Designing for designer experience: Framework for scaling design at slack

The Challenge

When I joined as Slack's first Product DPM, I was tasked with creating operational infrastructure for 22 designers across 6 Foundation sub-teams with zero existing framework. Each sub-team operated like its own product organization with senior design leads, EMs, and PMs - essentially 6 mini-companies under one umbrella requiring systematic coordination.

Research & Strategy

Research

I interviewed all 22 designers plus 18+ cross-functional partners to map workflows and pain points. I observed decision-making processes and analyzed communication patterns to understand where work was duplicating or falling through cracks. Key insight: Each sub-team operated independently, but great work was happening in isolation without cross-team learning.‍

Strategy

I designed systems around four focus areas based on team feedback - Meeting Clarity, Quarterly Planning, Team Health, and Learning & Development.

Implementation

Meeting system overhaul

Problem:

‍"Expensive meetings" - 22 designers spending 2-3 hours/week in unclear meetings with communication gaps between leadership intentions and team understanding.

Solution:

Created meeting principles and restructured each meeting type:

• Weekly Jam → Weekly Studio (structured design exploration)
• Formalized exec review process with clear feedback protocols
• Redesigned leads meetings for cross-team connection

Quarterly planning integration

Problem:

Design operated like small org while Product Management matured to enterprise scale (50→70+ people during pandemic).

Solution:

Integrated design into existing PM planning processes rather than creating parallel systems. Established systematic review of 50-60 quarterly projects with proper resourcing and t-shirt sizing.

Results

40%+ satisfaction increase across all focus areas over two quarters, with particularly strong improvements in Meeting Clarity, Learning & Development, Team Belonging, and Planning effectiveness.

Business impact

• Enabled three new design-led projects due to operational efficiency gains
• Integrated design voice into enterprise quarterly planning (50-60 projects/quarter)
• Created scalable framework supporting continued team growth
• Improved stakeholder relationships across 18+ senior partners

Key learnings

Building quarterly process is an iterative process - organizational design requires continuous iteration based on usage patterns.

‍T-shirt sizing ensures we talk about team capacity when planning projects - created shared language across design, product, and engineering.

‍Resourcing planning opened up L&D conversations - planning became strategic discussions about growth, not just project allocation.

Impact on my product design philosophy

This operational design work was actually user experience design - my users were internal teams instead of external customers. Now I apply this same systems thinking to user experience challenges, bringing operational excellence and strategic perspective to product design problems.