New team member team onboarding
About
Challenge: Onboarding takes too long. Steep learning curve to understand the technical field. Many team members to get to know, long process.
Scope:
R&D (200 people)
Design team (25 people)
Engineering (150 people)
Product Management (30 people)
Impact
Solution:
Created a smooth onboarding experience for new team members in our design team, so they can start producing deliverables in two weeks & have smooth jump start with engineering and product.
Reduced the newcomer anxiety.
Lessons learned
The process involved many stakeholders to agree on a change - HR, engineering, product - as the onboarding plans were not aligned.
Having a well developed process helps everyone - with learning, understanding, processes, and keeps talent!
People management
Leadership philosophy
◆ full empowerment of team members
◆ provide safe space to create
◆ design and product excellence
About
I brag about my team. I believe that great products are built by great teams. I take pride in fostering a culture where people feel valued, supported, and empowered to do their best work.
Managed and coached 5 designers in a 25-person team, helping them grow their skills, confidence, and impact.
Created a strong sense of belonging, ensuring that collaboration was built on trust, shared purpose, and open communication.
Advocated for team wins—because success is always a collective effort.
Impact
Developed and coached designers through structured feedback, performance conversations, and growth opportunities, fostering a high-performing team.
Empowered designers by creating a culture of open communication, trust, and continuous feedback loops, leading to stronger collaboration and better outcomes.
Elevated design craft and quality by establishing clear processes, best practices, and knowledge-sharing frameworks within the team.
Optimized team operations by partnering with engineering and product, streamlining workflows, decision-making, and cross-functional collaboration for faster execution and higher impact.
UX skillset scorecard & skill mapping
Challenge:
Designers not aware of their skillset strengths. Team not aware of teammate's skillset.
Solution:
1:1 conversations to map out skillset
Lessons learned:
Designers excited to talk about personal development, action items to focus on in the next quarter.
Meetings overview
Challenge:
Unorganized space to share with others, many spread out meetings, some pointless meetings that could have been an email.
Solution:
Each meeting has a purpose, agenda, retros on team processes
Lessons learned:
Dedicated time for actual work (focus) and meetings, transparent communication, space for feedback loop
Quaterly goal setting
Challenge:
Not having space to reflect on personal development.
Solution:
Quarterly chat about goals, skill development, focus on strengths and build on them, recognize weaknesses. This is a conversation, not a strict process.
Lessons learned:
Designers appreciate encouragement and support, importance of having goals.
Organizing team offsite
About
Organized a 25 person team offsite.
Impact
Team building. Bonding outside of the traditional work environment, fostering stronger relationships & trust among team members. Unconference style agenda, where people submit their topics and vote
Celebration and recognition. Celebrate team successes, recognized individual contributions and reinforcing a culture of appreciation.
Various workshops. Design review retro, Persona deep dive, Collaboration between product designers and design system designer
Lessons learned
energized team spirit
very positive feedback from team members
people got to know each other on personal level
