Creating a Positive and Collaborative Design Culture
At Questrade, I led a team of six UX designers during a period of disconnection, low morale, and stakeholder frustration. Designers were siloed, lacked ownership, and were receiving poor performance reviews. Stakeholders felt excluded from the process, and executive design reviews were unproductive and demoralizing. This case study outlines how I created a more collaborative, structured, and empowering design environment—one that delivered better outcomes for the business and helped each designer grow in their craft and confidence.
Year
October 2022 - October 2023
Topics
Leadership, Empowerment, Process
Company
Questrade
/ Team Portfolio
New Customer Portal: Led the design of a new unified customer portal that integrates all business lines including investing, trading, mortgages, and future business lines.
Signup & Onboarding Strategy: Developed a platform-wide onboarding approach with shared standards for content strategy and interaction design across all business lines.
Core Platform Foundations: Defined key cross-platform experiences including navigation, inbox/messages, help, chat, statements, and reports.
Design Patterns: Created higher-level design patterns and informed the design system to ensure consistency across product lines.
Investing Product Features: Delivered key workflows such as account creation, move money, and other investing-related features.
/ The Challenge: A Team Without Alignment or Support
Before I joined, the design team struggled with a lack of visibility into design progress from stakeholders. Designers worked apart from product and engineering, resulting in late design reveals that frustrated everyone involved. Projects were often delayed, junior designers had little ownership, and the overall environment felt disjointed and negative. Team ceremonies were either missing or ineffective, performance reviews lacked context, and executives were giving tactical feedback on pixel-level design decisions. Designers also lacked domain knowledge, which further hindered their impact.
/ What I Did
Restructured Team Ceremonies: I introduced clear and intentional ceremonies to improve collaboration and focus. Daily standups became a space for project coordination. Weekly team meetings allowed us to share business context and build culture. Smaller critique groups enabled deeper design feedback, and regular stakeholder show & tells helped build alignment and transparency. 1:1’s focused goal tracking, providing and receiving feedback, and doing a pulse check on how they were feeling.
Established a Triad Model: I championed a triad model across projects, pairing each designer with a dedicated product manager and developer. This encouraged shared ownership, real-time decision-making, and eliminated the outdated “big design reveal” approach.
This was new for Questrade, and has been adopted due to the success of this team.
Introduced Project Planning and Cadence: Each designer created a quarterly project plan that outlined what they would deliver and how they would show progress on a bi-weekly cadence. This gave structure to the work, improved accountability, and helped stakeholders stay aligned.
Reframed Mentorship and Ownership: Junior designers were given end-to-end ownership of projects and the relationships that supported them. Instead of shadowing senior designers, they were empowered to lead within a focused domain area. This built their confidence, helped them deepen expertise, and created a pathway to take on progressively more complex projects.
Created a Weekly Leadership Review: To reduce stress and last-minute feedback, I implemented a weekly design review cadence with senior leadership. Designers presented work in progress in a structured setting with clear goals and context. This made feedback more thoughtful, timely, and constructive.
Defined Clear Roles and Goals: Each designer had individual goals tied to product impact, team contributions, and personal growth. These expectations gave everyone a clearer sense of their role, how they were progressing, and what success looked like.
/ Impact
We delivered more projects on time and with higher quality, across both web and mobile platforms. Design work was consistently backed by user research and aligned with business needs.
Stakeholders felt included in the design process and provided better input earlier in the cycle. Requirements improved, timelines were met, and feedback loops shortened.
Performance reviews were grounded in real achievements, and team members had tangible product, team, and growth stories to point to. One junior designer was promoted to an intermediate role during this time.
Design reviews with senior leadership shifted from stressful and reactive to constructive and high trust. Designers felt supported, and leadership was engaged at the right level of fidelity.
Most importantly, the team culture became one of ownership, collaboration, and pride. Designers developed domain expertise, supported each other, and contributed to broader team success through accessibility efforts, prototyping initiatives, and internal process improvements.
Creating a Positive and Collaborative Design Culture
At Questrade, I led a team of six UX designers during a period of disconnection, low morale, and stakeholder frustration. Designers were siloed, lacked ownership, and were receiving poor performance reviews. Stakeholders felt excluded from the process, and executive design reviews were unproductive and demoralizing. This case study outlines how I created a more collaborative, structured, and empowering design environment—one that delivered better outcomes for the business and helped each designer grow in their craft and confidence.
Year
October 2022 - October 2023
Topics
Leadership, Empowerment, Process
Company
Questrade
/ Team Portfolio
New Customer Portal: Led the design of a new unified customer portal that integrates all business lines including investing, trading, mortgages, and future business lines.
Signup & Onboarding Strategy: Developed a platform-wide onboarding approach with shared standards for content strategy and interaction design across all business lines.
Core Platform Foundations: Defined key cross-platform experiences including navigation, inbox/messages, help, chat, statements, and reports.
Design Patterns: Created higher-level design patterns and informed the design system to ensure consistency across product lines.
Investing Product Features: Delivered key workflows such as account creation, move money, and other investing-related features.
/ The Challenge: A Team Without Alignment or Support
Before I joined, the design team struggled with a lack of visibility into design progress from stakeholders. Designers worked apart from product and engineering, resulting in late design reveals that frustrated everyone involved. Projects were often delayed, junior designers had little ownership, and the overall environment felt disjointed and negative. Team ceremonies were either missing or ineffective, performance reviews lacked context, and executives were giving tactical feedback on pixel-level design decisions. Designers also lacked domain knowledge, which further hindered their impact.
/ What I Did
Restructured Team Ceremonies: I introduced clear and intentional ceremonies to improve collaboration and focus. Daily standups became a space for project coordination. Weekly team meetings allowed us to share business context and build culture. Smaller critique groups enabled deeper design feedback, and regular stakeholder show & tells helped build alignment and transparency. 1:1’s focused goal tracking, providing and receiving feedback, and doing a pulse check on how they were feeling.
Established a Triad Model: I championed a triad model across projects, pairing each designer with a dedicated product manager and developer. This encouraged shared ownership, real-time decision-making, and eliminated the outdated “big design reveal” approach.
This was new for Questrade, and has been adopted due to the success of this team.
Introduced Project Planning and Cadence: Each designer created a quarterly project plan that outlined what they would deliver and how they would show progress on a bi-weekly cadence. This gave structure to the work, improved accountability, and helped stakeholders stay aligned.
Reframed Mentorship and Ownership: Junior designers were given end-to-end ownership of projects and the relationships that supported them. Instead of shadowing senior designers, they were empowered to lead within a focused domain area. This built their confidence, helped them deepen expertise, and created a pathway to take on progressively more complex projects.
Created a Weekly Leadership Review: To reduce stress and last-minute feedback, I implemented a weekly design review cadence with senior leadership. Designers presented work in progress in a structured setting with clear goals and context. This made feedback more thoughtful, timely, and constructive.
Defined Clear Roles and Goals: Each designer had individual goals tied to product impact, team contributions, and personal growth. These expectations gave everyone a clearer sense of their role, how they were progressing, and what success looked like.
/ Impact
We delivered more projects on time and with higher quality, across both web and mobile platforms. Design work was consistently backed by user research and aligned with business needs.
Stakeholders felt included in the design process and provided better input earlier in the cycle. Requirements improved, timelines were met, and feedback loops shortened.
Performance reviews were grounded in real achievements, and team members had tangible product, team, and growth stories to point to. One junior designer was promoted to an intermediate role during this time.
Design reviews with senior leadership shifted from stressful and reactive to constructive and high trust. Designers felt supported, and leadership was engaged at the right level of fidelity.
Most importantly, the team culture became one of ownership, collaboration, and pride. Designers developed domain expertise, supported each other, and contributed to broader team success through accessibility efforts, prototyping initiatives, and internal process improvements.
Creating a Positive and Collaborative Design Culture
At Questrade, I led a team of six UX designers during a period of disconnection, low morale, and stakeholder frustration. Designers were siloed, lacked ownership, and were receiving poor performance reviews. Stakeholders felt excluded from the process, and executive design reviews were unproductive and demoralizing. This case study outlines how I created a more collaborative, structured, and empowering design environment—one that delivered better outcomes for the business and helped each designer grow in their craft and confidence.
Year
October 2022 - October 2023
Topics
Leadership, Empowerment, Process
Company
Questrade
/ Team Portfolio
New Customer Portal: Led the design of a new unified customer portal that integrates all business lines including investing, trading, mortgages, and future business lines.
Signup & Onboarding Strategy: Developed a platform-wide onboarding approach with shared standards for content strategy and interaction design across all business lines.
Core Platform Foundations: Defined key cross-platform experiences including navigation, inbox/messages, help, chat, statements, and reports.
Design Patterns: Created higher-level design patterns and informed the design system to ensure consistency across product lines.
Investing Product Features: Delivered key workflows such as account creation, move money, and other investing-related features.
/ The Challenge: A Team Without Alignment or Support
Before I joined, the design team struggled with a lack of visibility into design progress from stakeholders. Designers worked apart from product and engineering, resulting in late design reveals that frustrated everyone involved. Projects were often delayed, junior designers had little ownership, and the overall environment felt disjointed and negative. Team ceremonies were either missing or ineffective, performance reviews lacked context, and executives were giving tactical feedback on pixel-level design decisions. Designers also lacked domain knowledge, which further hindered their impact.