Context & Problem
The Summary
In 2022, I joined a reputable tech company that sells research and data to business leaders through multiple subscription-based B2B SaaS platforms. The company served 30K+ professionals globally across governments, healthcare, HR, and Fortune 1000 enterprises, with $300M+ in annual revenue. I stepped into a UX role that promised high impact, but what I found was an organization in the middle of digital transformation where UX was still misunderstood and underutilized.
UX and Visual Design operated like parallel universes. What I expected to be collaborative turned out to be fragmented. The organization had adopted agile rituals without changing its waterfall mindset.
My Role
My role evolved out of necessity: I was the first full-time UX designer hired by the UX Director, joining an organization with over 30 designers across brand, marketing, and product. As the dedicated UX team grew to five, in the first year we operated as a centralized team serving all 4 product lines. I worked primarily on the parent product—the IT research platform for CIOs and tech leaders.
In year two, (below figure) the UX function restructured and I became embedded in a different product line focused on enterprise software buyers and vendor research, a cross-functional group of seven designers (led by a Design Director), along with product and engineering leads.
While my title didn't change, I had to become responsible for defining UX processes, building collaboration rituals and surfacing business-critical insights through user behaviour. It was fast, political, and often chaotic — but full of potential.
What I Saw
From the start, it was clear the problem was how UX was positioned. I saw a culture where user needs were secondary, processes were inherited not designed, and teams didn’t feel empowered to ask “why.”
UX activities weren’t baked into product workflow. We were often brought in late — after decisions were made, after designs were started, sometimes just for sign-off. Product teams prioritized deliverables, not discovery. Visual designers were talented but often boxed into execution roles. Everyone was busy — but few felt aligned.
I started asking questions:
Why aren’t users part of the process earlier?
Why does UX feel separate from design?
Why do teams rely on handoffs instead of collaboration?
Challenges I Faced
Cultural Misunderstanding
UX was seen as a visual layer, not a strategic discipline
Fragmented Processes
No shared frameworks, metrics, or expectations for user outcomes
Confusing Leadership
Competing visions for what UX should do
Misuse of Agile
Agile rituals existed, but without space for discovery or user input
Solution / Design Leadership
Breaking the Wireframe Assembly Line
I didn’t have authority. But I had curiosity, people skills, and a high tolerance for ambiguity. Leading change wasn’t technically part of my role, but doing good UX work was. That meant stepping up anyway.
As I navigated these constraints, I led process improvements that integrated UX and Visual Design into a shared workflow — no more handoffs, no single owner, just collaboration. My goal wasn’t to “own” UX, but to create space for it.
Process
Year 1: Building the Factory
In my first year, I supported a service design initiative on one of the company’s flagship research products called Blueprints. These were practical, research-backed how-to guides that show companies how to solve a specific business problem, usually through a clear framework called a Visual Model. Published on our gated platform, the full blueprints and their visual models were critical lead-generation content and strategic decision-making tools for members.
The problem? The creation process for visual models was broken. Designers struggled with creating them causing backlogs and delays. Researchers worked in long, waterfall-style cycles and handed off dense content to designers in Jira with a vague request, often with no message clarity, or design intent. UX was brought in to wireframe, but not to shape the story or the user experience behind it.
The UX director’s solution was to insert UX into the chain: UX handled intake and wireframes, then visual designers took over for look and feel. It resembled a Double Diamond, but with an added handoff in the middle. The UX and design team shipped over 100 visual models that year, but designers felt like assembly workers, not collaborators.
It worked — but it wasn’t enough.
Insight
The process made production smoother, but it also split UX and visual design into separate tracks. Designers satisfaction was low, feeling like wireframe "assembly workers", which impacted the final deliverable and product experience. According to the product's aquire marketing lead, visual storytelling was what drove engagement not diagrams.
Year 2: Breaking the Wall
When in the second year, I became embedded in a different product team focused on software vendors and buyers, I saw an opportunity to fix the broken handoff model. With support from the design director, I launched a pilot program to integrate UX and Visual Design across the full Double Diamond.
My Approach: From Handoffs to Co-Creation. I replaced the linear handoff model with integrated collaboration across two phases with four key activities:
🔀 Diverge Phase:
1. Content Analysis – 1-hour working sessions to unpack research and map key messages
2. Collaborative Ideation – Co-sketching concepts with designers from day one
🎯 Converge Phase:
3. Concept Development – Moving from literal diagrams to strategic visual metaphors
4. Iterative Refinement – Real-time design and feedback through team critiques
This systematic approach upskilled designers at all experience levels. Instead of gatekeeping knowledge, I made everything transparent—inviting designers to stakeholder meetings and running 1:1 working sessions where we'd work through the framework together, teaching them to break down complex information and explore conceptual directions.
The Key Shift:
Instead of asking designers to "color in" wireframes, I reshaped stakeholder meetings to uncover conceptual direction and ask: "How would you explain this blueprint to someone brand new?" When stakeholders said things like "chasing money" or "sports strategy," these became rich conceptual territory. Working alongside designers, I helped translate these insights into powerful visual metaphors:
A soccer field for brand positioning frameworks (fig.1)
Butterfly chase patterns for investment behaviour (fig.2)
Disrupted rhythm for sales wins (fig.3)
Gravity wells for voice-of-customer dynamics (fig.4)
These weren’t just creative, they helped make complex ideas instantly clear, build brand trust, and improve lead conversion. Designers shifted from execution to strategy. And our process became a shared craft, not a sequence of handoffs.
I used my background in illustration to help visual designers explore ideas more freely and connect with the "why" behind each framework. By thinking through the story together, they began contributing great ideas to our working sessions.
I led more than 17 of these projects with different designers applying this collaborative approach. This model worked. All 6 designers on my embedded team reported higher satisfaction with the process. Three designers in the centralized UX team adopted it for their own work. Design leadership validated it—4 out of 5 acknowledged the quality improvement. Stakeholders saw it too: 6 out of 8 were satisfied with what we delivered. The co-creation approach had proven itself.
Expanding Impact
Scaling the Collaboration: Redesigning the Blueprint Experience
When the blueprint page redesign appeared on the roadmap, I saw an opportunity to extend our proven collaborative approach to the customer-facing experience. These gated pages were the place where the full blueprint with their visual model were published and played an important part in the platform's lead generation strategy. However, the experience didn't reflect the quality of the content, it was hard to scan, overly dense and confused users giving them little reason to engage before hitting a locked CTA.
I led a 2-week sprint with product designers and front-end developers to create a modular, conversion-focused layout. Using the same Diverge/Converge framework we tackled it together from day one - no handoffs.
🔀 Week 1:
Design audit: I led an audit of the existing experience with the team and found that poor visual hierarchy and unclear actions made pages difficult to scan and understand - issues rooted in CMS limitations. This user confusion contributed to zero conversions on blueprint content.
Collaborative Ideation: Within these constraints, I led working sessions with designers as we explored ways to break dense content: adding a hero section to highlight framework visuals, regrouping similar ideas for clarity while separating the side bar content.
🎯 Week 2:
Solution Development: We narrowed down our solution to a modular design that creates better hierarchy. By organizing information into clear sections (hero, problem, research & tools, testimonials) on an 8pt grid for spacing, we made key content easier to find and scan. This flexible structure could grow across other product lines.
Iterative Refinement: Instead of handoffs, we ran daily design–dev critiques, adjusting and adding to the design system, and content in real time, shifting from siloed execution to shared ownership.
By designing for user comprehension, we optimized the conversion path for Blueprint pages and activated a new lead generation channel. Conversion rates increased from ~0% to 1.5% in 3 months, adding 22% to the total platform activity.
Impact
Collaborative UX Model
✨ 85% Team-Wide Impact
Measured across designer satisfaction (100%), adoption (75%), and leadership validation (80%)
⚡ Rapid Product Delivery / Blueprint
17+ visual models shipped
- 2 weeks to redesign the blueprint experience
100+ scalable blueprint pages
📈 22% Platform Growth
Activated lead generation of blueprint pages from 0% to 1.5%
Grew total platform conversions by 22%
🔥 Cultural Shift
Replaced handoffs with co-creation
Elevated design from execution to strategy
Scaled impact across the team
Results
"Working with Felicia brought UX and design together. We were able to discuss ideas early on in the process…which became a collaboration rather than line work and making a piece pretty. As a designer that made me feel more useful." Product Designer
"The pilot for this product has been very successful... It has been such a huge benefit to the designers, and the results were amazing." UX Director
"Involving visual designers early in the process is really helping. They are coming up with ideas at the same time and are now understanding what the UX team is doing and vice-versa. That portion is very helpful." Design Director
