Building beautiful products with Stripe’s Head of Design | Katie Dill (Stripe, Airbnb, Lyft)
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.