Step 1: Start With A Competitive Audit The biggest challenge was figuring out how to effectively advocate for design at different levels. I realized that when not everyone is on board with a new idea, you need more than just the work to make it happen meaning I had to learn to advocate not only for the user but for our greater design system as a whole.

Step 2: Apply Modernization Updates (in waves) As a founding designer, there’s a delicate balance between being a hands-on contributor creating mockups quickly and a design operations expert when championing a non-existent team. The effort really paid off in the first three months, and I managed to bring on a front-end engineer and a design intern to help make the design vision a reality. It truly takes a village!

Step 3: Provide Guidance and Direction for Huge In my first few months at Posh, I focused on creating communication tools, documentation, briefs, and a Trello-based design ticketing system to avoid adding to the design debt I inherited. By the time I left, I had successfully established a weekly product review and basic brand guidelines for the team, along with a substantial collection of documents including creative briefs, email templates, one-pagers, customer journeys, and detailed customer interview guides.