Design Manager
Platform - Identity
I was the first design manager in the Identity team in the Platform org. My focus was to build a cross-geo team, introduce design thinking and solid craft to a platform services area. Highlights;
- Built the team from 1 when I joined, to onboard 5 new designers in 18 months.
- Designed and delivered a new branding system for authentication across all Atlassian products.
- Saw through Trello migration to the Identity Platform to migrate 10 million users in 6 months.
- The Identity team lead a fundamental shift in Administration for user management and product access.
- Lead future visioning for a passwordless authentication.
Identity is the gateway to all Atlassian experiences and I evangelized this problem space to help the business understand that having a strong experience design team is critical to take custodianship for these core functions, so I could then attract investment in the area.
The Atlassian end-user auth UI and the Admin Hub. We had two core archetypes. End user - every user needs an Atlassian account and our team owned everything from auth to account management. Admin - all accounts require administration.
The Craft
Being a new and inexperienced team, I introduced foundational UX practices and baked them in to the design process; IA, experience mapping, customer journey flows, design sprints, research and user testing. Focussing on cross cutting user journeys over single screens or features was a strong focus for myself and the team.
I spent a lot of my energy encouraging ICs to push beyond the limited lean MVP experimentation mindset, and to invest in doing great design, to explore and push for the best experience first as a principle.
The Product
End User - Authentication. I designed a new system for contextually branding the auth UI across the suite of Atlassian products undertaking research and design sprints to understand the user's mental model of the parent-child relationship of Atlassian to it's products. I also designed a UI refresh including the first responsive system for Atlassian. Positioning the products within a suite was a fundamental shift in how the founders have been presenting the company to consumers from day 1.
End User - Migration. Identity onboards products acquired by Atlassian to the Platform. The hero case is US based Trello and with our Engineering team also based in Mountain View, I hired a Product Designer in SiliconValley to own that experience having designed the initial flows myself. I then focussed on building and nurturing relationships between Identity delivery teams and the Trello design team which ultimately manifested an experience that will reach tens of millions account migrations.
Admin - User Management. Identity lead a core program of work envisioning and executing a new conceptual model for how Admins manage their user base and grant product access. Deprecating a legacy model inherited from the days before Atlassian grew from the Jira monolith is a fundamental shift for the business.
Future Visioning
A passion of mine was pushing a passwordless vision for the future of authentication. In my last 3 months we went deep in design and research around this problem space, and more broadly to look at the whole auth service including 2FA, account onboarding, management.
Management
This was a really challenging part of the business in which to become the first manager, and a first time manager myself. Even with the growth of the team we still had a Designer to Engineer ratio of 1:40 overall, supporting 11 engineering teams.
At the leadership level;
- Worked strategically with my triad to ensure design was part of the quarterly and annual planning.
- Ensured that experience lead initiatives were scoped and added to the backlog, and prioritsed.
- Presented on a regular cadence at annual, quarterly and more regular all-hands rituals.
Closer to delivery track;- Help designers work in an embedded delivery team model.
- Helping the Tech Leads, Engineeers and PM adopt design practices and process in to the delivery track.
Becoming a manager was a challenging and rewarding experience. Trying to build a high performing team against some adversity, investing heavily in individuals growth, accelerating high performers and uplifting under performers, challenging cultural mindsets, encouraging adoption of better methodologies and practices - this is an important job and one that I'm grateful to have now experienced in an official managerial capacity