# Noah Zachlod

> UX and Product Design Leader | Building High Performing Teams, Systems, and Customer Centered Experiences

Location: Pleasanton, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/noahzachlod

I am a product design and user experience leader with over 25 years of experience building, scaling, and mentoring world class design teams for enterprise SaaS platforms, global e-commerce, and advanced B2B systems. I have partnered with leading companies in HCM, financial services, and technology to deliver accessible, trusted, and high craft experiences across web, mobile, kiosk, and emerging platforms.

I excel at setting a clear design vision, developing scalable design systems, and building consensus across organizations to deliver cohesive, user centered products. My experience spans the full spectrum of UX principles and practices, including information architecture, interaction design, content strategy, usability testing, UX operations, AI powered product design, and user centered visual design. At ADP, I led UX operations for more than 300 designers, anchored by streamlined processes, tooling, and research infrastructure. At Western Union, I built the company’s first global digital design team and launched multilingual omnichannel experiences that drove double digit growth in transactions, revenue, and customer satisfaction.

Specialties include leadership, team building, user experience best practices, design systems, pattern and style guide creation, project and product management, requirements gathering, competitive analysis, design documentation, resource management, and digital development technologies. I am passionate about translating technical complexity into intuitive, impactful experiences and guiding teams toward operational excellence, business impact, and design craft. Let’s connect to explore how we can elevate user experience together.

## Work Experience
### Director of User Experience @ ADP
Jan 2021 – Jan 2025 | Pleasanton, California, United States
Led User Experience (UX) Operations to support a team of over 300 User Experience Designers, Researchers and Content Strategists for the largest HCM and payroll company globally with a focus on people, process and tools. 
• Established a holistic process for all of UX with activity guides for different phases of the design process including intake acceptance, kick-off template, stakeholder review guide and cognitive walkthrough.
• Proposed and led the implementation of a consistent UX intake process and ticketing system for all UX requests to enable tracking of work, time on projects and better gathering of requirements for requests.
• Managed the complete reimagining of UX Research by replacing multiple disparate tools and building an AI powered tool stack that worked together seamlessly and reduced the time to conduct and develop research findings by over 50%.
• Developed and implemented a full on-boarding, off-boarding and cross-boarding process with documentation, checklists and templates for managers improving the experience for all new hires and employees changing roles.
• Managed the creation of a UX Resources site with information on all aspects related to UX including Design, Research, Content, Analytics, Accessibility, Artificial Intelligence (AI), ADP tools and products.
• Led the full transition from Sketch as the primary design tool to Figma with a comprehensive transition plan, training and up-skilling, community updates and development of a resource hub for employees.

### Senior Director of Product Design, Head of User Experience @ Western Union
Jan 2012 – Jan 2020
Established a digital presence for a 170-year-old company by defining a holistic customer experience strategy and building a user experience team to design a global suite of digital products.
• Delivered the complete product design for Western Union’s transactional mobile applications, Web sites and Kiosks which are now available in over 200 countries and territories in 34 languages worldwide.
• Developed a global Design System including a style guide, pattern library, and UI kit to increase quality, time to market, reduce engineering resources and establish a consistent customer experience.
• Oversaw all phases of UX work including discovery, research, conceptual design, prototyping, detailed design, usability testing, and final implementation.
• Evangelized organizational culture of design to focus on the user needs and established product design methodology to reinforce the customer-first approach.
• From a product perspective, transformed Western Union’s digital products into category-leading consumer experiences to increase market share and the global brand footprint within the digital space.
• From an organizational perspective, recruited and built a team of world class user experience designers and specialists to support product requirements and improve the customer experience across all Western Union’s digital products in addition to designing innovative next-generation experiences that are 2-3 years out.
• Created products exceeding expectations and enabling the Western Union’s network of digital products to deploy innovative new ways to reach our customers, increasing transaction starts +5%, revenue +73% and Net Promoter Score +43% within the first year. 
• Achieved and maintained digital transaction growth of +25% year over year since launch.

### Senior Manager, Experience Design @ Offermatic
Jan 2011 – Jan 2012
Managed interaction design, visual design, information architecture and end-to-end customer experience.
• Defined information architecture to ensure clear and straightforward paths for users to follow, identifying specific areas of friction that were streamlined using A/B testing with product partners, resulting in significantly increased conversion rates.
• Increased customer engagement and retention by proposing a gamification system that enabled users to earn points, gain levels and participate in events while earning rewards.
• As a proof of concept designed a loyalty program enabling local merchants to create campaigns to draw in new users and reward existing customers, from concept to launch in a single sprint.
• In addition to the user-facing product led design of business sites that included dashboards to monitor performance and effectiveness of merchant campaigns.

### User Experience Area Lead - Interaction Design @ eBay, Inc.
Jan 2005 – Jan 2011
My primary role at eBay was User Experience area lead for checkout and payments, which processed over 700 million transactions annually.

Armed with the belief that a simple, transparent and well-designed product would establish trust with users I identified 3 key design guidelines:
• Each page should have a clear purpose and add value to the experience.
• The design should feel so natural for users that it would require no learning.
• Every element of the page should help users focus on completing that step of the flow.

The result of the redesigned eBay checkout was a 10% increase in user satisfaction and a 17% increase in ease of use making it eBay’s top-rated flow.

In order to streamline the experience further, I designed and implemented a guest checkout system for eBay’s new users to buy a fixed price item without requiring them to register for an account. I also launched an incentive redemption interface for eBay gift cards, coupons and gift certificates. Additionally, I proposed, designed and brought to incubation a shopping cart system for eBay. 

During that time I coordinated and led cross-organizational initiatives with PayPal, Bill Me Later and Microsoft (Bing).  Finally, I managed project timelines and deliverables with global product managers and development teams in Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, Australia, India and across the United States.  

After successfully recreating eBay checkout I moved to the Shipping team where we completely transformed the way shipping worked at eBay, ultimately enabling sellers to provide specific delivery dates upfront in their product listings. In order to accomplish this I redesigned the seller shipping tools and performed a complete overhaul of purchasing and printing shipping labels. Within a few months of launch, label printing doubled to over $1 million per day and customer satisfaction skyrocketed.

### Sr. User Interface Architect (Contract) @ Cisco Systems, Inc.
Jan 2005 – Jan 2005
I was brought into Cisco as a contractor to define the information architecture and develop user interfaces for a multi-part B2B application, spanning multiple departments and reaching thousands of users.

To accomplish this, I worked with stakeholders to translate the needs of business analysts into user interfaces thus achieving business goals while maintaining an optimal user experience. After identifying and categorizing the requirements I produced wireframes that were tested with the users and finally designed the interfaces.

One personal goal was to design for scalability so I established a set of templates to be used for all page development. I collaborated closely with the engineers and performed regular code reviews to ensure it would seamlessly be integrated into the development environment for rapid implementation. The result was a set of clear usability and interface standards to be used across all Cisco B2B applications.

### Management Consultant, Information Technology @ Small Business & Technology Development Center
Jan 2002 – Jan 2005
At the Small Business Development Center, my primary focus was consulting on information technology and Web strategy. I worked with a diverse group of clients to identify needs, create a strategy and architecture, develop implementation plans and recommend tools best suited to their needs.

I recommend the information architecture, flows, development plans and release schedules. After defining the roadmap I managed the overall site creation including tracking timelines, development, and marketing strategies to ensure projects were completed on time and within budget.

To facilitate the client’s success I researched and proposed hosting options, content management systems, and maintenance procedures. I also proposed content management systems (CMS) and customer relationship management (CRM) tools to ensure customer information was retained and utilized accurately. Finally, I recommended procedures for maintaining search engine optimization, usability and quality assurance.

### Assistant Vice President - Web Design @ AllianceBernstein
Jan 1999 – Jan 2001
At Alliance Capital Management I was brought on to establish a Web Design department and Web presence for Sanford C. Bernstein & Company which served over 18,000 Bernstein clients and 12,000 Professional Advisors that comprised over $70 billion in managed assets.

Initially, I defined the site structure, navigation and overall information architecture. This required a highly collaborative relationship with stakeholders where we defined requirements and development schedules as a team. 

I was able to negotiate editorial schedules with marketing, business experts and data groups, and guided the flow of features and updates through development, QA, review and final approval.

For the end-users I developed a suite of data visualization interfaces for a sophisticated, dynamic Web application that displayed clients’ account data, updated on a daily basis.

With an eye for scalability, rapid development and brand alignment I managed the integration of all content, graphics and features resulting in the launch of the Sanford C. Bernstein Client, Bernstein Advisor, Pension Fund, Global Information Services and SBC Research sites.

### Lead Web Engineer @ Ziff Davis Events
Jan 1998 – Jan 1999
At Ziff Davis Events I was in charge of design and development of more than 30 Web sites containing over 3,000 pages. Features included the ability to register for the event, plan conference schedules, learn about classes, seminars, speeches or find information about an exhibitor. After the event full transcripts from presentations were posted online for attendees. 

The company’s primary revenue stream was generated from event and exhibitor registrations, which drew millions of attendees annually from across the world. At this time Web users were very reluctant to provide financial information online, especially in the amounts required for events like Seybold, COMDEX or InterOp. 

I focused on providing a simple and transparent interface while reassuring users that we maintained secure event registration forms and the result was an exponential increase each month in online event registrations.

As more sites were introduced and content was frequently updated it became evident that there was a significant opportunity to improve the process. At that point content was handed down from marketing to my team, which coded every page manually. 

To address this I proposed and led an organizational initiative to consolidate all company Web sites to single Content Management System (CMS) resulting in a centralized environment which East and West coast teams could jointly develop Web sites accessible to domestic and international content producers.

### Webmaster @ Monster Cable, Inc.
Jan 1996 – Jan 1998
Early in my career I had the opportunity to become Webmaster at Monster Cable where I was in charge of Web development, design and online strategy for the company. 

I managed domain names, site design, page development, hosting and maintenance for Monster Cable and Monster Music Internet and Intranet sites. This entailed coding of all web pages, organization and collection of content, creation of graphics, research of online advertising costs, promotions, and development of strategic links.

One of my key early achievements early on was leading the Senior Management team in the creation of a Web vision and strategy for all Monster Cable sites which kept us aligned and focused.


## Education
### Master's degree in Management
John F. Kennedy University

### Bachelor's degree in Mass Communication and Psychology
Sonoma State University


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/noah-zachlod
- Portfolio: https://www.nzachlod.com/

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Source: https://flows.cv/noahzachlod
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Last updated: 2026-04-13