Limor Zisbrod, Product Design Leader

Background

We were calling Pave an agentic platform to power all your compensation workflows. In reality we were four separate products stacked into a left nav, each built by its own team, solving its own workflow, reading from its own data. We preached about becoming a unified platform, but for every new feature, the fastest approach was to find a spot in the app to add a page or a tab. Teams were building duplicative experiences because coordination would take too long. Meanwhile, leadership wanted an agent button on every page, not a rethink of the foundation those agents would need to work well.

My approach

I wanted to set a new course before teams added more debt to the product, but trying to pause the roadmap in favor of a full redesign was not realistic. No on asked me to fix this, there was no budget or team set aside for it. Instead of trying to get approval for a project plan, I decided to focus on three things:

Change the conversation from feature requirements to cross-platform principles
Give teams tools to build toward a shared product
Create momentum through tactical work

Changing the conversation

I ran a workshop with product and design to brainstorm a shared set of principles that apply to our entire platform. The conversation forced us to be more specific. We know we describe our platform as intelligent, but in what ways? We know we want to build simple, easy-to-use workflows, but what's the trade off for companies that require more complex features? The workshop was the first time we had a forum to discuss openly.

I captured and drafted a set of five principles and ran a second workshop for a dress-rehearsal. As a team, we brainstormed what it would look like to apply these principles to our product decisions. The brainstorm sparked new thinking and teams started proposing solutions that weren't tied to their own product area. We built the principles into our PRD template, so they're present in day-to-day work.

Creating the tools

I organized a design week, bringing our distributed team from SF and Japan into one room in New York. I split the work into three streams and staffed designers based on their interests and strengths: a user journey and vision artifact, an IA proposal to support that vision long term, and revamped team rituals to keep product and design working this way going forward.

The most rewarding part of the week was watching designers take advantage of their time together, and shift from identifying problems to driving solutions. My goal was to empower them to lean on each other for support and be strong advocates for design on their respective teams.

Coming out of design week, the team had a proposal for a new information architecture that could support our vision. We brought it back to the product team and presented.

Building momentum

We identified the one piece of the IA that would do the most to unify the product, and it depended on data we didn't have yet. Rather than wait, I partnered with an engineer to ship a first version of it in the nav using what we already had, enough to set the foundation and prove the direction. In parallel, we're running a research prototype to validate the bigger vision, with a presentation to R&D on the calendar next.

Impact

Design week surfaced compensation philosophy, a critical concept the company had deprioritized for years despite its importance. I used the vision work as something tangible to rally the team around. I now own a cross-pod work stream driving it, rather than leaving it to get built piecemeal by whichever team gets there first.