Our process was ad-hoc and chaotic.
When I began at Reputation, it was clear there were a lot of things that weren't working efficiently. It was costing the business time, tech debt, and ultimately money to run in such a chaotic way. In a company where time-to-market was critical, these inefficencies were essential to address.
No Centralized Files → Delays, Inconsistency, & Tech Debt

Because there was no design system or centralized files, everything had to be designed from scratch. This caused major delays in design and inconsistencies that trickled down into engineering implementation, causing duplicated dev efforts and major tech debt.

No Formal Process → Missed Priorities and Poor Visibility

Because there were no formal processes for tracking design efforts, how to create design specs, and how to really leverage the design partners they already had, it caused priorities to be missed or delayed and a lot of confusion and frustration due to poor visibility across design and product.

No Design Culture → Untapped Potential and Burnout

Product didn't understand how to leverage design, so they were often treated as just a means for generating mocks for engineering. This caused a lot of missed opportunities to use design as thought partners and burnout due to feeling like a cog in the machine.

Intitating change prompted pushback.
There was cultural and organizational resistance to disrupting the status quo and skepticism around benefits of updating protocols. It would require a lot of empathy, iteration, and trust building to get us where we needed to go.
Many believed documentation, design system work, and research would slow delivery.
PMs and engineers saw design as mock producers, not strategic partners.
A cross-functional lack of empathy created silos and misalignment.
Accessibility was deemed unnecessary despite customer complaints.
Achieving change through gradual, small successes.
To improve the situation, it required a phased approach -- Developing empathy for cross-functional partners through interviews and visibility, piloting changes to identify areas of improvement and culture fit, iteration to incorporate feedback and build on success, and building trust in a gradual process through social proof and advocacy.
Developing Empathy

  • Conducting cross-functional interviews

  • Defining needs, wants, and pain points

  • Communicating that out to the broader team

Piloting Changes

  • Creating a plan to address identified issues

  • Testing it out on a small scale on individual projects or teams based on buy in

Iteration

  • Conducting retros to understand pros and cons

  • Making adjustments based function / culture

  • Running more tests / expanding to more teams

Building Trust

  • Create pilots to build social proof through results

  • Onboarding teams based on trust level / buy in

  • Leverage allied advocates to support conversion

I created major lasting impact on the business.
60M ARR
  • Improved Sales and Retention
  • Increased NPS for flagship product by 28pts
  • Design = Competitive Edge
0 1 Design System
  • 1,050+ Components
  • 10+ Product Teams
  • WCAG Compliant
Better Ops
  • Kanban Design Boards
  • Confluence Documentation
  • Design-to-Dev Handoff
Efficiency
  • Faster Design
  • Faster Dev
  • Faster Time-to-Market
Tech Debt

Through centralized components

Dev Bugs

By decreasing code conflicts

Alignment

Across the product organization

Employee Morale

Through connection and support

Design System
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