How I Think

How I Approach Product Design

My job as a designer is to help people see the future, to see what could be. To help the team make better decisions faster, and to make customers feel in control of what we build.

A few things I believe:

• Design is decision-making. The ability to clarify tradeoffs, prioritize, and rally a team around an idea.
• Rough and directionally correct beats beautiful and wrong. A good prototype shortens debates and gets real feedback fast. I expose design to the harsh reality of the browser as soon as possible. AI helps here.
• AI changed my team's speed, not our standards. Work that used to take a week of prototyping now produces a half dozen options in a morning, but design fundamentals haven't changed. The team gets 0 points for shipping the wrong thing ahead of schedule.
• Evidence beats opinions. I'd rather watch one customer struggle with a flow than read ten opinions about what they'd probably want.
• Process is a tool, not a religion. The team and the problem define the process, not the other way around.

How I Work Across Teams

The most valuable design work happens upstream, before anything looks like a project. At Dialpad I inherited a feature factory: siloed PMs, designers executing tickets. We reorganized roadmaps around directional themes instead of disconnected deliverables. We don't want to ship our org chart.

I also value and partner with customer-facing teams like customer support, professional services, and sales. Having these proactive relationships beats reacting to escalations.

Once work is underway:

• I partner with engineers early. We agree on what's safe to build before the design is finished, so engineering and design run in parallel instead of waiting on handoffs.
• I involve the whole team in reviews and share work early, even when "it's not ready yet!" Engineering, PMs, QA, and leadership. The best ideas don't always come from people with design in their title.

How I Lead

When I first became a manager, my philosophy was simple: hire good people and stay out of their way. It felt respectful, but was incomplete.

Some people thrived with that freedom while others stalled. One designer understood complex workflows but struggled to present their work. Another had great UI instincts but needed help prioritizing. Staying out of the way wasn't helping either of them, so I evolved a more deliberate approach: notice what each person needs, coach them on it directly, adjust as they grow.

Managing the team

• Clear, actionable feedback. I don't sugarcoat critique and or avoid hard conversations. The kindest thing a manager can do is be clear.
• Designers should think like product people, not production artists. Craft gets you to senior. Storytelling, business acumen, and selling your ideas get you further. I spent two years helping a senior designer make that shift before promoting them to staff. My job is to show what the next level demands.
• Psychological safety is really important. When something's off or times are tough, I pull everyone in and give them space to vent and be honest. A team in the right headspace does its best work.
• Still in the work. I shape specs, prototype flows, and tune UI details in Figma. Not because I don't trust my team, but because credibility is earned in the work (and I really enjoy it!).

Managing up and out

• No surprises. I bring leadership into design directions early. Because we're going to get their feedback at some point, better to get it early when it's easier to address it.
• "Yes, and here's what it costs." When asked for the unreasonable, I don't lead with no. I lay out what we'd delay, what we'd sacrifice, and let people decide with full information.
• I translate design for the business. Roadmaps, revenue, and resourcing are part of the job.

I've led through rapid hiring and layoffs. How you treat people in hard moments defines trust more than anything you do when things are easy.

The goal in all of it: a team that delivers great work without depending on me.