebook, ebook purchase, distribution and pricing. Envisioned and designed new checkout process to better articulate purchase options and upgrade choices. Spearheaded complete redesign of consumer-facing bookstore, including search, product pages and author profile. Employed Lean UX methodologies to conduct interviews and create personae. Created new designs for warnings and notifications system in book creation tool. ### User Experience Design Freelancer @ Self-employed Jan 2010 – Jan 2011 Designed the UI for FriendCheck, an online shopping tool that enables shopping concurrently between friends. Revamped pre-existing design to make application more social and immediately compelling. Did UI redesign of online video conferencing calendar for Jobnob, a job search networking service. ### Sr. Product Manager @ Plaxo Jan 2004 – Jan 2009 Acquired by Comcast - 2008 Designed requirements and wireframes for multiple UI redesign projects to simplify the Plaxo web site and backend. Ran usability tests to identify potential issues with new design in high-profile rollout. Designed wireframes for over 10 projects and ran usability tests for at least 3 separate projects. Created and refined copy, design and mechanics of multiple email campaigns. Wrote requirements, created wireframes and drove development of premium product, including pricing strategy, product feature set, billing backend and purchase flow. Led initial phase of company’s rebranding effort, generating the core values used to rebrand the property, including new messaging and logo. Performed interviews and presented research to inform company strategy in the job recruiting space. ### Product Manager, consultant @ PeoplePC EarthLink Jan 2003 – Jan 2004 Defined market test objectives, wrote and designed emails, ran test and analyzed data to gauge impact of switching tool on ISP's churn. Drove build vs. buy recommendation on customer retention tool. Performed competitive analysis, identified requirements and contract terms, drove negotiation process, and forecasted incremental revenue of $800,000. ### Sr. Technical Product Manager @ AOL Time Warner Jan 2001 – Jan 2003 | Mountain View, CA Guided product requirements and new product planning for 3 departments (web clients, instant messaging, search). Created a common vision amongst stakeholders for new product concepts (digital distribution, collaborative tools). Spearheaded creation of "IM bot" product strategy, resulting in 24 bots and $700,000 revenue in the first year. ### Product Manager @ AOL Time Warner Jan 2000 – Jan 2001 Led complete product development cycle for personalized services (movies, flight tracker, travel deals, traffic, calendar, local entertainment) appearing on the My AOL page and wireless. ### Product Marketing Intern @ Macromedia Jan 1999 – Jan 1999 | San Francisco, CA Produced recommendation and marketing plan for affiliate program to promote Macromedia's content site, shockwave.com. ### Marketing Coordinator @ Advanced Recognition Technologies Jan 1996 – Jan 1998 | Tel Aviv, Israel Managed advertising, marketing and tradeshow participation for voice/handwriting recognition software start-up. Created marketing collateral, managed trademarks, communicated with media, worked with designers. ### Account Executive @ Bleiweiss Communications Inc Jan 1994 – Jan 1995 | Calabasas, CA Ran production team for union client and wrote articles for over 36 issues of various national union newspapers. Conferred with union leaders and labor officials to design content and PR strategy. Designed newspaper and magazine layouts using QuarkXpress ## Education ### MBA in Information Systems, Management NYU Stern School of Business ### BA in History UCLA ### Carlmont High ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/dassishusterman --- Source: https://flows.cv/dassi JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/dassi/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13