Lead Product Designer (Leadership) · The AA · 2025

Launch of Two New Sub-Products

Led a cross-functional design team through the launch of two new sub-products under significant time and budget constraints. Owned prioritisation, coached designers through trade-offs, and delivered both products alongside a reusable launch framework for future growth.

Summary

Focus

Introduce two new sub-products into the portfolio efficiently while building the team's confidence in working within clear delivery boundaries.

Approach

Set clear priorities early, made explicit trade-offs under delivery constraints, and coached the team to focus on what mattered most to protect quality and outcomes.

Impact

On-time delivery of two new sub-products, a shared prioritisation model across design, and a repeatable framework that reduced future launch risk and design rework.

Final deliverables for Commercial Use and Key Cover, from indexed landing pages to in-journey components. An additional outcome was a reusable framework to support future product launches.

Business Context

  • Business goal: Expand the product portfolio after years of no new offerings.
  • Constraints: Tight timeline, budget limits, first-time integration into main product line.
  • Success measured by: Timely launch, alignment with main product strategy, team growth.

Design was responsible for shaping how these sub-products fit into the existing portfolio, including what not to introduce at launch.

The Main Focus

  • Deliver new sub-products on time while maintaining quality and alignment with the main portfolio.
  • Coach the team to understand constraints and prioritise effectively.
  • Balance leadership between project delivery and team skill development.

Strategy & Approach

  • Established clear priorities and delivery boundaries early, allowing the team to move fast without compromising essential quality.
  • Broke work down strategically and aligned ownership to individual strengths.
  • Facilitated regular check-ins and trade-off discussions to surface risks early and make clear prioritisation calls.
  • Balanced speed with quality by explicitly defining what could not be compromised.
  • Aligned stakeholders on realistic scope early, preventing late-stage changes that would have compromised quality.
Work phases planned within a constrained delivery timeline.
Design had an agreed three-week window for end-to-end work before engineering was brought in. A 0–1 delivery plan aligned priorities, surfaced constraints early, and protected team focus.

Key Design Decisions

Strategic decisions balanced the available timeframe with a clear understanding of the non-negotiables from day one.

These decisions shaped both what shipped and what was deliberately left out.

Decision #1: Protect scope by prioritising non-negotiables

  • Rationale: Tight timelines required clear boundaries to avoid last-minute compromises.
  • Outcome: Both sub-products launched without critical gaps or rework.

Decision #2: Guided team on constraint-driven design

  • Rationale: Help designers focus energy on what matters most.
  • Outcome: Team learned to work efficiently, improving future delivery cycles.

One deliberate decision was to delay promotional logic until after launch, protecting clarity and delivery confidence under time pressure.

Process Snapshots

These snapshots illustrate how clear prioritisation and early trade-offs enabled the team to deliver under pressure, while still validating demand for the new sub-products through testing.

0 to 1 plan board: A shared prioritisation board made ownership and dependencies explicit, helping the team stay focused and unblock issues early.
A/B test results showing positive uplift. Expand image
A/B test insight: Introducing an extra step increased uptake of the new sub-products. While overall conversion dipped slightly (-0.8%), this surfaced a known trade-off with Parts and Garage Cover, later addressed in a follow-up initiative.

Impact & Team Outcomes

This work demonstrated how a design team can work under constraints while gaining confidence, and how a clear process creates a reusable framework for the future.

Quantitative Outcomes

Two sub-products launched on time and within budget, demonstrating that clear prioritisation and constraint-led decision-making can enable speed without increasing delivery risk or team burnout.

Qualitative Outcomes

  • A reusable framework that reduced future launch effort and set a precedent for how new products are introduced within the portfolio.
  • The team gained confidence in working under constraints.
  • Prioritisation principles established for future projects.
  • Smoother alignment between stakeholders and the design team.

The framework has since been referenced for subsequent product initiatives, reducing uncertainty around future launches.

Learnings & Leadership

Learnings

  • Helping designers internalise constraints accelerates both delivery and learning.
  • Clear priorities prevent wasted effort and improve output quality.

Leadership

My leadership approach focuses on clarity over control — creating shared priorities, protecting teams from unnecessary pressure, and using constraints as a tool for better decision-making.

  • Coached team members on time management and prioritisation.
  • Maintained project focus while supporting skill growth.
  • Delivered first-time product launches efficiently, establishing a repeatable process.