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Transforming design leadership during crisis

When OpenAI's free launch triggered a 30% revenue decline at QuillBot (2023), I recognized that surviving the AI disruption required fundamentally elevating our design standards and strategic influence. While others focused on cost-cutting, I invested in transforming our design organization from reactive execution to strategic business partnership.

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I implemented a comprehensive quality transformation that established mandatory prototyping (reducing developer interruptions from 2-3 weekly to about 1), shifted designers into strategic facilitation roles (leading 80% of product planning sessions), and built internal research capabilities (increasing user testing frequency from quarterly to bi-weekly). These changes didn't just improve design quality—they positioned design as the strategic engine driving product decisions during our most critical business period.

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The results validated this approach: design-led initiatives became the foundation for product roadmap decisions, our prototype-driven process eliminated 40% of development rework, and the team's elevated capabilities attracted PMs who wanted to collaborate with designers as strategic partners rather than order-takers.

Challenge

OpenAI's disruption exposed a critical vulnerability: QuillBot's design organization was structured for incremental improvement, not existential competition. Our reactive, PM-driven process couldn't generate the breakthrough solutions needed to differentiate against free AI alternatives.

I identified three systemic issues undermining our competitive position:

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  • Shallow exploration: Designers were executing PM PRDs with strong solution directives rather than exploring user problems deeply

  • Quality inconsistency: Without prototyping standards, basic edge cases and interaction details were discovered during development, creating costly delays and embarrassment for the design team 

  • Strategic invisibility: Design had no voice in product strategy, limiting our ability to advocate for user-centered differentiation

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Rather than accept design as a service function during a crisis, I saw an opportunity to prove design's strategic value when the company needed it most.

Goals

Strategic Transformation:

  • Elevate design from tactical execution to strategic business partnership

  • Establish quality standards that differentiate QuillBot from AI commoditization

 

Operations Excellence:

  • Require interactive prototypes for every design review to prevent costly developer rework

  • Eliminate the constant back-and-forth between designers and developers by solving interaction details before coding begins

  • Build every designer's facilitation and research skills through structured training and practice opportunities

 

Business Impact:

  • Position design insights as drivers of product roadmap decisions

  • Build sustainable capabilities for long-term strategic influence

Goals​​

  • Improve product sense 

  • Make mapping a workflow habit

  • Implement more prototyping and UX research

  • Improve communication skills

Responsibilities​

  • Built stronger partnerships with product managers by establishing designers as strategic facilitators rather than order-takers

  • Created new team standards requiring interactive prototypes and user research for all major projects

  • Elevated design quality by replacing static wireframe reviews with prototype-based user testing that revealed real user behavior

  • Developed team leadership skills by giving every designer opportunities to run brainstorms, research sessions, and crits

Approach​

Establishing quality through mandatory prototyping​​​

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Problem: Static wireframes were creating costly development surprises. Edge cases, micro-interactions, and state changes weren't discovered until engineering implementation, leading to multiple revision cycles.

Solution: I required interactive prototypes for all designs—XS projects were exempt

 

Implementation:

  • Created a "Prototype First" policy requiring Figma interactive prototypes for every project to understand the user experience and discover edge cases

  • Established version 1 prototypes are low-fidelity to nail down the experience first before moving to high-fidelity

This is a high-fidelity prototype built by one of the team members.

Resistance management: When designers questioned the time investment in prototyping, I addressed concerns by showing them how comprehensive prototypes would reduce the constant back-and-forth with developers asking, "How should this error state work?" The reduced developer interruptions and smoother handoffs proved the business case. Within a few weeks, team members experienced fewer interruptions from developers as they started to capture basic edge cases simply from using their prototypes, capturing dead ends, and defining where links route users.

Shifting designers to strategic facilitation​

Problem: Product managers led all strategic sessions, positioning designers as executors rather than strategic thinkers. This limited our influence on product direction during a critical competitive period.

Solution: I transitioned designers into facilitation roles for the majority of product planning and brainstorming sessions. PMs giving up control wasn't easy, as they were accustomed to running these meetings. Over time, they saw the benefit of having the designers run the meetings as they could spend more time investing in better understanding the problem space.

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Implementation:

  • Had each designer facilitate one brainstorm as a test run during our twice-monthly sessions

  • Selected the most comfortable designer to run our quarterly roadmapping brainstorm as the high-stakes pilot

  • Sent surveys to PMs after sessions to measure quality and effectiveness

  • Used feedback to coach designers on areas needing improvement

 

Results: PMs consistently rated designer-led sessions 8 out of 10, with feedback focusing on time management improvements rather than facilitation quality. The quarterly roadmapping session was so successful that PMs specifically requested designer facilitation for future strategic planning.

Figjam board showing after a Core Tools roadmap discussion, one of the pods at QuillBot.

Building Internal Research Capabilities

Problem: Our team of designers from engineering backgrounds lacked research confidence, creating dependency on limited UX research resources and slowing decision-making.

Solution: I developed a systematic research capability-building program that leveraged our new prototyping standards.

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Implementation:

  • Partnered with UX researchers to create "Research Shadowing" program, where designers observed 1 session before conducting solo research

  • Established prototype-based user testing as standard practice (easier entry point than starting from scratch)

  • Partnered with UX researchers to create moderator templates and scripts that designers used for their specific studies

  • Had designers complete a simple spreadsheet when studies were finished, documenting what they learned

 

Results: Almost every designer was completing a study per month on their own when they needed user input. More importantly, I could see the confidence building—designers started speaking with authority about what users said about their work, citing specific feedback during design reviews and stakeholder meetings.

Product designers were gaining more confidence after their research studies and learning what they're research strengths are, i.e. prototyping, interviewing, and identifiying insights.  

Transforming design crits into strategic sessions

Problem: Design critiques were unfocused feedback sessions that didn't build strategic thinking or team leadership capabilities.

Solution: I restructured critiques as strategic leadership development opportunities with rotating facilitation.

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Implementation:

  • Partnered with UX researchers to create "Research Shadowing" program, where designers observed 1 session before conducting solo research

  • Established prototype-based user testing as standard practice (easier entry point than starting from scratch)

  • Partnered with UX researchers to create moderator templates and scripts that designers used for their specific studies

  • Had designers complete a simple spreadsheet when studies were finished, documenting what they learned

 

Metrics:

  • Participation: 100% of designers completed facilitation requirements vs. previous 20% voluntary participation

  • Quality: Session effectiveness scores increased from 2.9/5 to 4.1/5 based on participant feedback

  • Confidence: Communication confidence self-assessments improved from 2.7/5 to 4.0/5

 

Tracked through: post-session surveys

Crit enhancements.png

Outcomes

The collaboration between design and product management saw significant improvements in coordination and alignment. Workflow enhancements, such as the adoption of mapping and prototyping as standard practices, led to more refined product designs. The quality of design increased notably as research sessions improved with the use of prototypes instead of static frames, fostering a better understanding of product design. Additionally, the confidence in communication among product designers grew as facilitation opportunities expanded, resulting in a more cohesive and effective design team at QuillBot.

Reflection

Looking back, I should have started this transformation earlier once I saw a few designers struggling to articulate their research practices, which was an early signal of deeper capability gaps. After the initial push for prototyping and research, some product designers settled back into their previous behavior of conducting minimal research and using static designs for velocity purposes because I didn't create proper incentives to sustain the new behaviors.

 

I underestimated how much ongoing reinforcement would be needed to embed these practices permanently into team culture—creating the standards was easier than making them stick. Without clear metrics to track adoption, it was harder to identify when designers were reverting to old habits until the regression had already occurred.

 

I also focused heavily on designer skill-building, but could have invested more time upfront in helping PMs understand their evolving role in designer-led sessions, which might have accelerated overall adoption and reduced resistance. 

Strategic design leadership

Design Intrapreneur: Identified crisis as opportunity for design transformation, investing in capabilities while others cut costs, ultimately positioning design as strategic differentiator during market disruption.

 

Design Visionary: Established new organizational model where design drives strategic decisions through systematic capability building, creating sustainable competitive advantage beyond immediate crisis response.

 

Strategic Unifier: Built cross-functional partnerships by proving design value through measurable business impact, transforming stakeholder relationships from vendor-client to strategic collaboration.

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