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Defining a UX team strategy in uneasy times
Project
Company
Freenow
Year
2024
Role
Director, User Experience
Team
Marian Wagner — Design Lead
Fernanda Marques — Design Lead
Nadine Piecha — Head, UX Research
The challenge
I joined Freenow as UX Director with the goal of growing and scaling the team and set the foundations to improve the craft and operations. I found a really knowledgeable and capable team but they went through two rounds of layoffs so the situation at the moment was difficult, but proved to be a beautiful challenge to make an impact and turn the situation around. For that I started a UX team strategy, to
01
Uncertainty
02
Unclear career growth
03
High pressure to stay profitable
04
Reduced team capacity
05
Small team budget
These were some of the reasons that drove me to engage with the team into a vision setting exercise that would also set the foundations for a multi-year strategy, created and driven by the entire team.
We followed the First follower leadership lesson taught by the Dancing guy, that I discovered thanks to Angela Pesta, one of my previoius managers earlier in my career. This helped me set an expectation and some momentum in the UX Annual gathering. In case you’re curious, here’s the video!
Building a foundation
After meeting my team and running a full team retrospective to talk about all what mattered to them and the issues they perceived needed most attention, and after meeting all senior stakeholders and people I would have to work with I digested all what I learnt the very first days so that I could start building what it was meant to be the foundation of the UX team strategy for the following months.
From a new team vision to a 3-year team strategy structured into 4 building blocks.
We defined our vision
“To act as thought partners across the product and keep users at the forefront of our decisions to craft solutions that drive a positive impact on their journeys.”
For that to become a reality, we focused on 4 pillars in 2025.
01
Becoming influential
02
Leveling-up our craft
03
Improving our operations
04
High performing team
Bottom-up team strategy work
As a leader I believe in servant leadership and in building high agency and solid teams that can contribute to the strategy for the team beyond their day-to-day responsibilities.
Therefore, not only the strategic initiatives were informed by their feedback, but also we build groups where they could start leading the work themselves. That work started in our Annual UX gathering, where they teamed up and worked on the one-pagers that later on would be the baseline for the work to follow.
Keeping momentum and execution
We started defining groups of people to lead initiatives based on growth interests and skills. Those teams were leading the thinking and execution of the different initiatives together with the UX leadership team. That made our team feel more committed to the strategy and outcomes of it.
Our monthly UX All Hands meetings, our Weekly UX syncs, have a dedicated section to talk about the UX strategic initiatives to ensure communication flows and also we progress and unblock any issues we come across.
We have a dedicated JIRA board for us to track progress on all our UX Strategic initiatives.
Impact
Just in 2025, by prioritising UX Strategy initiatives we managed to have great impact in several key business areas and also recovered positive momentum and engagement in our team
01
Starting a DS guild and improving our DS coverage
02
Shaping Product Strategy in 0 to 1 products
03
Adapting our design, writing and research rituals, process and tools to AI
04
Reducing UX Debt by starting a definition and process for it
05
Defining clear career paths and competence matrix for all roles
Back
Defining a UX team strategy in uneasy times
Project
Company
Freenow
Year
2024
Role
Director, User Experience
Team
Marian Wagner — Design Lead
Fernanda Marques — Design Lead
Nadine Piecha — Head, UX Research
The challenge
I joined Freenow as UX Director with the goal of growing and scaling the team and set the foundations to improve the craft and operations. I found a really knowledgeable and capable team but they went through two rounds of layoffs so the situation at the moment was difficult, but proved to be a beautiful challenge to make an impact and turn the situation around. For that I started a UX team strategy, to
01
Uncertainty
02
Unclear career growth
03
High pressure to stay profitable
04
Reduced team capacity
05
Small team budget
These were some of the reasons that drove me to engage with the team into a vision setting exercise that would also set the foundations for a multi-year strategy, created and driven by the entire team.
We followed the First follower leadership lesson taught by the Dancing guy, that I discovered thanks to Angela Pesta, one of my previoius managers earlier in my career. This helped me set an expectation and some momentum in the UX Annual gathering. In case you’re curious, here’s the video!
Building a foundation
After meeting my team and running a full team retrospective to talk about all what mattered to them and the issues they perceived needed most attention, and after meeting all senior stakeholders and people I would have to work with I digested all what I learnt the very first days so that I could start building what it was meant to be the foundation of the UX team strategy for the following months.
From a new team vision to a 3-year team strategy structured into 4 building blocks.
We defined our vision
“To act as thought partners across the product and keep users at the forefront of our decisions to craft solutions that drive a positive impact on their journeys.”
For that to become a reality, we focused on 4 pillars in 2025.
01
Becoming influential
02
Leveling-up our craft
03
Improving our operations
04
High performing team
Bottom-up team strategy work
As a leader I believe in servant leadership and in building high agency and solid teams that can contribute to the strategy for the team beyond their day-to-day responsibilities.
Therefore, not only the strategic initiatives were informed by their feedback, but also we build groups where they could start leading the work themselves. That work started in our Annual UX gathering, where they teamed up and worked on the one-pagers that later on would be the baseline for the work to follow.
Keeping momentum and execution
We started defining groups of people to lead initiatives based on growth interests and skills. Those teams were leading the thinking and execution of the different initiatives together with the UX leadership team. That made our team feel more committed to the strategy and outcomes of it.
Our monthly UX All Hands meetings, our Weekly UX syncs, have a dedicated section to talk about the UX strategic initiatives to ensure communication flows and also we progress and unblock any issues we come across.
We have a dedicated JIRA board for us to track progress on all our UX Strategic initiatives.
Impact
Just in 2025, by prioritising UX Strategy initiatives we managed to have great impact in several key business areas and also recovered positive momentum and engagement in our team
01
Starting a DS guild and improving our DS coverage
02
Shaping Product Strategy in 0 to 1 products
03
Adapting our design, writing and research rituals, process and tools to AI
04
Reducing UX Debt by starting a definition and process for it
05
Defining clear career paths and competence matrix for all roles
Back
Defining a UX team strategy in uneasy times
Project
Company
Freenow
Year
2024
Role
Director, User Experience
Team
Marian Wagner — Design Lead
Fernanda Marques — Design Lead
Nadine Piecha — Head, UX Research
The challenge
I joined Freenow as UX Director with the goal of growing and scaling the team and set the foundations to improve the craft and operations. I found a really knowledgeable and capable team but they went through two rounds of layoffs so the situation at the moment was difficult, but proved to be a beautiful challenge to make an impact and turn the situation around.
01
Uncertainty
02
Unclear career growth
03
High pressure to stay profitable
04
Reduced team capacity
05
Small team budget
These were some of the reasons that drove me to engage with the team into a vision setting exercise that would also set the foundations for a multi-year strategy, created and driven by the entire team.
We followed the First follower leadership lesson taught by the Dancing guy, that I discovered thanks to Angela Pesta, one of my previoius managers earlier in my career. This helped me set an expectation and some momentum in the UX Annual gathering. In case you’re curious, here’s the video!
Building a foundation
After meeting my team and running a full team retrospective to talk about all what mattered to them and the issues they perceived needed most attention, and after meeting all senior stakeholders and people I would have to work with I digested all what I learnt the very first days so that I could start building what it was meant to be the foundation of the UX team strategy for the following months.
From a new team vision to a 3-year team strategy structured into 4 building blocks.
We defined our vision
“To act as thought partners across the product and keep users at the forefront of our decisions to craft solutions that drive a positive impact on their journeys.”
For that to become a reality, we focused on 4 pillars in 2025.
01
Becoming influential
02
Leveling-up our craft
03
Improving our operations
04
High performing team
Bottom-up team strategy work
As a leader I believe in servant leadership and in building high agency and solid teams that can contribute to the strategy for the team beyond their day-to-day responsibilities.
Therefore, not only the strategic initiatives were informed by their feedback, but also we build groups where they could start leading the work themselves. That work started in our Annual UX gathering, where they teamed up and worked on the one-pagers that later on would be the baseline for the work to follow.
Keeping momentum and execution
We started defining groups of people to lead initiatives based on growth interests and skills. Those teams were leading the thinking and execution of the different initiatives together with the UX leadership team. That made our team feel more committed to the strategy and outcomes of it.
Our monthly UX All Hands meetings, our Weekly UX syncs, have a dedicated section to talk about the UX strategic initiatives to ensure communication flows and also we progress and unblock any issues we come across.
We have a dedicated JIRA board for us to track progress on all our UX Strategic initiatives.
Impact
Just in 2025, by prioritising UX Strategy initiatives we managed to have great impact in several key business areas and also recovered positive momentum and engagement in our team
01
Starting a DS guild and improving our DS coverage
02
Shaping Product Strategy in 0 to 1 products
03
Adapting our design, writing and research rituals, process and tools to AI
04
Reducing UX Debt by starting a definition and process for it
05
Defining clear career paths and competence matrix for all roles