I measure my work by what my designers can do without me.
Five things this page proves
1
I develop designers.
I don't just manage them
A career framework, two real coaching stories, and what changed
2
I'm still credible in the craft
Close enough to the work to say what isn't good enough, and why
3
I've closed the premium-brand gap before
A premium product whose digital experience had to catch up
4
Design works inside Product & Engineering
Not a separate kingdom. Constraints shape the answer
5
I care about commercial outcomes
UX quality is how we get there, not where we stop
Developing designers
Growth needs a shared language before it needs a manager.
Nestlé's Success Factors records goals.
It didn't help leads and designers have honest conversations about craft or what “next level” looks like. So I built a Nespresso career framework, adapting one I'd created at Kingfisher around Nespresso's hallmarks, then trialled it with the team before rollout.
Capability levels
01 – WHAT "GOOD" LOOKS LIKE
Six levels, from Learning to Leading, each mapped to a role.
Career path
02 – WHERE YOU'RE HEADING
Two tracks, individual contributor or manager, with a real crossing point.
Core & enabling skills
03 – WHAT TO WORK ON
Three soft, three hard skills, each described at every level.
Personal development plan
04 – PERMANENT TEAM
A yearly reflect, evidence, aspire, commit loop with your lead.
Insource transition plan
05 – KINGFISHER THEN NESPRESSO
A scored evaluation path for contractors moving in-house.
Levels and tracks
6 levels
The IC and manager tracks share one ladder. A Senior can become a Principal without being pushed into people management, and the Product Design Lead role is where management experience lets someone cross over.
Leading
Manager / Specialist
Expert
Principal
Mastering
Senior
Demonstrating
Mid
Growing
Junior
Learning
Intern
ICs
MANAGERS
Craft focused
People focused
Solving problems
Enabling others to solve problems
Tangible outputs
Intangible outputs
Mentoring craft
Intangible outputs
Protected by manager
Protecting the team
Who it's for
The personal development plan
A FigJam template each designer fills in with their lead through the year, then exports into SuccessFactors. It turns the review from a form into a conversation.
1
Reflect on the past 12 months
What went well and what could improve, at 3, 6, 9 and 12 months, plus 360 feedback from colleagues.
3
Career aspirations
More of the same, or a different growth area? Captured before goals are set.
2
Evidence your achievements
4
Set your objectives
3 to 5 SMART performance goals tied to team and squad OKRs, plus personal development goals.
From the trial
Both sides of the conversation
Several designers and managers trialled the template before it went wider. They valued the structure and clarity it gave to career conversations, which is what gave us the green light to roll it out across the team.
Manager, from the trial
Helps me understand my team's aspirations through honest conversations and supports during challenging moments.
Direct report, from the trial
It's a vital tool for fostering a transparent, supportive environment where everyone can truly thrive.
For contractors
The insource transition plan
When contractors move in-house, the risk is that nobody agrees what they're being assessed on. I first built this at Kingfisher and rebuilt it for Nespresso: a scored, time-boxed plan that gives the designer a fair path and gives the business a clear read on progress.
1
Understand your areas
Core and enabling skills, three detailed categories in each.
3
Set objectives
Pick the areas of focus the scores point to.
2
Score yourself
4
Track it
Regular check-ins, each goal marked achieved or needs improvement.
"Being a manager is a mindset shift. You're no longer a player, you're the coach. You can't score the winning goal anymore, no matter how hard you try."
Leo Widrich · Co-founder, Buffer
Developing designers · in practice
Two senior designers who needed opposite things.
When contractors move in-house, the risk is that nobody agrees what they're being assessed on. I first built this at Kingfisher and rebuilt it for Nespresso: a scored, time-boxed plan that gives the designer a fair path and gives the business a clear read on progress.
Story A · Senior Product Designer
Great work that nobody heard about.
When I started
She'd just stepped up to Senior. Her work was really strong and she had great ideas, but she was quite introverted and didn't always get heard, especially in bigger meetings.
The real gap
Not craft. Confidence and influence. Developing a senior designer isn't always about making them a better designer.
What I did
I stopped presenting on her behalf and made space for her to own the conversation. We'd prep beforehand on what she wanted to land. Afterwards I'd give feedback on what worked and where to push further. Then I deliberately stepped back more, meeting by meeting.
What changed
She got comfortable presenting her own thinking, challenging people and representing her work. Success wasn't her needing me. It was the opposite.
Story B · Senior Product Designer
Brilliant, fast, and doing it all himself.
When I started
Very experienced and very quick. Faced with a problem, his instinct was "I'll just do it", and he'd usually have it solved before everyone else had finished discussing it.
The real gap
He performed brilliantly on his own, but the people around him weren't benefiting from his experience. Sometimes other designers felt they weren't adding much.
What I did
Told him straight: at his level, impact isn't only what you personally produce. Part of being senior is making the people around you better. I pushed him to slow down now and then, bring others into his thinking, explain how he got to an answer, critique their work, and leave them room to solve things.
What changed
The goal was never to make him less effective. It was to turn one person's capability into something the whole team could use.
Story A
She needed more voice
Development area: confidence and influence
My move: create the stage, prep, debrief
Who stepped back: me
Story B
He needed to make room
Development area: multiplying his impact
My move: reframe what "senior" means
Who stepped back: him
The premium-brand gap
A premium product deserves a digital experience that feels the same.
Nespresso's coffee and boutiques feel premium. Online, it still behaved like a catalogue. Part of my remit has been repositioning Nespresso as a premium brand online, in support of its channel strategy to 2027. It's a gap a lot of premium, direct-to-consumer brands share.
What I learned
Closing the gap takes more than a reskin.
Design for the portfolio you'll have
Nespresso had Original and Vertuo, with Starbucks and Blue Bottle arriving. We built the experience to flex across brands from day one, instead of redesigning each time a new one landed.
Consistency without sameness
A modular navigation library and a composition matrix per market kept 40+ markets consistent without making them identical. It's the same approach I used across B&Q and TradePoint at Kingfisher.
Premium is how it works, not just looks.
We benchmarked Nike, IKEA, Blue Bottle and On rather than other coffee brands. Customers compare you to the best experience they've had anywhere, not to your competitors.
Inside Product & Engineering
The best idea didn't ship. The right one did.
The Revamp brief looked like a reskin. Discovery showed something bigger: customers buying coffee for the wrong machine system (Vertuo vs Original). Drop-offs, wrong orders, complaints, and market jargon making it worse. The business had lived with it for years.
Constraints are design input
Engineering told us what the basket could and couldn't read. We redesigned around it instead of escalating it.
Data over opinion
Some markets pushed back. Critiques and working sessions built on their own data, not our hypotheses, got us to agreement.
Solve the right problem first
A reskin would have looked better and fixed nothing. Reframing the brief was the biggest design decision on the project.
MACHINE PDP CONVERSION LIFT · NESPRESSO
Research, data and goals shaped design decisions. A 50% relative lift on the page that sells the hardware.
Before
1.4%
After
2.1%
SUBSCRIPTION ADD-TO-CART · NESPRESSO
Getting people to commit to a recurring order is where lifetime value is won, so this is the number I'm proudest of.
Measuring a problem the business couldn't see
Contact centre
Signal 01
Calls and tickets tagged to compatibility
Returns
Signal 02
Return rate on the first coffee order
Cross-system bounce
Signal 03
PDP exits after landing on the wrong system
Wrong first order
Signal 04
New machine owners ordering the wrong system
For navigation, I built a four-part KPI framework with a 1 to 5 scorecard: engagement and navigation behaviour, content and ecosystem performance, business impact, and customer feedback, sliceable by market, quarter and owning team.
Recap: How I lead
Five things I bring to a design team.
The principles behind the work on this page, and where to find the proof.
Principle
Where it shows up
1
Coaching over individual output
A five-part career framework built at two companies, and two senior designers coached in opposite directions.
2
I stay close to the craft
Navigation & IA across 40+ markets, the TradePoint app PDP, and a compatibility fix I designed and tested myself.
3
I make premium brands feel premium online
Moving Nespresso from a product funnel to a lifestyle ecosystem, with shared patterns that flex across 40+ markets.
4
Design works inside Product & Engineering
Redesigning around a basket constraint instead of escalating it, and winning over sceptical markets with their own data.
5
I design for commercial outcomes
Machine PDP conversion from ~1.4% to ~2.1%, subscription add-to-cart +28%, and KPIs defined before any screens.
