Design team leadership

Spring 2023 - Current

Senior Designer, Interim Design Operations Manager

Gro Intelligence

The Challenge

  • Design team grew from 2 to 9 people in 6 months, then 1 year later lost 4 designers in 4 months.

  • Lack of design and product vision led to unsatisfying outputs.

  • No established design documentation or systems, meaning that projects were left half-done and with no way to pick them back up again.

  • Design was tracked in slack messages, not in any formal tracking method.

  • UX research was seen as an afterthought to “check” a design, rather than a crucial part of the design process.

  • There was no established culture of how designers contribute to the success of the product or company as a whole.

The turning point

In the Spring of 2023, a much-needed reorganization of the Product wing happened to bring product, design, and marketing all closer together and mirror the engineering wing of the company.

Within weeks, more leadership change ensued, which left the design team afloat in uncharted territory.

Actions

  • I facilitated a “team reset” with 30-60-90 framework for the whole team and for individuals to feed into. I also facilitated egular group check-ins on team health and morale during the transition period.

  • I organized the UX team’s documentation hub - clearing out deprecated files and building a clean enjoyable space in Coda for all design resources.

  • I start our long-overdue design system and documentation template which set out to stabilize our design components and enable consistency confidence in our designs.

  • I created an innovation pipeline for new ideas to be captured and reviewed regularly, rather than let stagnate.

  • I facilitated a team workshop of documenting a rough design process for our projects that included UXR early and often.

Outcomes

The turnaround was astonishingly fast.

  • The team - and other teams - immediately felt a renewed sense of purpose and ownership in our designers’ work.

  • Team members stepped up with new initiatives, contributing to the innovation pipeline, and speaking up more often in product-wide meetings.

  • UX research payoff within 2 weeks - a simple chart labeling fix rather than costly new component. Massive engineering and design hours saved through data-driven design.

  • Rapid productivity increase thanks to established documentation standards which let designers avoid re-inventing the wheel.

Lessons learned

  • A demoralized team needs a clear vision in order to feel confident and unified.

  • Implementing consistent systems and processes enabled innovation and collaboration to thrive, especially on a remote team.

  • Encouraging and empowering team members to own their own initiatives reignited their passion and drive.

  • Consistent communication is crucial - don't just set a vision and forget it, keep collaborating. Conversation and open dialogue are the routes to building trust, and trust is what keeps a team alive.

  • Showing how design delivers tangible business value is a crucial part of getting designers a seat at the table. Otherwise, design is brought in at the end as a way to “make things pretty.”

  • Implementing consistent systems and processes enabled innovation to thrive.

Other works