I’ve managed product designers across a range of backgrounds and skill levels, from interns through to IC veterans. In addition to the 13 folks I managed directly throughout my time at BuzzFeed (plus 3 in a previous role) I’ve been actively involved in top product design mentorship programs in NYC, created and led workshops for SVA MFA design students, run open office hours and led manager dens at BuzzFeed.
There were 20 people in the product design team at BuzzFeed. The four design managers shared responsibility for running and scaling the team, and collaborated on operational processes to help with that. Projects included: designing how we hire and onboard new designers, evolving our career ladder , facilitating the creation of design principles , establishing our design process (and giving talks about it); and evolving our critique format and communication tools to best support and empower the team.
Whether starting from business needs, audience data or qualitative research, my focus is on identifying human problems, helping teams explore potential solutions and shipping beautifully crafted products. As part of BuzzFeed's consumer facing leadership team—alongside peers in directors of engineering, product and data—I oversaw product design for BuzzFeed.com, iOS and Android, Tasty and our CMS. Projects I helped launch include the Tasty iOS app , BuzzFeed Shopping and the 2016 election homepage in additio