Hi, I’m Dan.

A photograph of Dan Lutger.

I’m a founding product designer, helping startups and companies build design teams and establish product design as a company discipline. I design entire end-to-end enterprise B2B and B2C SaaS platforms. I excel at making complex web applications easy and enjoyable to use through data-driven, user-centered design thinking methods. I’m familiar with working simultaneously in multiple agile teams with lean (or guerrilla) UX processes. I’m at my best when I am collaborating with sharp fellow learners and teachers.

Here’s some examples of my work. I promise no photos of me looking at Post-it notes.

OVERVIEW – Felux

Felux logo with # Make Steel Sexy in glowing neon lettering.

For 2.5 years I worked at Felux, a marketplace for buying and selling steel, as the lead senior UX/UI product designer. I was their first product hire where I helped established design and product as a company discipline and was responsible for the redesign of their main flagship product (and for making steel sexy). I’m putting together a tour of the extensive work I did but until then I can show this in person on request.

UX CASE STUDY – Dogs!

A laptop showing a Label Insight platform for digitizing dog food package feeding instructions and a mobile phone showing a SmartLabel page of dog food package feeding instructions.

A brief overview of one of the last features I designed for the Label Insight platform. It also included a complementary feature design for the Consumer Brands Association platform, SmartLabel. And it involved dogs!

OVERVIEW – Label Insight

Several screens from Label Insight platforms around the Label Insight logo.

For 12 years I worked at Label Insight, a consumer product database and attribute insight tool, as the lead UX and product designer. I was employee #1, the first product hire, and developed design as a company discipline. I was the only designer for the first 9 years until I created and managed their design team. Label Insight was acquired by Nielsen shortly after I left.

I’ve created a tour in Figma that I can give in person or that anyone could self-guide at their convenience. It demonstrates major applications I designed as well as some various features. This is not complete by any means. A lot of my last work had been R&D designs for new applications and features that had not launched by the time I left that I will showcase in another demo. Due to NDAs I cannot make this public so please contact me if you need the password.

What other people think…

“Dan is a special, hard-to-find talent, and a truly fantastic person. Dan combines extreme thoughtfulness with a constant curiosity around the most up to date UX/UI fundamentals and thinking, dedication, hard work, and a collaborative, empathetic style that will transform a culture. So excited to see what’s next for him.”

Tom Slade
Product Manager / Founder

“In my opinion, designing an elegant workflow and a product is difficult. Designing the same for an industry, such as metallurgy, that is as old as time, is twice as difficult. Dan not only overcame these challenges as the founding designer at Felux, but also delivered a very elegant and a successful product. My favourite of Dan’s, is the work around “pricing analysis”. I never thought a plethora of numbers in different units could look this good on a screen! But Dan, he made it possible. Dan’s talent and eye for design is something I’ve not seen before.

 Empathy is one of many Dan’s core strengths. He is always accepting of feedback from engineering. He accommodated our concerns and altered designs accordingly without compromising user experience. It was always a pleasure to talk to Dan over a coffee! I wish him nothing but the best!”

Sree Potlola
Senior Software Engineer

 

“Dan is an exceptional designer. Not only is he incredibly thoughtful and empathetic, but he excels at remaining unbiased, creative, and really listening to what people have to say. He has limitless ideas and is always looking for ways to solve customer problems. He is unwavering in his kindness, ability to keep an open mind and ability to find the silver lining in everything. I have learned so much from Dan while working with him – not only about work, but most importantly about how to be a wonderful person. He is a true gem.

 Any team would be lucky to have Dan, and I can assure you that customers will undoubtedly agree. He will be their biggest advocate.

Tami Checkoway
Product Leader

“Dan was a senior product designer at the company I work for, Label Insight, long before I joined the company years ago. He built our entire design department after many years of carrying everything design related single-handedly, supporting five fully fledged agile teams with around twenty complete single page applications shared between them. Today we have an entire design team, system, and component library that enables engineers to build entire front ends without having to write new components or even touch CSS outside of routine alignment instructions, which is a testament to him as a collaborator, but also the scalability of his design work. On top of that he’s just an all around great person – one of my favorites.”

Joshua Kelckner
Lead Engineer