Leading a Product Vision for the Managers
Achievers had been losing deals because our product lacked compelling tools designed specifically for people managers. This group was becoming increasingly influential in purchase decisions and played a key role in driving product engagement across organizations. To address this gap, I led a designer who defined a long-term product vision that would elevate the manager experience, boost user engagement, and improve our position in the market.
Year
October 2023 - June 2025
Topics
Leadership, Growth, Vision, Research, UX Design
Company
Achievers
/ Team Portfolio
I led a team of six product designers across multiple domains including:
Manager Experience: Tools to help managers recognize, engage, and support their teams
Marketplace: Our internal store where employees redeem rewards
Integrations: Extending our experience across platforms like Slack, Workday, and Microsoft Teams
Mobile: Reaching non-desk workers with core functionality
Emerging Products: Exploring new opportunities in surveys and broader HR tools
I assigned one intermediate level designer, who was later promoted, to lead the Manager Experience initiative.
/ Design Challenge 1: Building for Leadership Maturity
Our generative user research uncovered that a manager's leadership maturity significantly influenced how they managed their teams.
We redefined our personas around maturity levels. This insight drove the experience areas, feature groupings and how we rolled out our vision over time.
/ Design Challenge 2: Encouraging Recognition Through Positive Reinforcement
Manager engagement with recognition activities was inconsistent. Some didn’t yet see it as part of their daily habit. We tested several messaging approaches and found that positive reinforcement was significantly more effective than punitive nudges.
By framing prompts as encouragement rather than correction, we increased participation and laid the groundwork for a more habit-forming experience. This principle was embedded in our UX copy and visual strategy.
/ Design Challenge 3: Designing Within Technical Constraints
We initially envisioned a fully integrated, role-based manager interface. However, platform architecture limitations required us to scale back to a single-page solution in the short term.
/ Leadership Focus 1: Operating Without a Product Manager
For the first three months, there was no dedicated product manager or engineering team. Rather than pause, I coached the designer to move forward with confidence as a design-led initiative. Together, we framed the problem space, conducted user research, and built a compelling narrative.
My focus was to ensure design momentum didn’t stall—and that by the time product and engineering re-engaged, we had a thoughtful, validated direction ready to build from.
/ Leadership Focus 2: Creating a Vision
I pushed the designer to define a vision which ended up having three parts:
Problem Framing: Clearly articulated user pain points and business needs—grounded in interviews, sales data, and customer success feedback. We created scenario-based personas tied to the maturity model.
Experience Areas: Rather than showcasing polished screens, we focused on the approaches and workflows that would address each problem area. This gave product and engineering room to collaborate on execution without losing strategic direction.
Rollout Plan: We mapped the experience areas into a phased rollout, using the manager maturity model as a natural progression path. This helped internal teams visualize incremental value and prioritize accordingly.
/ Leadership Focus 3: Individual Growth
Through regular 1:1s, we identified growth areas for the designer: visual design, presentation confidence, and development collaboration. To support this, we:
Enrolled her in a visual design course
Reviewed presentation narratives and ran dry-runs before stakeholder meetings
Debriefed after engineering handoffs to identify improvement opportunities
She led retrospectives to foster stronger designer–developer alignment
As a result, she not only refined her design execution but became a trusted voice across product and engineering. Her growth culminated in a well-deserved promotion.
/ Impact
Delivered a long-term design vision that influenced product strategy and roadmap
Created an MVP that shipped within architectural constraints and validated core assumptions
Established a reusable framework for vision-setting adopted by other design teams
Fostered the professional growth of a designer into a promotion
Leading a Product Vision for the Managers
Achievers had been losing deals because our product lacked compelling tools designed specifically for people managers. This group was becoming increasingly influential in purchase decisions and played a key role in driving product engagement across organizations. To address this gap, I led a designer who defined a long-term product vision that would elevate the manager experience, boost user engagement, and improve our position in the market.
Year
October 2023 - June 2025
Topics
Leadership, Growth, Vision, Research, UX Design
Company
Achievers
/ Team Portfolio
I led a team of six product designers across multiple domains including:
Manager Experience: Tools to help managers recognize, engage, and support their teams
Marketplace: Our internal store where employees redeem rewards
Integrations: Extending our experience across platforms like Slack, Workday, and Microsoft Teams
Mobile: Reaching non-desk workers with core functionality
Emerging Products: Exploring new opportunities in surveys and broader HR tools
I assigned one intermediate level designer, who was later promoted, to lead the Manager Experience initiative.
/ Design Challenge 1: Building for Leadership Maturity
Our generative user research uncovered that a manager's leadership maturity significantly influenced how they managed their teams.
We redefined our personas around maturity levels. This insight drove the experience areas, feature groupings and how we rolled out our vision over time.
/ Design Challenge 2: Encouraging Recognition Through Positive Reinforcement
Manager engagement with recognition activities was inconsistent. Some didn’t yet see it as part of their daily habit. We tested several messaging approaches and found that positive reinforcement was significantly more effective than punitive nudges.
By framing prompts as encouragement rather than correction, we increased participation and laid the groundwork for a more habit-forming experience. This principle was embedded in our UX copy and visual strategy.
/ Design Challenge 3: Designing Within Technical Constraints
We initially envisioned a fully integrated, role-based manager interface. However, platform architecture limitations required us to scale back to a single-page solution in the short term.
/ Leadership Focus 1: Operating Without a Product Manager
For the first three months, there was no dedicated product manager or engineering team. Rather than pause, I coached the designer to move forward with confidence as a design-led initiative. Together, we framed the problem space, conducted user research, and built a compelling narrative.
My focus was to ensure design momentum didn’t stall—and that by the time product and engineering re-engaged, we had a thoughtful, validated direction ready to build from.
/ Leadership Focus 2: Creating a Vision
I pushed the designer to define a vision which ended up having three parts:
Problem Framing: Clearly articulated user pain points and business needs—grounded in interviews, sales data, and customer success feedback. We created scenario-based personas tied to the maturity model.
Experience Areas: Rather than showcasing polished screens, we focused on the approaches and workflows that would address each problem area. This gave product and engineering room to collaborate on execution without losing strategic direction.
Rollout Plan: We mapped the experience areas into a phased rollout, using the manager maturity model as a natural progression path. This helped internal teams visualize incremental value and prioritize accordingly.
/ Leadership Focus 3: Individual Growth
Through regular 1:1s, we identified growth areas for the designer: visual design, presentation confidence, and development collaboration. To support this, we:
Enrolled her in a visual design course
Reviewed presentation narratives and ran dry-runs before stakeholder meetings
Debriefed after engineering handoffs to identify improvement opportunities
She led retrospectives to foster stronger designer–developer alignment
As a result, she not only refined her design execution but became a trusted voice across product and engineering. Her growth culminated in a well-deserved promotion.
/ Impact
Delivered a long-term design vision that influenced product strategy and roadmap
Created an MVP that shipped within architectural constraints and validated core assumptions
Established a reusable framework for vision-setting adopted by other design teams
Fostered the professional growth of a designer into a promotion
Leading a Product Vision for the Managers
Achievers had been losing deals because our product lacked compelling tools designed specifically for people managers. This group was becoming increasingly influential in purchase decisions and played a key role in driving product engagement across organizations. To address this gap, I led a designer who defined a long-term product vision that would elevate the manager experience, boost user engagement, and improve our position in the market.
Year
October 2023 - June 2025
Topics
Leadership, Growth, Vision, Research, UX Design
Company
Achievers
/ Team Portfolio
I led a team of six product designers across multiple domains including:
Manager Experience: Tools to help managers recognize, engage, and support their teams
Marketplace: Our internal store where employees redeem rewards
Integrations: Extending our experience across platforms like Slack, Workday, and Microsoft Teams
Mobile: Reaching non-desk workers with core functionality
Emerging Products: Exploring new opportunities in surveys and broader HR tools
I assigned one intermediate level designer, who was later promoted, to lead the Manager Experience initiative.
/ Design Challenge 1: Building for Leadership Maturity
Our generative user research uncovered that a manager's leadership maturity significantly influenced how they managed their teams.
We redefined our personas around maturity levels. This insight drove the experience areas, feature groupings and how we rolled out our vision over time.
/ Design Challenge 2: Encouraging Recognition Through Positive Reinforcement
Manager engagement with recognition activities was inconsistent. Some didn’t yet see it as part of their daily habit. We tested several messaging approaches and found that positive reinforcement was significantly more effective than punitive nudges.
By framing prompts as encouragement rather than correction, we increased participation and laid the groundwork for a more habit-forming experience. This principle was embedded in our UX copy and visual strategy.
/ Design Challenge 3: Designing Within Technical Constraints
We initially envisioned a fully integrated, role-based manager interface. However, platform architecture limitations required us to scale back to a single-page solution in the short term.
/ Leadership Focus 1: Operating Without a Product Manager
For the first three months, there was no dedicated product manager or engineering team. Rather than pause, I coached the designer to move forward with confidence as a design-led initiative. Together, we framed the problem space, conducted user research, and built a compelling narrative.
My focus was to ensure design momentum didn’t stall—and that by the time product and engineering re-engaged, we had a thoughtful, validated direction ready to build from.
/ Leadership Focus 2: Creating a Vision
I pushed the designer to define a vision which ended up having three parts:
Problem Framing: Clearly articulated user pain points and business needs—grounded in interviews, sales data, and customer success feedback. We created scenario-based personas tied to the maturity model.
Experience Areas: Rather than showcasing polished screens, we focused on the approaches and workflows that would address each problem area. This gave product and engineering room to collaborate on execution without losing strategic direction.
Rollout Plan: We mapped the experience areas into a phased rollout, using the manager maturity model as a natural progression path. This helped internal teams visualize incremental value and prioritize accordingly.
/ Leadership Focus 3: Individual Growth
Through regular 1:1s, we identified growth areas for the designer: visual design, presentation confidence, and development collaboration. To support this, we:
Enrolled her in a visual design course
Reviewed presentation narratives and ran dry-runs before stakeholder meetings
Debriefed after engineering handoffs to identify improvement opportunities
She led retrospectives to foster stronger designer–developer alignment
As a result, she not only refined her design execution but became a trusted voice across product and engineering. Her growth culminated in a well-deserved promotion.
/ Impact
Delivered a long-term design vision that influenced product strategy and roadmap
Created an MVP that shipped within architectural constraints and validated core assumptions
Established a reusable framework for vision-setting adopted by other design teams
Fostered the professional growth of a designer into a promotion