One Designer to a Team of Five
I was Prolook's first designer. I grew design into a team of five, built our design system, and set up a process that held up through constant change.
ROLE
Design Manager
COMPANY
PROLOOK
The Problem
There was no design system, and it showed. Fonts, text styles, colors, modals, and buttons didn't match across the site. There was no clear primary or secondary button, and the flows were confusing. The whole site needed a usability overhaul, and one designer couldn't do it alone.
My Role
Role: UX Design Manager. I was the first designer, built and led a team of four designers, and kept doing hands-on design work.
How we worked: The design team also served as project and product managers. We worked with a dev team in the Philippines.
My Philosophy
As soon as we decided the team needed to grow I started learning as much as I could about leading a team. I developed my own mission statement based on what I learned around four key things people look for in their leaders.
As a UX Design Manager, my mission is to cultivate an environment of trust and collaboration where team members feel empowered to innovate and thrive.
I lead with compassion, prioritizing the well-being and growth of my team, while fostering stability through a clear vision, dependable processes, and thoughtful decision making.
With a spirit of hope, I aim to maintain a positive outlook on the future of our projects and the careers of my team members, driving progress and shared success.
Building the Team
I hired for the kind of work we had. Our projects were complex, so I looked for people who could handle that. I also looked for different skills and backgrounds, so the team would fill each other's gaps. Each person had a video interview, then an in-person interview with a live design challenge on a product like ours. I wanted to see how they thought in real time.
New designers got daily check-ins. I walked them through everything and introduced them to key stakeholders. I sat in on their first meetings until they felt sure of themselves.
One designer was an in house transfer and joined as a junior doing small projects with supervision. Over time she took on large projects with little supervision. Presenting to stakeholders made her uneasy at first, but she grew comfortable with it. Soon she didn't need me in meetings at all. She earned a promotion to mid level and a raise.
The Design System
I built the design system early, so the whole team would start on the same page. I made it in Figma. It covered colors, fonts, and every component. Weekly design reviews kept everyone using it and gave each designer a place for feedback.
Parts of the overhaul launched while I was there. Our biggest projects were built on the system and in staging when I left. These were the uniform designer, order tracking, and filters and product selection.
Documentation
Our priorities shifted often, and projects were dropped and picked back up. Each restart meant meetings just to get the details back. That took two or three days.
I set up Monday.com boards to track every project and to talk with our devs. Each project's notes and status lived in one place. Our back and forth with the devs shrank. Picking a project back up took about a day.
What I Learned
Our team store project was started and dropped four times. It also passed through three designers. Each time it came back, the notes were waiting, so no one had to start over. Writing things down is how a small team survives shifting priorities.