Hello. My name is

ZakElyazgi

I am a hands-on user experience design leader and creative director with 20 years of experience tackling design challenges across a wide array of industries.

I am based in the Washington, D.C. metro area and my current role is with Verisign, where I am the Director of UX and Creative Services, leading all branding, UX and creative projects.

I focus on transforming complex, messy experiences into simple, engaging and satisfying ones.

Browse Zak’s Work Experience View Samples of Zak’s Recent Work

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A good user experience designer needs to be able to see

both the forest and the trees.

That means user experience has implications that go far beyond

usability, visual design, and physical affordances.

— Eric Reiss, Author & Information Architect

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ZakElyazgi

Notable Roles & Clients

Director, UX & Creative Services
Verisign
Oct. 2021 - Present

Currently leading the User Experience and Creative Services design team, responsible for brand, print and event creative, user experience design and research across multiple applications and websites.

Director, User Experience
Halfaker & Associates
Sep. 2018 - Oct. 2021

Lead, mentor and manage a distributed team of UX designers matrixed across a mix of public-facing website and enterprise web application/product teams.
Attract, hire and train UX talent, build a UX practice, and advocate for a user-centered design culture for the company, to serve the needs of federal government clients.
Develop UX processes, procedures, design systems and infrastructure to support rapid design activities that integrate into Agile development sprint cycles.
Engage with clients across various projects to evangelize the value of user-centered design and guide them through user research, design activities and artifacts.
Support business development efforts to win new contracts.

Director, User Experience
SiriusXM Radio Inc.
Jan. 2014 - Sep. 2018

Founded an in-house UX practice: built and developed user experience team responsible for digital properties with monthly traffic of 12MM unique visitors.
Co-founded SiriusXM’s digital A/B testing and usability testing programs.
Helped drive digital transaction mix from 18% to 50%, resulting in millions of dollars in cost savings (through call deflection), and a significant incremental lift in trial subscription conversion.
Leading a team of UX designers, drive the UX strategy for the SiriusXM.com marketing site and account management web application.
Partner with executives, stakeholders, analysts, project managers, and product owners to identify and prioritize opportunities for conversion optimization, call deflection and customer satisfaction improvement.
Lead efforts and strategy for user research, including digital A/B and multivariate testing, surveys, usability studies and web analytics and synthesize actionable insights from various data sources, within an iterative Agile process.
Define UX style guide, pattern library and design principles for use by designers, front-end web, and web application developers across all SiriusXM.com web properties.
Proactively took on front-end development as part of efforts to increase quality and sophistication of projects being deployed to production.

Sr. User Experience Designer
SiriusXM Radio Inc.
Mar. 2012 - Jan. 2014

Design the user experience for SiriusXM.com’s account management mobile and desktop web application, translating requirements and user needs into design artifacts including task flows, wireframes, clickable prototypes and high-fidelity mockups.
First UX Designer hired by the company.

Sr. Consultant (UX)
Acumen Solutions
Jun. 2011 - Mar. 2012

Primary engagement was as a contract UX consultant to SiriusXM Radio, Inc. (June – December).
Provided UX guidance for Acumen’s iPad application FAST (Field Assistance for Sales Teams), a digital sales and acquisition tool for in-the-field sales staff.

UX Designer (Consultant)
National Student Clearinghouse
Apr. 2010 - Mar. 2011

As part of a newly-formed Agile development team, develop accessible user experience for degree, enrollment, and professional certificate verification web applications.
First UX Designer hired by the company; a large part of responsibilities included evangelizing the importance of user-centered design principles to all levels of the company.

UX/Information Architect (Consultant)
Personal Pathways, LLC
Aug. 2007 - Jan. 2010

Lead UI/UX Designer and Information Architect for emerging corporate social networking product with extensive database backend.
Responsible for auditing design, functionality and information architecture, and usability of previous enterprise-level website and designing the interaction flow, wireframes, low and high-fidelity prototypes, user experience and visual design.

UX Designer / Creative Director (Freelance)
Daze Studios, LLC
Jun. 2001 - Mar. 2012

Lead new user interface designs through the full design and development cycle (including concept, information architecture, visual design and interaction design).
Develop style guides and work closely with the development team, business analysts and executive leadership to ensure design and UX intent is carried through to production.
Redesign the entire user interface, interaction flow, information architecture and user experience of several enterprise-level web sites and applications.
As Creative Director, lead the design, development and production teams involved in all print, online, interactive and video projects from concept to launch.
Design websites, logos, business cards, stationary, ad slicks, promotional and advertising materials, signs, multimedia presentations, direct mail, email campaigns, and other deliverables.
Produce, direct and edit promotional and music videos.

Sr. Systems Administrator
Aol, Inc.
Sep. 1997 - Mar. 2007

Served as team lead and mentor for multiple teams simultaneously within Network Operations Center (NOC), and as a liaison to Operations teams.
Co-founded and built DBA Operations support (monitoring and troubleshooting) team within NOC; co-founded Storage Systems Operations support team.
In addition, played a significant contributing role in the formulation of companywide Diversity and Inclusion policies and initiatives, including presenting committee ideas to top leadership in the company.
Certified as a Sybase Database Administrator.