Lusiné VartanLV

Lusiné
Vartan

Creative Director — Experience Strategy, Digital Products, and AI‑Assisted Workflows


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Résumé

Fifteen years directing experience strategy, product design, and executive narrative in regulated, data-heavy environments.

Executive Profile

Creative Director with fifteen years directing experience strategy, product design, and executive narrative in regulated, data-heavy environments.

Built a ten-person multidisciplinary product design organization at Dignari as the firm scaled from 24 employees to roughly 300 and through its 2024 acquisition by EY, then led that practice’s integration into a global firm.

Directs experience design and narrative architecture for EY’s flagship executive experience platform and builds enterprise AI-assisted workflows hands-on, from concept through working system. Works from an ambiguous problem to a design system, a working prototype, and a presentation executives can review.

Core Capabilities

Direction and strategy
Creative Direction · Experience Strategy · Product Vision · Executive Storytelling and Facilitation
Design practice
Human-Centered and Service Design · Design Systems · User Research · Content Design · Accessibility, Section 508
AI and transformation
AI-Enabled Experience Design · Context Engineering and Tool Orchestration · Human-in-the-Loop Design · Evaluation and Reliability Testing
Organization and environment
Design Organization Building and Hiring · Stakeholder Alignment · Financial Services and Federal, Regulated Environments

Professional Experience

2025–
Present

EY Creative Director, Experience Strategy

Leads experience strategy, creative direction, and AI-assisted workflow design within EY Studio+, working with partner-level stakeholders on future-state narratives, executive experiences, and product direction.

  • Built an enterprise AI-assisted workflow for client value and relationship management, hands-on from concept through working system: grounded in firm context, several tools sequenced across the process, and relationship managers’ decisions and approvals kept as defined review points.
  • Leads experience design, content design, and narrative architecture for EY’s flagship executive experience platform, relaunched to align executives around enterprise transformation.
  • Developed a future-state financial-services Marketplace concept for a high-stakes pursuit, translating strategy and persona narratives into an editable Figma design system, a working prototype, and an executive-ready presentation experience.
  • Defined a Classic-to-Intelligence-Enabled Model within that concept, demonstrating context-aware opportunity discovery, explainability, advisor decision control, and privacy-safe aggregate insight for asset managers.
  • Designed and delivered an immersive executive experience for a global bank’s commercial banking leadership, carrying it from concept through delivery.
2024–
2025

EY / Dignari Creative Director, UI/UX and Human-Centered Design

Carried an acquired design practice into a global firm while preserving specialist capability.

  • Led the post-acquisition integration of Dignari’s design practice into EY, standardizing ways of working across 20+ practitioners while preserving specialist capability.
  • Design portfolio was referenced in federal RFP responses following the integration, contributing to multiple contract wins.
  • Led the combined Human-Centered Design Community of Practice.
2017–
2024

Dignari Head of Design, Creative Director, UI/UX and Human-Centered Design

Built the design organization, and the operating standards behind it, as the firm scaled roughly twelvefold into acquisition.

  • Built and led a ten-person multidisciplinary product design organization spanning UX, research, content design, and visual design, while the firm scaled from 24 employees to roughly 300 into its 2024 EY acquisition.
  • Directed design across a 50+ application portfolio at CBP alone, spanning 21+ desktop, 25+ mobile, 4+ tablet, and AR/VR applications, plus TSA and USCIS programs, in security-accredited, Section 508, PII-sensitive environments, on products used by more than 25 million people.
  • CBP One: led design for CBP’s flagship public-facing mobile platform, consolidating traveler and stakeholder services, including I‑94, entry and exit, and appointment scheduling, into a single intake experience for travelers and officers.
  • OIT Design System: established CBP’s internal design system in 2018, combining Material Design and the U.S. Web Design System into the reusable component library supporting internal applications.
  • Built the hiring frameworks and operating standards that made design a durable enterprise capability rather than a service desk, including a design-department hiring process other departments adopted.
2015–
2016

CSC Principal Designer

Established design standards and executive communication for government engagements.

  • Established design standards and executive communication for government clients, and led CSC’s visual strategy from concept through execution for clients including the Financial Times and federal agencies.

Earlier Experience

2014–2015
Illustria

Designer, creative agency. Led creative processes across a diverse client portfolio.

2011–2014
IPS

Data Visualization Expert. Established design standards for print and digital data products, translating complex quantitative research into clear visual communication for government audiences.

2010–2011
No Kid Hungry

Designer. Developed identity systems and web layouts for national awareness campaigns.

Selected Leadership and Transformation Impact

AI-assisted operations, built rather than commissioned.

Engineers the context an AI works from, sequences several tools across one workflow, retrieves from internal knowledge rather than relying on model recall, and evaluates outputs against defined tests before release. Loop design is the discipline that matters most in regulated settings: where a system may run unattended, and where a person reviews, approves, or stops it. The leadership position is AI as team leverage, not headcount replacement.

Legacy modernization grounded in real work.

AI-288: redesigned a six-year-old vessel-inspection application around agricultural specialists’ actual workflows, informed by SME research, journey mapping, and field policy review.

Interoperable digital identity, released open source.

Grand prize winner, DHS Science and Technology Trusted UI for Digital Wallets Challenge, 2021: design system and prototypes published openly.

Founder, Affelion LLC, 2026–Present.

Launched Affelion Pop, an independent consumer product on the App Store, owning product strategy, UX, brand systems, go-to-market, and end-to-end delivery on a production pipeline built solo and available to demo live.

Education

MBA
University of Virginia, Darden School of Business · Expected May 2027 · Forté Fellow
BFA
Maryland Institute College of Art · Dean’s List · MICA Talent Award Grant

Credentials and Recognition

  • Grand Prize Winner, DHS S&T Trusted UI for Digital Wallets Challenge, 2021
  • Product Management and Customer Experience, University of Virginia, 2024
  • User Experience, Nielsen Norman Group, 2022 · AI for Business, Augment, 2026
  • Published contributor, Lettering and Type: Creating Letters and Designing Typefaces, 2009