Scaling Design: Lessons in Leading Large Teams and Building Culture.
Jul. 15, 2024
As a designer, you often start your career focused on individual contributions—crafting wireframes, conducting user research, and collaborating on specific features. But as you move into leadership roles, the scope of your work shifts significantly. You’re no longer just designing interfaces; you’re designing systems, teams, and ultimately a culture that can scale across an organization.
In my journey from a junior designer to a UX Director, the most valuable lessons I’ve learned have been about scaling design teams, fostering a culture of innovation, and ensuring that the quality of design remains consistent across projects—no matter the size of the team or the scope of the work.
Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned along the way.
Create a Scalable Design System, Not Just a Set of Guidelines
Leading design at scale requires establishing frameworks that enable consistent quality while supporting rapid growth. A robust design system serves as the foundation for enterprise-wide design operations, encompassing not just UI components but governance, processes, and quality standards.
Strategic Foundations:
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Design System Governance: Establishing decision frameworks for component evolution
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Cross-functional Integration: Aligning design and engineering through shared ownership
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Adoption Strategy: Creating clear paths for teams to integrate and contribute
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Quality Assurance: Building scalable review processes that maintain standards
What worked for me:
Start small: Begin with the most frequently used components. We started by creating a basic style guide, then moved on to defining buttons, form fields, and layout grids.
Collaborate with development: A design system doesn’t work if it’s disconnected from the development team. Regular syncs between design and engineering helped us align on component behavior and ensure that both sides were using the same language.
Evangelize it internally: A design system is only useful if people adopt it. I made sure that every designer on the team understood its value and how it would help them work more efficiently.
Culture is Your Biggest Asset—Invest in It
Building a team culture isn’t just a soft skill—it’s a necessity for any team looking to scale successfully. As we grew from a team of five to over 20 designers, I realized the importance of creating a culture where people felt comfortable taking risks, providing feedback, and learning from failure.
A healthy culture fosters trust and collaboration, both of which are critical when managing larger teams. One of the first things I did as we scaled was implement a culture of feedback. We instituted weekly design critiques where team members were encouraged to present their work in progress. The goal wasn’t to judge but to improve and learn together.
What worked for me:
Design critiques: Regular, structured critiques helped foster an open culture where feedback was normalized and expected. It also gave junior designers a platform to learn from senior team members and develop their skills.
Transparency: I made sure to be transparent about the challenges we were facing as a team and how we planned to address them. This level of openness helped everyone feel like they were part of the solution.
Celebrating wins: As a leader, celebrating small wins—even when they didn’t come from me—helped build a positive and motivating team environment.
Mentorship Scales Quality
As a leader, I found that one of the best ways to maintain design quality at scale is through mentorship. When teams grow, it’s easy for inconsistencies in design quality to creep in, especially when you have designers at different levels of experience.
Rather than micromanage every project, I focused on building a culture of mentorship within the team. Senior designers were paired with juniors to review their work, offer guidance, and help them grow. This approach didn’t just improve the junior designers' work—it strengthened the senior designers' leadership skills as well.
What worked for me:
Mentorship programs: By pairing senior designers with juniors, I ensured that the overall quality of design work remained high while also helping newer designers develop their craft.
Teaching the design system: As part of our onboarding, every new designer went through a crash course on our design system. This ensured that they had the tools they needed to succeed from day one.
Empowering autonomy: I encouraged mentorship, but also empowered individuals to take ownership of their projects, making sure they felt accountable for the quality of their work.
Scaling is About Letting Go
As a designer, you often want to have control over every pixel, every interaction. But as a design leader, scaling means letting go of that control. It’s about empowering your team to make decisions, trusting that the systems and culture you’ve put in place will guide them in the right direction.
The most valuable thing I did in this respect was to trust my team. I let them take the reins on projects while I focused on setting the overall vision and providing guidance when needed. I found that by stepping back and giving them autonomy, they grew faster and produced better work.
What worked for me:
Set clear goals: Every designer knew what was expected in terms of project outcomes, but they had the freedom to explore different ways to achieve those outcomes.
Trust and verify: I trusted my team, but I also made sure to have regular check-ins to ensure things were on track without micromanaging.
Focus on the big picture: As a director, my role became less about individual design details and more about ensuring that the design work aligned with the company’s strategic goals.
Final Thoughts: Scaling is a Balancing Act
Scaling design teams and culture is a balancing act. You need to give designers the tools and freedom to succeed while ensuring consistency and alignment with the broader company vision. It’s not about building perfect systems but about creating the right environment for your team to thrive.
At the heart of it, scaling design is about building trust—in your team, in your processes, and in your ability to lead without holding on too tightly. That’s what I’ve learned as a design leader, and it’s what I continue to build on as we scale even further.