TRIPLELIFT

Creating and growing a product design team

In almost four years, I’ve built a Product Design team from the ground up

Originally hired to lead the UI team at TripleLift (reporting up to UX Director), a point of chaos during the pandemic led to the entire UX team getting let go due to business needs - the company only retained the UI branch to service the ongoing client needs that drove immediate revenue

Shortly after as the pandemic was under way and the ad tech industry started to boom, Product and Engineering leadership expressed the need for extensive UX across product and tooling

I was promoted to Head of Product Design put in charge of building and growing the UX team while still maintaining high UI output

Building an end-to-end Product Design department

My role in creating a successful new team has included

• Hiring new talent and promoting existing designers

• Leading workshops and training sessions

• Working closely with VP-level Product leadership to coordinate multiple projects on the product roadmap

• Developing new processes

• Creating a design system based on company brand guidelines

• Applying these design standards to component libraries

• Advocating for the importance of design

• Supporting my team

Design process and thinking

• User research
  My team surveys clients and interviews internal users to determine business opportunities, pain points, motivations, and develop personas

• Product differentiation
  We conduct competitive analysis to establish our unique vertical in market

• User flows
  We create experiences that elevate the way users engage our content backed by data

• Rapid prototyping
  My team pitches and designs multiple versions of each product to explore possibilities

• Test audiences
  We test across internal stakeholders and c-level execs to get genuine internal feedback and work out kinks before finalizing designs

Impact

• Product Lines
  My team has developed and launched four new advertising product lines, generating over $80B in new revenue over the past three years

• Tooling
  We’ve built out five internal and client-facing tools, with seven more tools and features slated for this year’s product roadmap, some in various stages of development and testing

• Testing
  We’ve developed a platform for extensive pre-launch alpha testing, internal beta testing, post-launch QAs, and quarterly / yearly reviews ensure our products and tools are performing, all backed by data