Summary
In enterprise organizations, product development work, and therefore, design work, typically happens within a specific business unit or organization. Dedicated and embedded squads means there is a close and tight feedback loop between team members. But what happens when your company kicks off an initiative that spans across business units? How do you resource and run a design project with no dedicated designers? This case study will cover how we set out a vision, structured communications, built up an ad-hoc design team, shipped our first cross-organization product and all the lessons we learned along the way.
Key Insights
-
•
A clear, technology-agnostic experience vision can unify multiple siloed stakeholders around a common goal.
-
•
Forming a small, empowered core team with cross-functional representatives enables rapid iteration and decision-making.
-
•
Leveraging embedded designers from business units as an ad hoc design team allows scaling design resources flexibly.
-
•
Rapid iterative usability testing, including microcopy and terminology testing, helps catch blockers early.
-
•
Trust is critical when collaborating with embedded designers who report to different leadership.
-
•
Relying too heavily on a single content strategist creates a risk of a single point of failure.
-
•
Lack of a formal project kickoff leads to misalignment, confusion over roles, and changing expectations.
-
•
Service blueprints can effectively reveal backend complexities and clarify responsibilities across units.
-
•
Investing time in relationships and collaboration pays off more than cutting those efforts for short-term speed.
-
•
The hardest challenges often lie in cultural team alignment rather than purely technical or design problems.
Notable Quotes
"What’s so difficult about designing a login? On the surface, it’s simple, but the real challenge was cultural alignment across business units."
"There is no design team responsible for the overarching experience across the entire company."
"Experience vision is a powerful tool because it gives everyone a tangible goal to work towards."
"Consistency over business unit efficiency was a design principle to ensure unified interface and language."
"We formed a small core task force empowered to make decisions to avoid delays from formal reviews."
"Trust is often underestimated but is critical when designers face public critique and feedback."
"Relying on a single content strategist was a strategic mistake that created a single point of failure."
"No official kickoff was held, which meant shifting expectations and lack of alignment."
"Service blueprints would have helped business units understand backend impacts and responsibilities."
"Investing in people and fostering collaboration always pays off in stronger teams and better user experiences."
Dig deeper—ask the Rosenbot:
















More Videos

"UX research needed to be a team sport involving all disciplines rather than the few learning on behalf of the many."
Monty HammontreeThe Future of UX Research (Videoconference)
December 3, 2020

"Uganda is Africa’s largest refugee host nation with over 1.5 million refugees, mostly children, yet this crisis remains underreported."
Liz EbengoThe Burden on Children: The Cost of Insufficient Post-Conflict Services and Pathways Forward
December 4, 2024

"Content first design should happen after sketching but pretty early to help shape the wireframes and concepts."
Billy CarlsonTips to Utilize Wireframes to Tell an Effective Product Story
June 6, 2023

"The better question is who are we excluding when we talk about inclusive design."
Saara Kamppari-MillerInclusive Design is DesignOps
September 29, 2021

"Why don’t we do what we do for our careers? Designers should design their own career as a project."
Ian SwinsonDesigning and Driving UX Careers
June 8, 2016

"If content designers have deep focus, context, and trust, they can work on problems deeply from the beginning, having far more impact."
Jonathon ColmanHow to Maximize the Impact of Content Design
January 8, 2024

"A wave is really just a sprint but defined by the outcome we want to achieve, not just a time frame."
Maria SkaadenContinuous Design: One eye on the horizon and the other on the next wave
November 8, 2018

"We wanna make sure that we don't just hand it over as a black box, but also provide contextual information."
Bryce Benton[Demo] AI-powered UX enhancement: Aligning GitHub documentation with USWDS at Austin Public Library
June 4, 2024

"The satisfaction score is going down even though average salary is going up — that’s something interesting we should dig into."
Marc FonteijnFirst Insights from the 2025 Service Design Salary(+) Report
December 4, 2024