01 · Evidence
Where this showed up in real products
IBWTSole Designer · 2024 — now
A Design Function Where There Was None
Engineering studio: no designer, no product-management layer. I set up review, handoff and component ownership, set where AI is allowed to act and where it is not, and moved design into the codebase. More than two years in, it is still a function of one, and it ships a trading platform and an enterprise CRM.
Read the case →UvoteamDesigner → Product Owner
A Research-and-Test Loop for a Team That Had None
Interface decisions shipped on stakeholder opinion. I replaced the argument with measurement — four sequential experiments on the most expensive page — and in the final year ran that loop as Product Owner across a ten-person cross-functional team, owning the roadmap. The strongest finding was never shipped; I documented its cost afterwards rather than forcing the decision beforehand.
Read the case →upSWOTDesign Team Lead
Eight Designers on a Regulated Platform
Set up the review and critique process and the bar for flows, states and edge cases, and kept design aligned with the roadmap on a platform where compliance defined the product before the interface did.
Read the case →SaldoAppsDesign Team Lead
Four Designers, Three Platforms, Five Products
Hiring and onboarding, regular 1:1s, written career development plans, and a critique format where feedback has to name the problem, the reason and at least one option. Workload planning was half the job: five release rhythms against a fixed amount of design capacity.
Read the case →02 · Method
How I actually do it
STEP 01
Build Before Hiring
The function comes first: review, handoff, component ownership and a quality bar, proven on shipped work. A hire then joins a process that exists rather than a hope that one will form.
STEP 02
Engineering as the First Audience
The handoff is a working component with its states, not a picture, so design review moves earlier — a prototype is real and can be poked at — and I know what a decision costs before I ask for it.
STEP 03
Critique That Ends in a Decision
Feedback has to name the problem, the reason, and at least one viable option. A designer leaves a review with a decision, not with the feeling that their work was dismissed.
STEP 04
1:1s, Written Plans, Counted Capacity
Regular 1:1s and a written career development plan per designer. Workload planning with effort estimates, because five products on their own release rhythms will otherwise spend the team’s capacity on their own terms.
03 · Stack
Tools, in service of the above
Management & Ops
JiraMiro / FigJamFigma Dev ModeGitHub
Design Systems Ops
Tokens StudioStorybookGitHub PRsFigma Variables
People & Growth
Weekly 1:1sWritten Career PlansStructured CritiqueWorkload & Effort Estimation
Roadmapping
Roadmap Ownership (PO)Capacity PlanningJTBDStakeholder Facilitation
The full version
What the complete version of this page adds
- The per-component boundary tables from upSWOT — what you can change, what you cannot — that let eight designers be trained on tokens rather than supervised
- The three build gates at IBWT, with their real output: how a function of one holds a bar without a reviewer in the room
- The Uvoteam programme from the roadmap side: what shipped on measurement, and the winner that did not
It lives at alex.zhovnir.com/craft/leadership, behind a password — client agreements, not theatre. Send me a note and I’ll open it: alex@zhovnir.com.