Discover Design Team

Summary
To support Discover’s rapidly growing digital platform, I built the company’s first in-house design team and restructured how design partnered with product. In one year we scaled from 1 to 20 designers and fully replaced agency-led design delivery. The shift accelerated delivery, reduced review cycles by 49%, and generated over $5M in sustained annual savings.

Company
Discover

Role
Design Director

Team
Linh L, VP Design
Joan K, SVP Digital

Timeline
‍10 months

Context

Discover’s digital experiences support over 30 million customers, with 1.9 billion annual logins and nearly 1 billion monthly mobile visits. Digital channels are a primary growth engine for the business, yet design capabilities had not evolved to match that scale. While engineering and product teams operated at enterprise speed, design processes were fragmented and dependent on external vendors.

30M+ Customers

1.9B+ Annual Logins

990M+ Monthly
Mobile Visits

The Problem

All product design work was delivered by agencies, while internal UX strategists functioned largely as project managers coordinating vendor output. This structure created long review cycles, inconsistent experiences, and limited governance across products. Design was often perceived as a blocker rather than a strategic partner.

The Mandate

Replace agency dependency with a scalable in-house design team
Improve delivery speed and overall experience quality
Redefine UX strategists as strategic partners rather than vendor managers
Embed design within product teams and roadmap planning
Establish systems and governance to support design at scale

Approach

The Foundations for a Scalable Design Organization

Redesign the org
around customers

Install governance
and systems

Elevate roles into
strategic partners

We focused on three foundational changes. First, we reorganized teams around customer journeys rather than product channels, ensuring designers worked on end-to-end experiences. Second, we introduced governance systems to bring consistency and clarity to design delivery. Finally, we elevated the role of designers so they could participate earlier in product conversations and influence strategic decisions.

Before

Vendor-driven
Reactive
Project-based
Fragmented ownership

After

Embedded
Journey-aligned
Accountable to product metrics
Governance-backed

Solution

Aligning Teams Around Customer Journeys

We moved from product silos to journey-aligned teams, enabling designers and product partners to focus on end-to-end customer experiences.

Tier System

We introduced a tiered system to match design resources to project complexity, prioritizing strategic innovation while ensuring regulatory work could ship quickly.

Innovate

Solve

Improve

Refine

Design Principals

We introduced a set of design principles to create a shared north star, helping teams make faster decisions and clearly articulate the reasoning behind their design choices.