Management

For the Radiant revamp, I led a small but globally distributed design team consisting of three designers—one from Serbia, one from Brazil, and one based in Thailand. Each designer was responsible for a different feature area, while I provided high-level design direction, ongoing planning, and individual design reviews. In addition to managing the team, I also fully owned the design of a core feature myself.

Despite the heavy workload, I ensured we maintained both velocity and quality across all touchpoints. A key part of my role was aligning each designer's output with our product goals, giving structured feedback, and supporting them in prioritizing design efforts based on scope and impact.

One of the main challenges was navigating the 10+ hour time difference across the team. Fortunately, my teammates were flexible and we established a reliable sync window that worked across time zones. This made regular check-ins and design critiques manageable, and helped us stay aligned without slipping on deadlines.

The Radiant revamp wasn't just a visual overhaul—it introduced a set of new gamified features while evolving the brand identity. This combination made the design exploration phase especially demanding.

We faced the challenge of balancing creative experimentation with clear prioritization. To manage this, we intentionally narrowed down exploration efforts by grounding all design directions in solid objectives. This helped us stay focused while still delivering fresh, engaging, and on-brand experiences.

To provide a clear structural overview of Radiant's features, I developed a comprehensive Product Entity Relationship Diagram. This diagram served as a foundational blueprint, mapping out how different features interconnected within the platform. By visualizing the relationships between core components, it helped define feature scope, dependencies, and scalability considerations. This not only guided product planning but also became a crucial resource for engineers, enabling them to grasp the architecture and interactions between features quickly. Aligning closely with both design and engineering teams, I ensured the diagram remained an evolving reference, adapting as the product expanded.

After working on projects along with visualization aid from entity relationship diagram, we later come to realization that it sort of help us to see priorities between feature development better, and how much work it needs to keep iterate and maintain it for both designers and developers

I played a key role in structuring the design timeline to align with Radiant's broader product roadmap. We broke down feature releases into phases, ensuring that design deliverables were prioritized based on dependencies and development cycles. By mapping out key milestones, I helped create a workflow that balanced rapid iteration with thoughtful execution, allowing the team to stay agile while maintaining design quality. Regular syncs with stakeholders ensured that adjustments could be made as needed, keeping the process flexible without compromising on deadlines or user experience.

Aside from creating the design timeline, I also provided high-level visibility for my team. I managed three designers who were responsible for different features and design tasks. Despite the tight deadlines, I delegated work, oversaw and reviewed their designs, while also working on my own feature in parallel. So there was a case in a design report where I regularly provided high-level updates on 5-6 epic tasks, along with context, to my direct report.

The most challenging part was maintaining the quality of the design work—especially as the brand refresh was happening simultaneously with feature development. Each designer's work had to be clearly defined and aligned, so everything could bridge together into a cohesive system.

In practice, one dedicated designer focused on design system updates and reskinning existing features, while the other two worked on new features. I closely collaborated with one of them to shape the rebrand of Radiant and its design language, which is further detailed in the Design System page.

To ensure a seamless user experience, I played a key role in defining acceptance criteria for Radiant's features. This process involved breaking down user stories into actionable design tasks, covering edge cases and interaction flows to account for different user behaviors. By collaborating with product managers and developers, I helped align design decisions with technical feasibility while maintaining a high level of UX polish. For each feature, I mapped out possible user interactions, edge scenarios, and success criteria, ensuring that the final design met both functional and experiential goals. This structured approach allowed us to iterate efficiently, reducing friction during development and enhancing the overall user journey.

To evaluate and support the growth of my design team, I implemented a structured assessment framework inspired by Figma's product designer evaluation model. This framework serves as a foundation for tracking individual progress, identifying growth areas, and aligning each designer's development with both personal goals and team objectives. I conduct these evaluations on a quarterly basis, which allows for regular check-ins and provides clear visibility into how each team member is evolving in their role. These reviews are not just performance assessments—they also serve as a platform for mentorship, feedback, and collaborative goal setting, ensuring that every designer feels seen, supported, and empowered to grow.

Beyond the standard evaluation metrics, I introduced an additional layer specific to our product context which is game design skills. Given our close collaboration with game designers, I believe it's essential for product designers on our team to have a strong grasp of game design principles. This includes understanding player experience, game mechanics, and system thinking—skills that significantly enhance how we shape features and interactions within the product. I've advocated for this hybrid skill set as a key part of our design culture, encouraging designers to stretch beyond traditional UX boundaries and adopt a more holistic, cross-disciplinary mindset.