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Resume

nellemcdade.com | nellemcdade@gmail.com | Download

Design and tech professional with 9 years of experience crafting innovative, data-driven experiences through iterative user-centric design. Passionate about fostering designer growth and scaling teams for success.

Experience

Datadog

Senior Product Design Manager — Jan 2023 - Now

  • Led a team of ten designers on the Service Management and Automation team, including four direct reports: two managers with sub-teams and two full-time IC product designers.
  • Collaborated with Product, and Engineering Managers to define product vision and design strategy for early-stage and post-GA’ed products in the Service Management organization.
  • Oversaw design direction for Datadog’s observability copilot, Bits AI, overseeing web and mobile designs; App Builder, a low-code developer tool; Workflows, a user-friendly automation flow builder; and Case Management, a ticketing platform for technical teams.
  • Facilitated weekly asynchronous and synchronous rituals to align with designers on priorities, opportunities for cross-collaboration, and help uncover roadblocks.
  • Directed talent acquisition efforts, hiring three full-time designers and contributing to future headcount strategy discussions with the VP of Design and Director of Design.

MongoDB

Director of Product Design — Feb 2022 - Oct 2022

  • People manager to eleven designers, including two new managers overseeing sub-teams.
  • Collaborated with Product and Engineering Managers to define product strategy, design vision, and release strategy for products across MongoDB Atlas. Identified knowledge gaps and collaborated with designers and UX Researchers (when available) to conduct UX research studies.
  • Facilitated weekly design reviews with all product designers on the team to deliver design feedback on interactions, visual, and UX/UI.
  • Coached and mentored designers on the team, providing timely feedback in asynchronous and synchronous communication forms to help their career goals.
  • Owned fiscal planning, including headcount and compensation, informed by skill gap analysis and resource allocation, overseeing placements for hires and interns.

Product Design Lead — Sept 2019 - Feb 2022

  • Managed two design teams: Cloud Core and Atlas Design, initially with two direct reports and later expanding to five.
  • Hired multiple junior to senior designers on the team to meet critical business needs across various product areas.
  • Acted as a player, when needed, to lead end-to-end design projects from product definition through testing and shipping.
  • Facilitated weekly team rituals, including planning, stand-ups, and collaboration sessions, promoting real-time design feedback.
  • Coached individual designers for growth through 1:1s, Slack communication, and formal reviews.
  • Prioritized and planned workstreams for both teams, aligning priorities across product teams and presenting quarterly plans to executives.

Senior Product Designer — July 2018 - Sept 2019

  • Led multiple design projects for the IAM and Billing teams, working with Product Management and Engineering partners to create user-centric and data-driven design outcomes.
  • Led the end-to-end redesign of MongoDB’s navigation across multiple product areas over a year, working with 75 stakeholders across the company and multiple levels, while conducting various user research and testing studies to validate design and product decisions, and shipped designs in multi-phase releases.
  • Conducted numerous user research and user testing studies using mix-methodologies such as usability testing, concept testing, ethnographic studies, and more.
  • Mentored junior designers on the team and shared learnings through Lunch & Learns.

Button

Product Designer – June 2015 - June 2018

  • First product designer at a 10-person startup, joined post Seed round and left after the Series B.
  • Lead end-to-end design for products across mobile and web products designed for full-stack and mobile developers, marketers, and customer success managers.
  • Paired Senior Product Designer on creating the first Design System, entire product revamps, and a mobile components system (available via SDK and UI), as well as maintaining the marketing website.
  • Plan product strategy and user experience alongside Product Managers and Engineering Leads.
  • Lead scrappy targeted user research studies to quickly gain insight into users’ pain points, motivations, and frustrations with the product.
  • Fun fact, I co-designed the logo still in use today!

Product Design Intern - May 2014 - June 2015

Other Work Experience

Available on request

Education

Parsons School of Design — Communication Design BFA

Skills

  • Wireframing, prototyping, low-fidelity design, high-fidelity design, interaction design
  • User research (usability testing, card sorting, tree testing, concept testing, customer interviews, etc.)
  • Design Leadership, mentorship, coaching, project management, stakeholder management
  • Facilitating design thinking workshops
  • Figma/Sketch/Adobe Creative Suite
  • HTML/CSS/JavaScript