Establishing a new high-performing design team at SkillsWave

Building SkillsWave's design team after its spin off from D2L as a new design leader

My Role: Manager of Product Design

2 Designers, 45 Person Company

July, 2024-present

New company, new team

In April 2024, D2L annouced that is product, D2L Wave, would be spinning off into its own company called SkillsWave. As part of the spin out they offered me, a Senior Product Designer on D2L Wave, the position of Manager of Product Design at SkillsWave.

This is my journey of establishing the high-performing design team at SkillsWave in my first design lead role.

Defining SkillsWave's design process right away

Within weeks of SkillsWave becoming an official company, conversations about speed, optimization, and differentiation were everywhere. We had a new CEO that wasn't afraid to change things. I needed a new design process for SkillsWave's needs.

D2L’s design process gave us a strong starting point, but it was built for a large enterprise product. One wrong release could have a huge negative impact. SkillsWave could (and needed) to move faster. I needed to redefine SkillsWave's design process so we could move faster, but not lose the user-centred rigour.

SkillsWave's Design Process

Hover or click on the image to see changes

Design Process Stages (Summarized)

In align, we gather inputs and business drivers from product management and stakeholders, align on the problem to be solved, and empathize with end users to determine needs and impacts.

In explore & check, designers explore different ways to solve a problem. As we explore, we seek out feedback and inputs from product management, stakeholders, development and end users to narrow down to the strongest exploration that we can move into Make.

In make, we take the strongest exploration and create pixel-perfect designs that are ready for implementation (also known as a high-fidelity prototype). All interactions, copy, and final details are ironed out in this stage. We also prepare designs for the monitor stage by coming up with quantitative research questions and data tracking events that can be tracked in our data capturing platform.

In monitor, we look at the performance of a new feature in our data gathering platform and other channels. This helps us answer the research questions we created in make.

Design Process Stages (Summarized)

I built a lighter left diamond process for faster timelines and more user-validated rigour and iteration post-implementation. The shape of the model is intentional: it's not really linear. One loop of hexagons emphasizes iteration before build and the other emphasizes user validation and iteration after release.

The Result: A design process that I could communicate to the rest of the company, built for SkillsWave.

I brought design into high-impact, high-visibility initiatives early

After creating the design process, my goal was to re-establish design's value. Design was told to focus on SkillsWave Guide (you can read about that in my SkillsWave Guide case study here), but I took the opportunity to jump in on three other initiatives that ended up needing design's help.

Project 1: Internal Admin Roles and Permissions

SkillsWave’s admin tools were all internal, so I was told this project would be "development only" and design wouldn't need to get involved.

I didn't see it that way. 👀

Project 1: Internal Admin Roles and Permissions

SkillsWave’s admin tools were all internal, so I was told this project would be "development only" and design wouldn't need to get involved.

I didn't see it that way. 👀

Roles and permissions were critical to future product growth. We needed a flexible system that supported internal workflows without creating constraints later, especially as some of those workflows were expected to become customer-facing over time. Additionally, almost every team outside of product used these workflows to do business. We couldn't afford a major interruption if we got these roles and permissions wrong.

To handle this, I created an “admin inventory” Miro board to map how admin worked, then turned the project into a systems analysis growth opportunity for a newer designer on my team. The designer mapped each admin tool, learned the workflows from real users, and designed a lightweight permissions page.

The Result: Smoother admin workflows, significant growth for my newer designer, and the whole company saw design's value because we made each of their workflows in admin better.

Project 2: I brought clarity to SkillsWave's PLG business strategy

Product-led growth (PLG) is a business strategy where the product drives acquisition, retention, and expansion. For SkillsWave, PLG would help us reach small to mid-market employers and remove friction from the sales process.

While PLG's definition is straightforward, as we were planning I realized everyone in the company was talking about something different when they said "PLG". Product wanted a nice onboarding experience, marketing wanted pricing and nudges, and some teams thought PLG was a new feature launch. I realized we needed a shared understanding of PLG and the new user journey.

Not a real image, but most accurately reflects the feeling of early PLG planning :)

Design wasn't set to work on PLG for a few months, but I jumped in earlier to understand the space and create the shared PLG understanding.

I created a living document called The Stages of PLG. Using all of my research on PLG (and inspired by the ProductLed Playbook), this gave us a simple way to bucket all of the work we were discussing into tangible stages of what our product would look like in a PLG model.

An example of one part of the "Stages of PLG" deck. Most is omitted due to confidentiality. This was presented to the company president and then key leaders of all teams. We later iterated on these stages to include tangible KPIs and ways we could measure success.

I also mapped our existing product experience to those stages, highlighted where users would experience value, and identified the gaps.

A product journey map of SkillsWave, key moments of existing value, gaps, and opportunities, all mapped to the PLG stages.

Both of these artifacts combined with a lot of research aligned the company around the same journey and value points. These stages also highlighted where we needed to start: marketing could support discovery and consideration, design could shape onboarding and setup, and development could start building the technical infrastructure needed to create employer instances with minimal friction.

After this research, everyone understood where to start, and design started on the onboarding experience

A designer on my team designed the onboarding experience. I set the direction of a simple, delightful onboarding experience that prioritized skills and regularly collaborated in critiques with her to refine each page.

The Result: The stages of PLG are still being used today as we continue to build out our self-serve offering, and our PLG onboarding experience launched in June, 2025.

I found and acted on opportunities for user research

At D2L we had a dedicate user research team, so moving to SkillsWave with only 3 designers and no researchers, I knew we would have to get creative with finding opportunities for user research. I found the first opportunity for user research <3 months into the role.

Direction I set while this onboarding flow was coming together:

The onboarding flow will match the marketing brand, not our design system brand: We decided to adapt parts of the product design system to better match the marketing brand within the self-serve workflow. The reason was to create a more seamless transition from skillswave.com into the product. I worked with my team to make that call, then handed execution to a designer on my team
Prioritizing moments of fun and delight throughout the flow. Because PLG made the product more directly user-facing than ever before, I wanted the experience to feel welcoming and encouraging. That led to details like a celebratory confetti moment at the end of setup and other lighter touches throughout the workflow.
- Part of this decision involved ramping my team up on Rive animations, which we used to implement all of the animations in this flow.
Finally, we approached the experience with iteration in mind. In line with the design process I had established, the workflow was designed so we could monitor usage, learn from real behavior, and refine it after launch. While I cannot share the details, we have since adjusted steps and removed fields based on usage patterns and feedback.

This project was a good example of the role I was playing at the time: setting direction, creating clarity, and staying close enough to guide execution, while giving my team room to grow and deliver meaningful work.

Because of this work, SkillsWave was able to launch the first phase of its PLG model in 2025. There is still more to build, but defining and delivering that first step unlocked self-serve for the business, led to new pilot clients, gave sales a new “try the full product for free” motion, and opened the door to a new confidential potential opportunity with a large client.

Opportunity 1: Connecting with client success to research with our clients

When SkillsWave Guide launched, I went to client success with a question — would a client let us talk to their employees about SkillsWave Guide?

The answer was yes 🙌 We ran 5 focus groups and 7 individual interviews with a client on SkillsWave Guide.

The study was a collaborative effort between me and a designer on my team who wanted to learn more about research. I focused on logistics, working with client success, and the Rose, Bud, Thorn activity for the focus groups, and the other designer wrote the background questions and the research plan for the 1:1 interviews.

Direction I set while this onboarding flow was coming together:

The onboarding flow will match the marketing brand, not our design system brand: We decided to adapt parts of the product design system to better match the marketing brand within the self-serve workflow. The reason was to create a more seamless transition from skillswave.com into the product. I worked with my team to make that call, then handed execution to a designer on my team
Prioritizing moments of fun and delight throughout the flow. Because PLG made the product more directly user-facing than ever before, I wanted the experience to feel welcoming and encouraging. That led to details like a celebratory confetti moment at the end of setup and other lighter touches throughout the workflow.
- Part of this decision involved ramping my team up on Rive animations, which we used to implement all of the animations in this flow.
Finally, we approached the experience with iteration in mind. In line with the design process I had established, the workflow was designed so we could monitor usage, learn from real behavior, and refine it after launch. While I cannot share the details, we have since adjusted steps and removed fields based on usage patterns and feedback.

This is a Miro board we used for research. It includes background questions and ice breakers, and a Rose, Bud, Thorn activity where users could mark different parts of SkillsWave Guide with what they liked and what they struggled with.

Direction I set while this onboarding flow was coming together:

The onboarding flow will match the marketing brand, not our design system brand: We decided to adapt parts of the product design system to better match the marketing brand within the self-serve workflow. The reason was to create a more seamless transition from skillswave.com into the product. I worked with my team to make that call, then handed execution to a designer on my team
Prioritizing moments of fun and delight throughout the flow. Because PLG made the product more directly user-facing than ever before, I wanted the experience to feel welcoming and encouraging. That led to details like a celebratory confetti moment at the end of setup and other lighter touches throughout the workflow.
- Part of this decision involved ramping my team up on Rive animations, which we used to implement all of the animations in this flow.
Finally, we approached the experience with iteration in mind. In line with the design process I had established, the workflow was designed so we could monitor usage, learn from real behavior, and refine it after launch. While I cannot share the details, we have since adjusted steps and removed fields based on usage patterns and feedback.

While the study findings are confidential, this study led directly to improvements in SkillsWave Guide and while this was only one client, we still gained a better understanding of their employees were using SkillsWave Guide.

After the study, we improved skill set search by adding skills to the context of search, and highlighting those skills within the skill sets. Before this study, only skill set names could be searched.

Opportunity 2: Connecting with L&D Professionals in our network

I created a study to understand how L&D leaders thought about adopting new software tools on their teams. The results from this study would feed into my research on PLG.

To recruit participants, I talked to all of the senior leaders in my company and got them to message their networks for L&D leaders who could participate. This led to 4 conversations with L&D leaders outside of SkillsWave.

Direction I set while this onboarding flow was coming together:

The onboarding flow will match the marketing brand, not our design system brand: We decided to adapt parts of the product design system to better match the marketing brand within the self-serve workflow. The reason was to create a more seamless transition from skillswave.com into the product. I worked with my team to make that call, then handed execution to a designer on my team
Prioritizing moments of fun and delight throughout the flow. Because PLG made the product more directly user-facing than ever before, I wanted the experience to feel welcoming and encouraging. That led to details like a celebratory confetti moment at the end of setup and other lighter touches throughout the workflow.
- Part of this decision involved ramping my team up on Rive animations, which we used to implement all of the animations in this flow.
Finally, we approached the experience with iteration in mind. In line with the design process I had established, the workflow was designed so we could monitor usage, learn from real behavior, and refine it after launch. While I cannot share the details, we have since adjusted steps and removed fields based on usage patterns and feedback.

This was a "live journey mapping" activity I created for L&D leaders to walk through a time when they implemented a new tool or system in their company. I took notes and built the journey map as they were speaking. Details removed due to confidentiality.

We took the findings from this study into our PLG research and the onboarding workflow.

Direction I set while this onboarding flow was coming together:

The onboarding flow will match the marketing brand, not our design system brand: We decided to adapt parts of the product design system to better match the marketing brand within the self-serve workflow. The reason was to create a more seamless transition from skillswave.com into the product. I worked with my team to make that call, then handed execution to a designer on my team
Prioritizing moments of fun and delight throughout the flow. Because PLG made the product more directly user-facing than ever before, I wanted the experience to feel welcoming and encouraging. That led to details like a celebratory confetti moment at the end of setup and other lighter touches throughout the workflow.
- Part of this decision involved ramping my team up on Rive animations, which we used to implement all of the animations in this flow.
Finally, we approached the experience with iteration in mind. In line with the design process I had established, the workflow was designed so we could monitor usage, learn from real behavior, and refine it after launch. While I cannot share the details, we have since adjusted steps and removed fields based on usage patterns and feedback.

The Results: We regularly connect with client success on opportunities for research, and everyone on my team knows how to plan, facilitate, and analyze a usability study. We've run 5 studies so far! Our latest study used AI prototypes made with Claude 🎉

The result: A strong, valued design team that keeps its seat at the table

The design processes and strategic decisions I put in place during SkillsWave’s first year helped build a strong, respected design team. We now play a key role in shaping new features and workflows, and across the company we are known for bringing clarity, polished experiences, and strong cross-functional collaboration. The foundation we built in that first year also created new opportunities for the team, including budget for AI tooling, more direct access to clients, and multiple usability studies with both clients and non-clients.

Direction I set while this onboarding flow was coming together:

The onboarding flow will match the marketing brand, not our design system brand: We decided to adapt parts of the product design system to better match the marketing brand within the self-serve workflow. The reason was to create a more seamless transition from skillswave.com into the product. I worked with my team to make that call, then handed execution to a designer on my team
Prioritizing moments of fun and delight throughout the flow. Because PLG made the product more directly user-facing than ever before, I wanted the experience to feel welcoming and encouraging. That led to details like a celebratory confetti moment at the end of setup and other lighter touches throughout the workflow.
- Part of this decision involved ramping my team up on Rive animations, which we used to implement all of the animations in this flow.
Finally, we approached the experience with iteration in mind. In line with the design process I had established, the workflow was designed so we could monitor usage, learn from real behavior, and refine it after launch. While I cannot share the details, we have since adjusted steps and removed fields based on usage patterns and feedback.

Since 2024, the design team has helped launch:

A self-serve product-led growth model
SkillsWave Guide
A new learner profile
Improved semantic search and skill tagging
A new employee widget
Multiple improvements to provider and approval workflows
and a lot more! (and more coming!)

What's next: Stronger prototypes, efficient iterations, and real product code contributions using Claude and Cursor

A sneak peak 👀

Direction I set while this onboarding flow was coming together:

The onboarding flow will match the marketing brand, not our design system brand: We decided to adapt parts of the product design system to better match the marketing brand within the self-serve workflow. The reason was to create a more seamless transition from skillswave.com into the product. I worked with my team to make that call, then handed execution to a designer on my team
Prioritizing moments of fun and delight throughout the flow. Because PLG made the product more directly user-facing than ever before, I wanted the experience to feel welcoming and encouraging. That led to details like a celebratory confetti moment at the end of setup and other lighter touches throughout the workflow.
- Part of this decision involved ramping my team up on Rive animations, which we used to implement all of the animations in this flow.
Finally, we approached the experience with iteration in mind. In line with the design process I had established, the workflow was designed so we could monitor usage, learn from real behavior, and refine it after launch. While I cannot share the details, we have since adjusted steps and removed fields based on usage patterns and feedback.

This small section of exploration was made completely in AI and uploaded to my local dev environment. All of the styles match our SkillsWave design system and they were created in a local demo. The rest cannot be shared due to confidentiality.

Design has local dev environments on our machines, and we are actively:

Making contributions to small front-end focused PRs to test AI's limits on what we can improve in-product. We're hoping we can help making a dent during "bug fixing weeks" and add more polish to our front end.
Interactive prototypes that we can use for our development specs.
Creating Claude skills that help us throughout the design process.

All of this has given us a massive amount of capability and potential to make really interactive prototypes for user research, more accurate specs for devs when describing interactions, and maybe even some potential for component creation in the future.

✨ More coming soon!