OpenShift Data Science — Growth
Scaling the product, the team, and my own role — from a single designer's MVP to a twelve-designer organization with a mandate to reshape the platform's future.
01 · Context
Bigger product, bigger team, harder problems
After the Tech Preview, we knew the product needed to expand, and as it grew, so did the design team while the problems we were solving got harder as the underlying technology advanced. This condenses a lot of time and detail into a single story of the product's growth and my leadership within it.
02 · Understanding the workflow
Aligning a technical stakeholder group on what came next
I convened a virtual face-to-face with stakeholders to get everyone aligned on how to expand the product's features. Ahead of time, I worked with the PM on a high-level workflow and narrowed the agenda to three focus areas; during the session, we split into three teams to build out detailed workflows for each.
Since the room was highly technical, I took the two workflows we'd prioritized for the next phase — project creation and deployment — and reframed them from the user's point of view. It quickly became clear there was more work than I could accomplish alone, so I focused on project creation and made the case to bring on a second designer. When they joined the team a couple of months later, we split the design work and I stayed lead and the UX point of contact.
03 · Project view design & testing
Building the product's main touchpoint from research to shipped flow
The project view would become users' main touchpoint, so we started by interviewing internal data scientists about what a full-service product should include. Using my original MVP designs as a starting point, I expanded them through weekly design feedback sessions with stakeholders.
Working with UX Research, we ran a usability study on early prototypes that surfaced a handful of minor issues which we quickly fixed. Feedback from key early-access customers helped refine the design into a full flow, and over several months I worked closely with engineering to implement it, compromising where needed to ship something that performed well for users. After launch, we ran another round of testing to learn what to improve next.
04 · F2F meeting & team expansion
Rapid growth: from two designers to a full team of twelve
As engineering grew, there wasn't yet a clear plan for how the product would serve users beyond "add more functionality." I proposed a second F2F to fix that. The session dug into new target users, their goals, and desired outcomes, informing how to present new features to a much wider audience. Given the product's success, leadership committed to rapid expansion: six more designers, a content designer, and a dedicated UX researcher joining the two of us already on the team.
05 · Product, team & role expansion
From day-to-day design to coaching and leadership
With new designers joining, my role shifted toward coaching and leadership — mentoring an intern and several new associate designers alongside the experienced full-timers. This phase added major new features: pipelines, model serving, and multiple admin settings pages, alongside deeper research and new product telemetry.
As the surface area grew, conversations with customers and sales — and our own review of the product — made it clear wayfinding was becoming a problem: newer users needed more direction now that they had many options. The product had also earned enough success that UX leadership wanted it to showcase expanded visual design. We addressed both by adding a Home page, giving users an obvious landing point and clearer direction to their most critical tasks.
Visual design updates continued with the product becoming the pilot for Red Hat's updated open-source design system, PatternFly 6 — including both light and dark mode.
06 · Future product vision
Stepping back to reimagine the product's information architecture
To expand our reach toward a future vision, I worked with several senior UX practitioners to interview external data scientists about their met and unmet needs with existing AI/ML tools. We brought that needs analysis to the UX leads to imagine where the product could go — then opened it up to the entire design team, junior to senior, to brainstorm how to get there.
Combining that work with competitive analysis, Field Architect feedback, and ongoing discussions with engineering and product stakeholders, we identified the critical first step: an updated information architecture. Without it, we'd keep bolting features onto a navigation structure designed for a four-page product.
07 · Next steps
A platform, and a team, built to keep growing
The IA work became the foundation for the product's next phase, and the team that started as one designer is a full organization capable of moving it forward. The team's next goal is to hold steady against competing priorities and a fast-moving technology landscape, while continuing to grow the designers who will do the work. What started as a four-page MVP is now a platform with room to expand.