Positioning design at the core of both product and brand development was essential for HUB—to stay competitive through innovation and to embed user experience at the intersection of technology and product.

To establish a strong design function, I began by aligning with leadership and execution teams to understand their expectations, assess design maturity, and identify mindset gaps. In the first two months, I conducted team-wide conversations to uncover how design was perceived, where gaps existed, and where design could deliver early impact. These insights helped identify quick wins to build trust and demonstrate value. Concurrently, I onboarded a new associate designer by assessing their strengths, growth areas, and working style—ensuring their role aligned with both business priorities and team goals.

Defining Roles within Design team

Product Designer Collaborated with Product Owners to design client-facing interfaces, ensuring usability, consistency, and adaptability to diverse requirements.	Service Designer Mapped end-to-end customer journeys to uncover pain points and opportunities, shaping strategic feature recommendations and roadmap planning.
UI Designer Translated product designs into scalable components and reusable patterns, with documentation to ensure efficient use by designers and engineers.	Graphic Designer Supported marketing with visual assets for campaigns, presentations, and brand communications to maintain brand consistency.

Scaling the Design Function

The Associate Designer, skilled in UI and Figma, grew into an independent contributor through mentorship and feedback. My vision was to build a decentralised, autonomous design team, but budget constraints required each designer to own multiple features and collaborate with several Product Owners, demanding strong adaptability.

Design Leadership in Action

✋🏽 I led the design system effort and secured leadership buy-in to bring on an intern to support ongoing work.

✋🏽 Through structured mentoring including regular check-ins, training sessions, and hands-on feedback, the intern grew into a reliable contributor. They began documenting components, identifying reusable patterns, and actively supporting the evolution of the UI library.

✋🏽 After six months, the intern transitioned to full-time, supporting Marketing with branding assets and demo videos aligned with HUB’s product identity.

Design-Led Collaboration

Alongside mentoring the team, I partnered with Product and Engineering leadership to align design with goals like acquisition, retention, and platform growth. I led cross-functional workshops to co-create roadmaps, tackle complex problems, and balance user needs with business and technical priorities. I also ran sessions to boost Design System adoption, improving documentation, consistency, and shared ownership across teams.

Establishing a Design workflow within HUB

To build a high-performing team, elevate design maturity and position design as strategic design partner to product team, we established a structured workflow and four principles

1. Stay open-minded: Avoid attachment to a single idea. Great design evolves by involving stakeholders early and often.

2. Prototype fast, iterate faster: Speed matters. Designers were encouraged to prototype quickly and refine through continuous feedback.

3. Own your work: Designers were expected to take end-to-end ownership—from concept to delivery and post-launch iterations.

4. Collaborate to innovate: Innovation thrives at the intersection of disciplines. Designers actively partnered with Product and Engineering to co-create solutions.

These principles deeply embedded design thinking into HUB’s product culture and empowered the team to lead with clarity and impact.

Building a Collaborative Design Culture

Building a collaborative design culture shaped my growth as a leader. While driving business outcomes, I stayed grounded in user needs through team engagement, built trust as the basis for honest feedback, and introduced lightweight rituals to foster meaningful connection beyond formal meetings.

Monthly design lunches that encouraged informal bonding

Daily Standup to maintain alignment and offer support

Monthly Creative Challenges that allowed designers to explore ideas outside the roadmap.

We also held silent Focus sessions for Deep Work, and Weekly Peer Reviews that gave designers a safe space to share progress and exchange feedback.

These rituals fostered open dialogue, faster problem-solving, and stronger ownership—building a culture of trust and collaboration that boosted confidence, aligned purpose, and consistently raised the design bar.

Conclusion: Scaling Impact Through Design Leadership

A Culture of Ownership and Collaboration

• Beyond hiring and role clarity, I instilled ownership, strategic thinking, and collaboration.

• Rituals and trust-building shifted design from support to a strategic partner.

Early Involvement & Cross-Functional Alignment

• Product teams began involving design earlier in the problem-solving process.

• Stakeholders actively relied on design-led workshops to shape roadmaps and discover new opportunities.

Scalable Impact Through Systems and Mindset

• Design system became a shared language, speeding development and ensuring consistency.

• Designers grew independent, driving HUB’s growth and differentiation