Designing a UX team
I joined Emarsys with a strategic mandate: to not only build and lead the new UX team, but to establish a design practice and fully integrate it into the product development process. With no dedicated UX team previously, this was a significant challenge that required both a strong vision and a hands-on approach. The team I built would go on to drive a major platform redesign, and our talent development was strong enough that the two subsequent heads of UX were both promoted from within.
My approach to building the right team was guided by three core principles:
- Lean UX mindset: We experimented and learned what design practices the organization needed to truly bring the product forward, treating the org itself like a product we had to understand and improve.
- Researcher-designer pairs: I established the pair model to ensure our design work was always grounded in deep user understanding and a true collaborative partnership.
- Embedded UX people: We integrated designers and researchers directly with developer and product teams into cross-functional teams. This empowered them to act as strategic partners and amplified their impact across the organization.
Through a disciplined approach to hiring and professional growth, we grew the team from 2 to 16 in two years, with 95%+ retention — only one designer left during my tenure. Together, we introduced a suite of practices that became the foundation of our work: discovery and research to make better product decisions (like frequent interviews and design sprints), visioning tools like design principles and briefs, and systems thinking like our design system and user story maps to build coherent cross-product user journeys.
The team launched a new email editor, campaign manager, automation system, and AI features — a full platform transformation. Design teams are very much like a product: you have to understand the needs of your ‘users’ (the rest of the organization) to create the best possible solutions.