Meet Dominique
Dominique Simmons is the founder of CX UX Spark, a Seattle-based consulting practice that helps early-stage companies build products grounded in real customer understanding. With a background spanning cognitive psychology, UX research, customer experience strategy, and enterprise data and AI, she works at the intersection of human attention, technology, and clarity.
The Quiet Work of Paying Attention
Dominique Simmons has built a career around something many teams overlook: attention. Not the performative kind, but the deep, patient listening that happens when you slow down enough to notice how people actually think, struggle, and decide.
“I believe technology is the conduit for human excellence,” she says. For Dominique, that belief isn’t abstract. It shows up in the way she holds space for founders, in how she helps teams translate customer conversations into product decisions, and in the calm clarity clients often describe after working with her.
She doesn’t rush to answers. She listens for meaning.
From How We Hear to How We Build
Dominique’s story begins in cognitive psychology, studying speech perception and human attention. Long before product roadmaps and AI workflows, she was curious about how people process information what we notice, what we miss, and why.
After earning her master’s degree, she made a deliberate leap: applying theory to code. At an AI startup, she sharpened her technical skills, building proof-of-concept machine learning models while also defining the developer experience for the platform. It was here that UX quietly entered her work not as a job title, but as a way of thinking.
As her career evolved through roles in UX research and customer experience program management, one thread stayed constant: improving how people interacted with complex data and AI systems, and helping teams learn from the humans on the other side of the product.
“I started as someone building models and working directly with data, Then I transitioned to enabling those who build. That shift expanded my impact in ways I couldn’t imagine.”
When the Ground Falls Away
Two layoffs forced Dominique into a reckoning. The kind that strips away titles and asks harder questions about worth and identity.
“During those periods of destabilization, I grounded in the value and energy I bring regardless of role or company,”
Instead of retreating, she recalibrated. Those moments clarified what mattered most: helping teams guess less, reduce risk, and build with intention. They also revealed a deeper truth that her greatest contribution wasn’t just technical expertise, but her ability to create clarity in uncertainty.
Out of that realization, CX UX Spark was born.
Building Clarity, One Conversation at a Time
Today, Dominique works with early-stage companies navigating the fog of product decisions. Her role isn’t to prescribe solutions, but to help founders and teams truly learn from their customers and trust what they hear.
“Clients leave meetings with me feeling centered, That clarity translates to their customers.”
She measures success not in metrics alone, but in moments: a team seeing a new opportunity, a founder reframing a problem, a product becoming more human because someone finally listened.
Helping a client spark a new, more customer-driven approach, she says, “is a win for me.”
Growth, Community, and Lifting as You Climb
Growth and community are the values that anchor Dominique’s work. She reads widely, learns constantly, and draws energy from connecting with others especially in moments when things feel unclear.
“Connecting with people reminds me that we often share similar challenges, There’s always a form of support. It’s up to you to emerge from the fog and reach out.
Her personal motto, lift as you climb isn’t aspirational. It’s practical. It’s about recognizing what you can give at each stage, even when you’re still figuring things out yourself.
“If something feels like it’s out of your comfort zone, that’s a good sign. That’s where you want to stay in order to grow.”
Listening Forward
Dominique Simmons doesn’t chase noise. She listens for signal in conversations, in systems, in people. In a world obsessed with speed and scale, her work is a reminder that progress often begins more quietly: with attention, humility, and the courage to slow down.
And maybe that’s the spark she’s really offering not just better products, but a more human way of building them.
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