Introduced a set of scalable systems - including Product Score, Feedback Loop and Design System - that elevated UX visibility, improved product decisions, and positioned design as a strategic partner across the organisation

Context

Salesmanago is a customer engagement SaaS platform serving a diverse base of B2B clients. As the product and organisation matured, the need for better visibility into product performance, user sentiment, competitive landscape, and design consistency became critical. The challenge wasn’t just tracking metrics - it was making sure teams across Product, UX and Engineering could make smarter, faster, more aligned decisions.

My Role

As the Director of Product Design and a member of the senior leadership team, I reported directly to the Chief Product Officer and hold dual responsibility for both product excellence and the people behind it.

I built the Product Design & Research function from the ground up - establishing the structures, processes, tools, and methodologies that drive our success. My remit spans hands-on product design leadership, design operations, and fostering a culture of accountability, autonomy and continuous improvement.

Alongside shaping product strategy and leading critical initiatives, I’ve hired, mentored, and developed a high-performing, cross-functional team of designers and researchers. My focus has been to ensure that design is not just executional - but a strategic pillar of the organisation, fully integrated into how we build and scale product.

Challenges

Product & Organisational Visibility

• A fragmented understanding of product health across teams, with siloed and inconsistent metrics
• KPIs were heavily revenue-focused, with little visibility into user sentiment or experience
• Lack of structured user feedback loops made it difficult to ground product decisions in real insight
• No systemised way to track adoption trends or monitor competitive activity

People & Design Function Building

• Needed to build the Product Design & Research function from scratch
• Faced gaps in team capacity, role clarity, and shared rituals
• Design was seen as a delivery function - not a strategic contributor
• The team operated in silos, disconnected from Product and Engineering counterparts
• No existing frameworks for consistent UX or research practices across the organisation

Approach

Team Building & Leadership

• Built the Product Design & Research function from the ground up - including hiring, team structure, onboarding, rituals, and culture
• Introduced structured ways of working: 1:1s, design critiques, career growth frameworks, and mentoring processes
• Created clear role definitions and progression paths to support team autonomy and internal promotions
• Actively worked to break down silos between design, product, and engineering - embedding design early in the product lifecycle
• Ensured the team was not only delivery-focused, but a strategic voice in shaping outcomes
• Advocated for design at the leadership table - aligning Product Design more closely with CPO, VPs of Engineering, and Customer Success
  

Design Strategy & Systems Thinking

• Identified key gaps in product visibility, user understanding, and operational alignment
• Created a roadmap of strategic systems (Product Score, Feedback Loop, Competitive Intelligence, Adoption Dashboards, Design System) to close these gaps
• Focused on building scalable, reusable frameworks - not just artefacts - to empower teams with data, patterns, and clarity
• Worked cross-functionally to integrate these systems into planning cycles, decision-making rituals, and day-to-day workflows
• Shifted the organisation from reacting to symptoms toward anticipating needs based on user, product and market insight
• Promoted a learning culture grounded in shared metrics, open feedback loops, and iterative delivery

Key Initiatives

📊 Product Score Framework

• Introduced a normalised, composite metric to measure product health across behavioural cues (40%), user declarations (40%) and technical signals (20%)
• Designed with a strong UX lens: focused only on areas Product/UX could influence directly
• Enabled modular filtering by platform area, supporting decentralised ownership
  

👉 Result: Created a shared strategic view of product health that informed prioritisation, improved cross-team alignment, and reduced effort spent on low-impact work. Over time, we successfully raised our Product Score from “OK” to an “Excellent” level — a direct reflection of smarter decision-making and better user experience.

🔁 Feedback Loop System

• Built a scalable structure for capturing, categorising and analysing user feedback
• Introduced Jira-integrated boards for feedback triage and routing
• Created dashboards to monitor themes, response times, and user sentiment trends
  

👉 Result: Gave teams real-time access to user pain points and ideas - increasing customer-centricity in product planning and reducing blind spots

🕵️ Competitive Intelligence Framework

• Developed an automated system for regular monitoring of competitors’ UX, features and positioning
• Integrated output into internal Slack channels and monthly planning rituals
• Delivered structured templates for comparative analysis and market insight
  

👉 Result: Elevated product positioning conversations and helped identify feature gaps and differentiators faster

🧱 Design System Development

• Created a shared component library and interaction patterns to ensure design consistency and efficiency
• Collaborated closely with front-end developers to bridge design–build gaps
• Introduced governance models and contribution workflows
  

👉 Result: Reduced inconsistencies across the UI, increased team velocity, and enabled designers to spend more time solving product challenges - not recreating components

📈 Adoption Metrics System

• Defined a new, layered adoption metric model (micro/macro/product-wide)
• Built custom dashboards to track user behaviour and feature usage across modules
• Enabled early detection of adoption risks and underused features
  

👉 Result: Supported smarter prioritisation and guided product education efforts - directly influencing retention and activation strategies

Impact

• Built and scaled a strategic Product Design & Research function from scratch
• Enabled insight-led decisions across the product organisation through new systems and frameworks
• Strengthened Product/UX collaboration with shared tools, language, and goals
• Reduced UX design debt and delivery time through a cohesive design system
• Positioned UX as a trusted, strategic partner in product growth conversations
• Delivered measurable improvements across product health, adoption, and team velocity
  

What I Learned

Even in data-rich environments, alignment and clarity are often the missing links. By creating simple, accessible systems around insight and measurement, we helped shift the organisation from reactive to strategic. As a design leader, I saw first-hand how design can empower better decisions, not just better interfaces - and how the right team culture turns those systems into action.