Building greater Design influence without making the Design Manager the bottleneck
Altus had a small Design team embedded across complex product areas. At the same time, the company was changing how Product worked, with greater emphasis on understanding problems, validating direction and involving the right disciplines before solutions became delivery commitments.
The Head of Product, Delivery Manager and I formed the cross-functional leadership group helping shape and implement that Product Operating Model. We brought experience of similar models from previous organisations and worked with the Managing Director to make the change practical at Altus.
My particular challenge was Design.
I wanted designers to have greater influence over product direction and the quality that reached customers. But the quickest way to improve quality in the short term would have been to involve myself in more decisions, more reviews and more stakeholder conversations.
That would also have made me the bottleneck.
The goal was not to make more decisions as Design Manager. It was to create the conditions for stronger decisions to happen without depending on me.
That meant developing designers’ judgement and confidence while also changing the environment around them: bringing Design into important product decisions earlier, using customer evidence while direction was still open, and keeping Design involved as work moved through implementation.
The strongest evidence was not the frameworks or processes we introduced. It was the behaviour that changed around them: a designer becoming more capable of representing their own reasoning, customer evidence influencing a shipped product decision, Design challenging a technically sensible direction that created the wrong customer experience, and a closer Design-to-Engineering way of working that continued after I left.
Product Design Competency Matrix
| Capability | Associate | Product Designer | Senior | Lead / Principal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Product thinking | Learns the problem | Frames scoped problems | Leads complex problem framing | Shapes product & experience strategy |
| Interaction design | Creates simple flows with support | Designs end-to-end flows | Leads complex workflows | Shapes patterns across product areas |
| UI craft | Builds core interface craft | Delivers polished, accessible UI | Raises quality across complex work | Defines standards & system use |
| Research & validation | Supports research and synthesis | Runs appropriate validation | Uses evidence to influence direction | Builds stronger learning practices |
| Collaboration & delivery | Learns tools, constraints and rituals | Works independently on scoped work | Balances quality, pace and trade-offs | Improves team delivery practices |
| Leadership & influence | Seeks feedback and grows | Communicates clearly and collaborates | Coaches others and influences decisions | Builds organisational design capability |
| Capability | Associate | Product Designer | Senior | Lead / Principal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI-enabled design practice | Builds AI literacy | Uses AI responsibly in day-to-day work | Applies judgement to AI opportunities | Shapes responsible AI practice |
Product thinking
- Associate
- Learns the problem
- Product Designer
- Frames scoped problems
- Senior
- Leads complex problem framing
- Lead / Principal
- Shapes product & experience strategy
Interaction design
- Associate
- Creates simple flows with support
- Product Designer
- Designs end-to-end flows
- Senior
- Leads complex workflows
- Lead / Principal
- Shapes patterns across product areas
UI craft
- Associate
- Builds core interface craft
- Product Designer
- Delivers polished, accessible UI
- Senior
- Raises quality across complex work
- Lead / Principal
- Defines standards & system use
Research & validation
- Associate
- Supports research and synthesis
- Product Designer
- Runs appropriate validation
- Senior
- Uses evidence to influence direction
- Lead / Principal
- Builds stronger learning practices
Collaboration & delivery
- Associate
- Learns tools, constraints and rituals
- Product Designer
- Works independently on scoped work
- Senior
- Balances quality, pace and trade-offs
- Lead / Principal
- Improves team delivery practices
Leadership & influence
- Associate
- Seeks feedback and grows
- Product Designer
- Communicates clearly and collaborates
- Senior
- Coaches others and influences decisions
- Lead / Principal
- Builds organisational design capability
AI-enabled design practice
- Associate
- Builds AI literacy
- Product Designer
- Uses AI responsibly in day-to-day work
- Senior
- Applies judgement to AI opportunities
- Lead / Principal
- Shapes responsible AI practice
What the protected case study explores
- Developing designers who could represent their own judgement
- Helping shape and implement a cross-functional Product Operating Model
- Changing when and how Design influenced product decisions
- Challenging direction without relying on formal authority
- Extending Design influence into production
- What became embedded, what remained difficult and what I would measure differently
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