Work

Customer Experience & Product Transformation

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Establishing A Design-Led, Insight-Driven Product Organisation

Establishing A Design-Led, Insight-Driven Product Organisation

Smokeball

Established and scaled product design within a high-growth SaaS business, aligning product, CX and engineering around more insight-led, outcome-driven decision-making and laying the foundations for AI-enabled product experiences.

The Problem

When I joined Smokeball in 2023, the product had scaled to US$50M ARR through a founder- and engineering-led approach. While effective early on, it had resulted in a feature-rich but fragmented user experience, with no dedicated design function.

Customer insight existed across Product, Customer Experience and Support, but wasn’t consistently connected to decision-making.

At the same time, the legal-tech market was evolving, with increasing expectations around usability, workflow efficiency and AI-enabled capabilities.

Approach

1. Establishing a balanced product operating model

Partnered with the CPO to redesign the product organisation and shift toward a more outcome-focused model.

  • Evolved the “two-in-a-box” (Product Owner + Engineering) into a “three-in-a-box” model (Product Management, Product Design, Engineering)

  • Positioned design as an equal partner in shaping product direction and delivery

  • Transitioned existing Product Owners into a dedicated Product Delivery function

  • Introduced Product Managers to drive strategy and customer outcomes

  • Temporarily led Product Management while establishing the function and preparing for future leadership

2. Building design and product capability

  • Defined new roles, created job descriptions and hired Product Designers and Product Managers

  • Established design practices, rituals and ways of working

  • Introduced more structured discovery and user-centred design approaches

3. Connecting customer insight to decision-making

  • Partnered with Customer Experience and Support teams to strengthen feedback loops

  • Improved visibility and accessibility of customer insight across product teams

  • Explored tools (e.g. Twine) to transform large volumes of customer conversations into more usable, scalable insight

4. Introducing AI into the product experience

  • Led design of AI-powered product experiences (including Archie)

  • Explored how AI could support customer workflows and improve productivity

  • Balanced opportunity with the realities of delivery, adoption and team capacity

5. Aligning cross-functional teams

Over time, aligned:

  • Product Design

  • Engineering

  • Product Delivery

  • Product Marketing

  • Customer Experience

  • Customer Support

Creating more integrated, end-to-end ways of working across the organisation.

My Role

Owned

Led

Contributed to

  • Establishment of Product Design and CX alignment

  • Product design direction and integration into product development

  • Evolution of the product operating model (with CPO)

  • Design system strategy and implementation

  • Hiring and development of Product Design capability

  • Introduction of design practices and discovery approaches

  • Redesign of key product experiences

  • Design of AI-powered product experiences

  • Product Management function setup

  • Product strategy and roadmap alignment

  • Product roadmap prioritisation

  • Cross-functional organisational alignment

Outcomes

  • Clarified ownership across product, design and engineering

  • Improved cross-functional collaboration and alignment

  • Shifted toward more insight-led, outcome-driven product decision-making

  • Increased visibility and use of customer insight across teams

  • Established the foundations for a scalable, design-led and AI-enabled product organisation


Embedding design, product and engineering as equal partners, supported by real customer insight, is critical to delivering consistent, high-quality experiences.