Projects

Leadership

Razorpay

I led the design vision and strategy for Razorpay's largest business unit - Payments, directing 15 teams of designers, engineers and product managers with 10 direct reports. Our work impacted over 250 million users and helped us reach 50% of India's digital payment market share. Additionally, I played a key role in unifying and expanding the design team and establishing a design focused culture.

Situation

I was hired as the first design leader in Payments BU after chaotic 2 years of no leadership, unstable team dynamics and dwindling motivation with the sole purpose of building the team, culture and processes from scratch.
Razorpay's first design was done in the year 2014 and since then a lot had changed in the digital payments industry but the Razorpay checkout experience remained the same. Lack of quality in craft and lack of a shared vision to tackle upcoming competition and challenges.
There was a lack of trust and collaboration amongst peers across functions that hindered the pace and quality of outcomes.
It was my job to inspire executive stakeholders, increase employee engagement and satisfaction and build new competitive advantages for the company.

Challenges

Payments BU consisted of 20+ teams with no singular design language and hence no consistency in quality.
Design was treated as an execution arm rather than utilising it as a strategic peer. Product had the last say and they were not fully informed all the time.
Research was non-existent.
There was no Design strategy aligned with product and business goals.
No set frameworks and processes to align all other functions.

Resolution

Building My Design Team

Bringing designers together through monthly meetups and regular offsites.

Offsites and team lunches - These team retreats give designers space to connect, build relationships, spark creativity, and think big together. These off-sites have strengthened our bonds, inspired collaboration across boundaries, sparked innovation, and became a cornerstone of our design team culture.

Monthly meetups - These monthly workshops and presentations are an opportunity for us to share knowledge and train each other on design topics. Every week, we gather to present our work and receive feedback from the team. This is a chance for us to improve our craft together and ensure coherency throughout the product.

Individual Growth - There was no set career ladder in place and for the last two years most designers didn't have any constructive discussions on their individual growth. So I started doing regular 1-on-1s and building individual growth plans focusing on their areas of expertise and ambitions aligned with organisational goals.

Focusing on career growth

Next, I took up the huge task of coming up with a Product Design Competency Framework that we can apply across the org for all designers with clear expectations on impact and outcomes to keep everyone driven.

Setting up processes

Most disconnect and mistrust amongst cross-functional peers was because of a lack of process of operating and collaborating with each other. As a result, there were issues with timelines, quality and pace expectations and disagreements till the end of a project.

So, I detailed out and established a product design framework called DOPE (Design OPErating Model) that would help designers plan their work better - set clearer expectations on deliverables, outcomes and timelines - and help PMs and engineers work together with designers to get desired impact.

Crafting a shared product vision

When you cultivate a team of top talent and empower them with the right tools, you can build a winning product. However, it's easy to lose sight of the big picture. That’s where a compelling product vision comes in.

Translating the vision into an actionable strategy- As I supported each domain in establishing their goals and vision, I then worked to integrate their aspirations into a unified, comprehensive product vision focusing on a comprehensive UX, visual and content strategy.

Building Research Culture

Despite having years of data and insights, there wasn't a culture of leveraging past knowledge or seeking the right insights to make confident decisions. Individually, everyone was aligned that we should invest more in research but nobody knew how to go ahead. We just had 3 UX Researchers working across the entire org and mostly doing surface-level user testing kind of stuff.

I set up a plan with the Research team to conduct an org-wide Workshop, in batches, to educate cross-functional peers on why we need to do more research, for what kind of projects, the process of some common types of research studies and timelines and outcome expectations from them. Together we set up a few templates and guidelines to get each team started on conducting their own research.

Results

By implementing these rituals, we have been able to maintain a strong sense of camaraderie and collaboration, even as our team continues to grow. There was a huge uptick in motivation and the sense of belongingness that reflected in everyone's work.
Product - Design - Engineering collaboration was vastly improved with smoother functioning and the number of projects due past deadlines reducing from 75% to 15%.