Operationalising Innovation: Scaling design strategy within a 15-Year-Old legacy ecosystem.
When $100m+ program's deadline accelerated, the instinct to go all in on speed, I was one of the only people who saw it differently, moving fast without the right foundations would cost more than it saved. Before a single screen was designed, I first built and led a design-led operational framework.
This case study summarizes a multi-layered problem spanning dozens of projects and hundreds of journeys across multiple teams. Each case study below breaks down one piece of it.
Role
Fractional Design Director
DesignOps Lead
Duration
20 weeks
Scope
The connective tissue between experience and business strategy, where every decision balanced user needs against operational reality
Teams involved
20+ Multinational Designers
150+ cross-functional stakeholders and leadership in over 15 countries
Impact summary
120+
Journeys delivered
200+
Key designers and cross-functional stakeholders' productivity impacted
10x
Increased production velocity from 4-years into just 20-weeks
~$10M+
Budget optimised in project expenditure
One of the existing B2C designs
One of the existing B2B designs (screenshot)
About Ignite, the digital transformation program, and its challenges
The challenge and why Ignite exists
Ignite's core function was to reimagine how a conventional telco business operates in a digital-first world. With the UAE's ambitious vision of becoming a global leader in AI and innovation by 2031, it was vital to innovate at speed 🚀. However, transforming the technology was one thing, but transforming how people worked, their thoughts, and their culture, was a challenge entirely its own.
15 year-old journeys relied on offline steps, manual handoffs, and outdated infrastructure instead of digital-first paths
Fragmented Frameworks
No shared system across products. Every team solved the same problem differently, with no single source of truth
Underperforming
The compounding result – severely impacting key engagement and conversion metrics across all channels.
What we built
The Norht Star vision was to create a world-class digital-first experience across App, Web, and Tablet — built for Consumers, Entrepreneurs, and Small Businesses, with compliance safeguarded at every step and transaction time treated as a non-negotiable metric.
300+
Features
x
3
Channels
x
2
Personas
=
1,800+
Unique permutations
To get the elephant out of the room, yes, the numbers were precise and not an estimate. These are the actual decision points and permutations our team had to make given the space we had.
Building the foundations
Why ‘just ship it’ wasn't enough
Time invested
2 weeks
Approach
Proving by doing
"Why all the trouble? You could've utilised your time in actually designing."
— common pushback from stakeholders
I understood that two weeks represented a significant investment in our fast-paced environment. But one of the most important decisions I made was to invest time to save time. I started by identifying reusable journeys, to recover that lost time and also to prevent redundant work in the future.
Helicopter view of all the Consumer Acquisition journey with all its features and its degree of reusability
This was also where I got my hands dirty
I came to notice that stakeholders were hard to convince unless I prove it myself. So I did some of the work myself to prove the point instead of just pitching it, to earn their buy-in.
Optimised E2E process and governance model to ensure a consistent high-velocity delivery.
Led handoff and refinement sessions
Technical oversight and cross-functional transparency through on-demand fixes and inquiries.
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Owned a high-stakes 0-to-1 product
Led by example: built reusable journeys first, then tackled complexity.
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Sales Assistant App
What I embedded into the program
When the first drop kicked off, everything I'd previously built was about to be stress-tested at scale. To ensure that the program thrived, I've created core pillars and collaborated closely with 150+ stakeholders, transforming fragmented efforts into a high-velocity, predictable delivery engine.
Project planning and scoping
Audited UX and rebuilt the IA to improve usability
Led cross-functional workshops to surface pain points
Mapped journeys at a high level to estimate reusability, cutting delivery time
Strategic resourcing
Mapped roadmaps against design needs to estimate effort per workstream
Matched designers to products by skillset and persona expertise (B2C/B2B)
Built a task force to absorb ad-hoc requests without disrupting core delivery
Radical transparency
Weekly reports gave every stakeholder an honest read on delivery status
Monthly show-and-tells turned passive observers into active advocates
Design and production support
Ran QA and version control, comparing live builds against Figma before handoff
Introduced refinement sessions to align feedback before moving forward
What it all added up to (Or.. outcome)
TL;DR of a TL;DR — I was handed 20 weeks with no existing playbook nor role and a $100M+ program, and I had to build the strategy as well as the operating model from scratch, alone.
Honestly? I don't know how we pulled it off. But when I look back at every decision made, every piece fell exactly where I intended it to. That decision was deliberate across the operational foundations, the design contributions, and the 0-to-1 build. Here's what it all added up to.
1,600
Days estimated work
Pre-transformation
20
Weeks delivered
~$10mio
Budget optimised
The ripple effect
Beyond the product success, the design foundation I built rippled throughout the organisation. The most tangible example of this was our UAT process. By leveraging the new operational framework, I condensed a journey-review cycle that historically took three to four weeks into a 90-minute session for 60+ stakeholders.
My workflows and strategy became the clearest proof that real product leadership sometimes means the 'strategic pause'. I combined systems and product thinking to define the program's strategic intent, through aligning design, product, business, and development roadmaps towards long-term business goals. From that, I elevated the organisation's ways of working from a reactive digital factory to a proactive, product-led strategy with scale.
Personal Reflection
For the first time ever, I proved that DesignOps is an operational strategy, rather than support. By leading this program, I moved out of the shadows and into the center of the business, where the impact was very visible and recognised with scale. What began as a role without a name became the foundational backbone of a complex digital transformation.
However this wasn't an easy ride, as the changes were initially met with hesitation. As mentioned in the previous chapter, I chose to get my hands dirty and personally apply the new systems in real-time, and then demonstrated the value of investing in time to save time in the long run, all the while not sacrificing quality. This approach has effectively removed all skepticism, proving that the 'Just Ship It' mindset way was costing us more than it was saving.
You don't find out what your foundations are worth until everything is on the line. Now I know, and so does everyone who was in that room. This taught me more than just having to lead projects, but having redefined how the organisation interprets the value of a design-led ecosystem.
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Always open to conversations! Whether it's about Design Operations, Design Leadership, UX/UI Design, or just exchanging notes on what's working and what isn't. Looking to bring on a Product Design, want to collaborate, or just want to geek out? Let's have a chat
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