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Case study · hero · 2021-06 to 2023-03

Sitetracker

Built the design function from scratch, then made Jobs to Be Done the shared decision language across design, product, engineering, and QA.

Role
Director of Product Design, Head of Design
Company
Sitetracker
Dates
2021-06 to 2023-03
Bucket
build the discipline
Open black ink sketchbook spread densely packed with hundreds of small logo-mark and wordmark explorations for Sitetracker
Sitetracker · Design from the handOne sketchbook spread from the discipline-build. The function I installed at Sitetracker started in pencil before it became a process.

TL;DR

  • Role: Director of Product Design, Head of Design
  • Timeframe: Jun 2021 to Mar 2023
  • Business problem: Sitetracker had a strong business and product org, but design was not yet a durable discipline. Product development sat closer to waterfall than to anything that put customer value at the center.
  • What I changed: Built the design function from scratch, established hiring and growth systems, introduced JTBD across product development, and scaled design and product capability internationally.
  • Proof: Built design from zero, made JTBD the shared decision language across design, product, engineering, and QA, and stood up parallel US and international capability on shared standards and culture.

The problem was not headcount

Hiring designers into a broken system creates frustrated designers, not a design function. Sitetracker needed the conditions for design to matter first: a hiring bar, a career ladder, critique, mentorship, research language, and a product process that made customer value visible before work was committed.

The company had built a real business without a real design function. Design sat downstream. Reviews happened late. Product, engineering, and QA had no shared language for the decisions they were making together. The real constraint was operating system, not org chart size.

Design moved upstream

Design at the end

Product decides
Engineering builds
Design reviews late

Design upstream, shared language

JTBD framing
Design + Product + Engineering align
Critique
Review
Ship
Design moved from a late-stage review gate to a co-decision partner at the start of every initiative.
Fig. Skill matrix authored before any job description
Mid
Senior
Staff
Principal
Visual craft
Interaction design
Systems thinking
Research literacy
Cross-functional partnership
Critique and coaching
Influence without authority
Expected at barOne sample candidate plotted

Authored before a single job description. The grid defined the gap. Hiring filled it.

What I did

  • Assessed product maturity before defining the org shape. The skill matrix mapped the capabilities the business actually needed rather than a generic design org chart borrowed from somewhere else.
  • Built a transparent hiring process scored on demonstrated capability, not credentials. That cut gut-call bias and made hiring decisions legible to product and engineering leadership so they could co-validate.
  • Wrote the design career ladder and mentorship framework before scaling headcount. New designers walked into a system that already told them what growth looked like.
  • Introduced JTBD across design, product, engineering, and QA through workshops and coaching. The framework stuck because it lived in how people argued about product decisions, not in a document that gathered dust.
  • Held a peer seat in weekly leadership reviews of features and projects. Authority was earned, not inherited.
  • Built and trained a product and design team internationally for global expansion. That team operated as a peer node from the start, not a delivery arm. <!-- TODO(consent): named peer pending consent -->

One bar, two locations

01

US team

peer node
02

International team

peer node

Shared operating standard

Hiring bar
Career ladder
Critique culture
JTBD language
US and international teams ran as peers on one operating standard: same hiring bar, same career ladder, same critique culture, same JTBD language.
Fig. The design discipline as an operating cycle
Sitetracker design discipline operating cycleSix stages arranged in a clockwise ring around a center caption. The stages, in order from twelve o'clock, are: Skill Matrix, Hiring Loop, Onboard With Crit, Weekly Crit, Career Ladder, and Mentorship Pairs. The center reads: discipline, four-person international team, built from zero.Discipline4-person international teambuilt from zero01SkillMatrixwhere the gaps are visible02HiringLoopscored capability, not credentials03Onboard WithCritthe bar is taught early04WeeklyCritthe bar is held in public05CareerLaddergrowth as a conversation06MentorshipPairscoaching that compounds

Output is reversible. Operating systems compound.

Fig. Six artifacts. One operating system.

Skill matrix

Capability-by-seniority grid that defined the gap before any hire.

Spec-free hiring loop

Scored demonstrated capability instead of filtering on credentials.

Career ladder

Written level definitions and the coaching language for growth.

Critique culture

Weekly crit that taught the readiness bar in public.

JTBD framework

Shared decision language across design, product, engineering, QA.

Mentorship framework

Pair structure that compounded coaching across the team.

Not six documents. One operating system. Each artifact feeds the next, which is why the whole thing held after I left.

What changed

  • Design moved from absent to operating: career ladder, mentorship framework, and skill-matrix hiring loop all in place before the team grew past the first few hires.
  • JTBD shifted from a design research method to the shared decision language across design, product, engineering, and QA. Decisions got made against customer value, not opinion.
  • Design moved earlier in the product cycle. Late-stage rework dropped because decisions were made together upfront.
  • International capability stood up on the same standards, training, and culture as the US team. Global expansion no longer carried a quality cliff at the boundary.
  • Design held a peer leadership seat in product reviews. The operating system kept working after my tenure. That is the artifact that mattered: not better screens, but the machinery that made better screens possible.

Reflection

I would push JTBD outward earlier. I ran the workshops and coaching, but let the design function consolidate for a stretch before extending the methodology to product and engineering. Starting both threads at once would have compressed the culture-change curve and given the rest of the org more reps with the framework before it had to carry real product decisions.