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 use whatever tool fits the job, though these days AI usually makes it faster to get something onto the screen.
• 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 the fundamentals haven't changed: the team gets zero points for shipping the wrong thing on 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 before anything looks like a project. At Dialpad, I inherited a feature factory: siloed PMs, designers executing tickets, engineers running constrained by technical limitations. We reorganized roadmaps around directional themes instead of disconnected deliverables. We want to ship great products, not 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 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.
• People do their best work when they aren't afraid to speak up. When something's off or times are tough, I pull everyone in and give them room to be honest. Headspace matters.
• Still in the work. I own and drive large features: shaping specs, prototyping flows, and tuning UI details in Figma. Not because I don't trust my team. Staying close to the tools keeps the coaching honest, and credibility is earned in the work.

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 help leadership see what design is doing 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.