Over the past four years, my role at Spinny has evolved significantly. From being a product design manager, I have stepped into a leadership position where I now head the entire design function. This transition has brought new responsibilities, challenges, and opportunities, as I work to build a design culture that fosters creativity, collaboration, and a user-centric approach across the organization. I have led the design team through substantial growth and refinement, focusing on developing robust processes, cultivating a thriving design culture, and ensuring that our designs align with business goals and user needs.

Leading the Design Vision and Strategy

As the Head of Design, my role now goes beyond managing individual design projects. I am responsible for shaping the overall design vision at Spinny, ensuring that our design work is aligned with the company’s strategic objectives. I work closely with cross-functional teams, including product, engineering, business and marketing to drive design initiatives that create value for both users and the company. One of my primary goals has been to elevate design as a key driver of business success and to empower my team to contribute meaningfully to the product development process.

Expanding Design Operations and Processes

When I first joined Spinny, one of the key areas I identified for improvement was the lack of a structured design process. Over time, I have introduced various frameworks to streamline design workflows, enhance cross-team collaboration, and ensure alignment with business objectives. As the head of design, I have worked on further optimizing these processes, ensuring they scale effectively as we continue to grow.

Planning Design Sprints

Upon joining Spinny, I quickly recognized the need for a structured design function within the company. At the time, designers were dispersed, collaborating with one or more product managers. It was crucial to establish clarity regarding prioritization, especially for designers working across different teams or with multiple product owners. The existing approach, primarily relying on Jira, seemed more suitable for developers rather than designers.

Selecting Airtable as the Preferred Tool

Airtable was free to use and we used to prioritise all our work weekly, Airtable alone was not going to solve this problem so I also introduced a weekly sync with all the PMs that my designers work with within a single project planning call. This call was more like a standup, and I ensured the forum was only used to discuss project prioritisation and not projects in detail. These calls usually get over within 20 mins.

What a typical sprint board looks like.

Impact

The impact of implementing Airtable as the preferred tool for planning design sprints and introducing weekly sync calls with product managers was highly beneficial for product designers in my team:

1. Improved Clarity and Prioritization: By using Airtable as the central tool for prioritizing design work, designers gained clarity on which projects and tasks should be given priority. This streamlined approach ensured that designers could focus on the most important and impactful design initiatives, reducing confusion and conflicting priorities.
2. Efficient Collaboration: With a structured design function and weekly sync calls, designers collaborated more efficiently with product managers. The sync calls facilitated quick decision-making and aligning on project prioritization, enabling designers to work seamlessly with multiple product teams.
3. Time Management and Communication: The weekly sync calls being limited to discussing project prioritization and kept to a concise timeframe (around 20 minutes) ensured that designers could manage their time more effectively. This allowed them to dedicate more time to actual design work while still maintaining clear communication with product managers. It also provided an opportunity for designers to ask questions, seek clarifications, and ensure everyone was on the same page regarding project priorities and goals.
4. Positive Team Dynamics: The structured planning and collaborative sync calls created a positive team dynamic between designers and product managers. This alignment and effective communication fostered a sense of camaraderie and shared responsibility, leading to better outcomes.
5. Historic Visibility of Work for Individual Designers: Our design sprints gave historic visibility of past design projects for individual designers. They could review their past work, track progress, and identify areas for improvement over time. This also helped them plan their design presentations to the rest of the team, the head of product or business owners.

Hiring the Right Talent