Work · Case study 03 · Leadership

Listening first

About 25 stakeholders told us where our communication broke down. We answered with five small changes and a 30-day pilot, not a heavy new process.

Company
One of the largest U.S. health insurers
My role
Design manager, plan owner
Team
3 senior designers + project manager
Timeline
Survey → plan → 30-day pilot (Nov 2026)

What we heard

We surveyed the business, product and engineering partners we work with, and about 25 responded. My team and I turned the results into a plan through working sessions. The gaps were clear:

  • Reviews often started without an agenda, a clear scope or a decision to make.
  • Decisions were scattered across meeting notes, chat and design files.
  • Engineering came in late, after concepts were already set.
  • People weren't sure of status or what happened next.

The plan: five changes

  1. Prepare the review. Agenda, purpose, scope, questions and the decision needed are shared before the meeting.
  2. Make scope visible. In-scope, out-of-scope and already-live areas are marked right in the design file.
  3. Run for decisions. Every review has a meeting lead, a note-taker and a presenting designer. Decisions get captured; tangents go to a parking lot.
  4. Create one record. Decisions, owners and due dates are published within one business day in a single project page, linked to the design files.
  5. Close the loop. A weekly designer sync confirms agendas, cancels meetings with nothing to decide, and surfaces engineering needs early.

Smaller supporting changes: an "expected outcome" question at intake, design rationale and exclusions in every handoff, a check against the live site before revising a page, and @mentions only when a reply is actually needed.

If a meeting has nothing to decide, it shouldn't be a meeting.

Rollout

Pilot first, then standardize what works: week 1, finalize the template and roles; week 2, pilot in design reviews, business syncs and design-to-engineering meetings; weeks 3–4, refine based on friction; day 30, confirm the standard and share it with partners.

Automation helps with the follow-through: I've built automations for weekly status reports and stakeholder sign-off tasks, so the process depends less on someone remembering.

How we'll measure it

These are targets, not results yet. The pilot is running now. I'll update this page with what actually happened.

  • 90%of formal reviews have an agenda, scope and decision question in advance
  • 90%of decisions have an owner and due date within one business day
  • Fewermeetings held without meaningful content
  • Clearercontext, status and next steps in a follow-up pulse survey
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The review template, roles and workflow are in the private portfolio.
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