Building beautiful products with Stripe’s Head of Design | Katie Dill (Stripe, Airbnb, Lyft)
Katie Dill, Head of Design at Stripe, shares insights on leading hyper-growth design teams, operationalizing quality, and proving design's ROI. She discusses building trust, fostering team alignment, implementing a "Walk the Store" quality review process, and hiring for taste and courage.
Deep Dive Analysis
16 Topic Outline
Katie Dill's Background and Early Leadership Lessons
Pivotal Leadership Moment: Earning Trust at Airbnb
Advocating for Design ROI and the Value of Quality
Stripe's Focus on Quality as a Driver for Growth
Defining Great Design and the Role of Beauty in Products
Operationalizing Quality and Design Excellence
Lessons from Diverse Organizations on Building Quality
Stripe's 15 Essential Journeys for Holistic UX Understanding
Product Quality Review (PQR) and Calibration Process
Prioritizing Quality and Impact in Product Development
Leadership Formula: Performance = Potential - Interference
Strategies for Building and Managing Large Design Teams
Case Study: Reducing Interference and Re-organizing at Lyft
The Importance of Embracing Bold Ideas and Vision Work
Key Qualities to Look for When Hiring Designers
Stripe Press: Mission and Notable Projects
5 Key Concepts
Beauty enhances functionality
Functionality is important, but beauty makes things easier to use, more approachable, and more compelling. It also increases user trust, signaling meticulous attention to detail.
Quality is growth
The idea that focusing on quality is not separate from growth, but directly drives it. Making a product easier to use and more understandable increases adoption, usage, and positive user experience, which in turn fuels business growth.
Performance = Potential - Interference
A leadership formula suggesting that team performance can be improved by both increasing the potential of individuals (through hiring and development) and by decreasing interferences (obstacles, inefficient processes) that hinder their ability to do great work.
Meticulous Craft
An operating principle at Stripe emphasizing painstaking care in all aspects of work, from designing physical spaces and APIs to building interfaces and handling support calls. It signifies a commitment to excellence expected from everyone in the organization.
Design as Intention
At its core, design is about bringing intentionality to decisions. It involves thinking deeply about who a product or system is for and making deliberate choices to serve their needs, whether designing a doorknob, an organizational structure, or a strategy.
6 Questions Answered
Beauty enhances functionality by making products easier to use, more approachable, and compelling. It also increases user trust, signaling that painstaking detail and care have been put into the product.
Quality improvements driven by design directly lead to growth by making products easier to use and understand, increasing activation, conversion, and overall user satisfaction. For example, improving checkout flow quality can significantly increase revenue.
Great design and beauty are not opposite to functionality; they enhance it. They make things more useful, accessible, and enjoyable, leading to better user outcomes and building trust, often aligning with a shared understanding of what is aesthetically pleasing and effective.
Operationalizing quality requires a group effort, clear vision and alignment, a strong editing function, and the courage to say 'no' when something isn't good enough. It also involves understanding the product from the user's journey perspective to identify and address quality regressions.
Leaders should use the formula 'Performance = Potential - Interference,' focusing on increasing team members' potential through effective hiring and development, while simultaneously decreasing obstacles and inefficient processes that hinder their great work.
Prioritize taste and character over tools and process, as these are harder to teach. Look for great talent, high craft, humility (to listen to users and teammates), and 'chutzpah' or hustle—the courage to create, fight for great, and execute rapidly.
21 Actionable Insights
1. Implement Journey-Based Quality Review
Establish “Walk the Store” reviews for your most critical user journeys, assigning engineering, product, and design leaders to regularly (e.g., quarterly) friction log and score the end-to-end user experience from an empathetic user perspective. This process increases awareness and accountability for product quality across the organization.
2. Define an “11-Star” Ideal Vision
Counter the tendency for incremental changes by sketching out an “11-star” ideal version of your product or experience. This comprehensive North Star vision guides development, allowing teams to work backward and make measured, thoughtful progress towards a truly transformative outcome.
3. Apply Performance Formula (P=P-I)
Use the formula “Performance = Potential - Interference” to guide leadership efforts. Focus on increasing team members’ potential through effective hiring and development, while actively decreasing interferences (e.g., faulty processes, misalignment) that hinder their ability to perform.
4. Prioritize Bold Vision Work
Fight against the fear of bold ideas and the seduction of easily measurable incremental changes. Instead, prioritize vision work that considers the entirety of the user experience and aims for comprehensive, transformative improvements, even if shipped in phases.
5. Make Quality a Group Effort
Recognize that product quality is not the sole responsibility of one person or team (e.g., QA or design). Foster a shared commitment to quality across the entire organization, ensuring internal communication and standards reflect this collective ownership.
6. Cultivate Courage to Reject “Good Enough”
As a leader, develop the resolve to say “no, this isn’t good enough” even when teams have put significant effort into something. This courage to push for excellence is critical for achieving truly great products and maintaining high standards.
7. Reorganize for Co-located Teams
Break down physical and organizational silos by co-locating cross-functional teams (engineering, product, design) to foster better alignment, faster iteration cycles, and clearer communication. Simultaneously, protect dedicated creative spaces for focused design work and community building.
8. Establish Clear Vision and Alignment
Ensure there is a clear vision for what the product should look like and how all its pieces fit together. Without this alignment, even talented individuals may produce great components that don’t form a cohesive and high-quality whole.
9. Appoint a Product Editor
Designate an “editor” (like a GC or architect for a house) who oversees how all product components fit together. This person helps narrow, reduce, and remove elements that don’t align with the overall vision, ensuring cohesion and quality.
10. Listen to Build Trust
When joining a new team or implementing change, prioritize listening to understand what individuals care about and what motivates them. Earning trust by listening is crucial for bringing the team along and making positive, collaborative change.
11. Foster Dual Team Communities
Encourage team members to identify with two “t-shirts”: their cross-functional product team (e.g., marketplace) and their functional discipline (e.g., design). Building community in both areas is important for different reasons, supporting both collaboration and craft development.
12. Quality Drives Growth
Understand that quality is not separate from growth; it is growth. Making products easier to use and more understandable directly drives user adoption, increased usage, and positive word-of-mouth, leading to better business outcomes.
13. Highlight Quality’s Business Impact
Actively identify and communicate examples where quality improvements have led to measurable business outcomes (e.g., reduced support calls, increased conversion). This demonstrates the direct ROI of quality and inspires other teams to prioritize it.
14. Embed “Meticulous Craft” as a Principle
Make “meticulous craft” a core operating principle for the entire organization, not just design. This sets an expectation that everyone, regardless of function, should approach their work with painstaking care and attention to detail.
15. Share Work-in-Progress Regularly
Implement a low-maintenance system (e.g., shared Google Slides deck updated monthly) for designers to share screenshots or prototypes of their work in progress. This increases awareness across the company, helps identify overlaps, and prevents redundant efforts.
16. Prioritize Taste and Character in Hiring
When hiring designers, prioritize their inherent taste, judgment, and character over their mastery of specific tools or processes. These intrinsic qualities are harder to teach and are more indicative of long-term success and fit.
17. Hire Humble, Empathetic Designers
Seek out designers who demonstrate humility, respect, and empathy for both their users and their team members. This ensures they are curious about user needs and collaborative within a team environment.
18. Look for Courage (“Chutzpah”) in Designers
Identify candidates who possess the courage or “chutzpah” to propose bold ideas, challenge the status quo, and fight for great design. Creation is scary, and this resolve is essential for pushing boundaries.
19. Early Startup Design Hiring Strategy
For early-stage companies, hire a design “doer” who can execute, but also consider bringing on a senior design advisor. This combination ensures immediate execution while establishing a user-focused strategy and organizational structure from the start.
20. Approach All Work with Intentionality
Bring intentionality to every decision by asking “who is this thing for?” This applies to everything from product features to organizational structure, ensuring that all efforts are purpose-driven and user-centric.
21. Show Trust by Giving Space
As a leader, actively demonstrate trust in your team by giving them the space and autonomy to take on challenges, even when it feels risky. This empowers individuals and fosters their growth and confidence.
8 Key Quotes
Functionality is important. And actually beauty enhances functionality because it does make things easier to use, more approachable, more compelling to use.
Katie Dill
Quality is growth.
Katie Dill
Performance equals potential minus interference.
Katie Dill
The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state, which makes art inevitable.
Robert Henri
Reach for the stars and land on the moon.
Katie Dill
It's easier to teach tools and process than it is taste and character.
Katie Dill
One of our greatest freedoms is how we react to things.
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
Tomorrow is today.
Katie Dill
1 Protocols
Stripe's 15 Essential Journeys for Product Quality
Katie Dill- Identify 15 critical user journeys that matter deeply to users and must be executed with the highest quality.
- Assign engineering, product, and design leaders to be responsible for the quality of each journey.
- Leaders 'walk the store' (review the journeys) on a regular cadence, putting themselves in the user's shoes.
- Friction log experiences, noting what's working and not working, filing bugs, and reaching out to relevant teams.
- Score the journey based on a rubric that considers usability, utility, desirability, and surprising greatness.
- Calibrate scores in 'PQR (Product Quality Review)' meetings with multidisciplinary leaders to ensure consistent understanding of the quality bar across the company.