Scope
A vertical with no settled way of working, and the mandate to fix that: own the design operation end to end, make the calls under ambiguity, and align the functions around them. What the role covered:
- The team. Hired two designers, took on the junior already there, and brought three freelancers under management. Up to six, plus a sourcing pool.
- The operating system. A design intake and triage for the ~100 incoming requests, a landing-page testing pipeline, and a review cadence.
- The design system and the relaunch. Both managed and steered through the team, not hand-drawn.
- Cross-functional governance. Priorities agreed with the PMs of other verticals, marketing, engineering and the other Heads.
The problem
A vertical under a year old. One junior designer, no roadmap, and no front door for work. Marketing, PMs and engineering sent requests straight in, close to a hundred, none triaged. A design system and a relaunch waited with no owner.
Coming in
Landing on
Every request straight in, no front door, no triage. A hundred things, all the same priority, which is to say none.
First, a team
Two designers hired, the junior taken on, three freelancers brought under management. Not more hands, a team with a review cadence: core designers for the work, a freelancer pool for the spikes, one standard across both.
Core designers for the work, a managed freelancer pool for the spikes, one review standard across both.
Then, an operating system
One intake for every request, triaged against worth, then sequenced onto a board the team could deliver. The hundred-at-once became a prioritised line, agreed with the other Heads. “Not yet” became a decision, not a fight.
Coming in
Intake
worth it?
Prioritised
Parked
The intake is the product no one sees. It decides whether the visible work is the right work.
Evidence over guessing
Decisions ran on evidence, not taste. Competitor teardowns, user interviews, the current journey and a wall of hypotheses, each resolved into a next step before a pixel moved. The board said it plainly: knowing beats guessing.
Evidence in
Resolved, one by one
Then build
Competitor teardowns, interviews and the current journey feed the hypotheses. Each resolves into a next step before the new layout begins.
A machine for testing landing pages
With the Head of CRO and the data analysts, I set the landing pages up to be tested fast: duplicate, split through Google Optimize, promote the winner. The cost of trying a new idea dropped to near zero, so the team tried far more of them.
Set up once, with CRO and Data
Read the result, then round again
Once it settled, we ran on a two-weekly cadence. Plenty of tests drew, neither variant clearly ahead, and the draws were as useful as the wins: a draw meant the lever we had pulled was not the one that moved people. What did move them was consistent enough to bank as principle, social proof, and clearer language. The basics, proven again rather than assumed.
Managed, not made
The design system and the relaunch were mine to run, not to draw. I steered both through the team, the distinction that separates a Head of from a senior designer, and helped set up a product-designer career track across Scout24.
Leads
Steers through
Delivers
The proudest work left no fingerprints on a single screen. Steered through the team, not drawn.
Impact
The clearest proof of a design lead is what survives them. Here, the operating system did, and the relaunch shipped on top of it.
Owned the outcome
The system outlived me
The intake, the testing pipeline and the review cadence kept running long after the engagement ended.
Shipped
The relaunch landed
It shipped on the design system the team built and I steered, not on one I drew myself.
Beyond the vertical
A career track, Scout24-wide
Co-established a product-designer career track that reached past the vertical into the wider organisation.
“A valuable leader, recognised by leadership, peers and customers alike.” Director of Product, Scout24 Schweiz