↓ Overview
↓ Problem
↓ Insight
↓ Idea
↓ Implement
↓ Impact

Brendan Appe

To deliver on both the long-term strategic vision (our Golden Thread) and near-term feature investments (our Golden Nuggets), I partnered with program leadership to reshape how design was structured across the initiative.
We established a User-Centered Design Core—pairing senior designers, researchers, strategists, and solution architects—to focus on defining future-state experiences and designing high-impact capabilities.

Junior designers were embedded directly into cross-functional squads to support sprint-level execution and ensure continuity between vision and delivery.

Our team structure balanced strategic design leadership with embedded support for sprint-level delivery.

To keep our distributed team aligned and energized, I also introduced a series of rituals: weekly design standups, chapter-wide playbacks, collaborative office hours, and Creative Coffee sessions.
These rhythms helped foster cohesion, built shared ownership of our design strategy, and created space for feedback and iteration—without losing sight of delivery milestones.