Building better design teams: What worked (and what didn't)

Growing Zenoti's design team 4x in 3 years was quite a journey!

But scaling is never just about adding numbers—it’s about building capability, raising the bar, and ensuring design is a driving force.

While there’s much to celebrate, there are always lessons along the way. Here’s a quick retrospective:

🎉 What Worked Well:

Show, Not Tell:

Instead of giving gyaan on how design should be done, we rolled up our sleeves and brought ideas ( Not PDs :) ) to life — fully baked, hi-fidelity, stunning executions packaged with compelling narratives! Nothing built credibility faster than a killer example.

Specialists Over Generalists:

Once we had budget (and leadership backing) to scale, I brought in specialists — experts in research, interaction, visuals, and motion. Pairing them into nimble 2–4 person teams around key projects unleashed magic!

Lead, Not Manage:

Forget (micro) managing people—my focus is on lifting the work with active participation or individual contribution. With experience has come the ability to switch contexts very fast and keep the quality bar sky-high across many projects simultaneously.

🧠 What Could’ve Gone Better:

Direct Customer Relationships:

We left customer relationships solely to product folks, mostly. It’s a miss. Designers need firsthand insights to build empathy and ground their work.

Deep Product Context:

We didn’t dive as deeply as we should into understanding the product's nuances and business impact, across everything we do. A better grasp = stronger design decisions.

Advocacy is a Must:

Assuming everyone “gets” design was naive. Investing in optics—internally and externally—isn’t optional and something we should do more of. Advocacy ensures design gets the spotlight (and respect) it deserves

This journey has been a whirlwind of wins, misses, and growth! Onwards and upwards from here 👍