Growing Design at Fonoa
When I joined Fonoa as the second product design hire, the company’s design maturity was low, and design was seen more as a UI-focused role than a strategic partner in product development. Together with Nemanja (the first designer), we aimed to evolve design into a core function aligned with Fonoa’s product and business goals. By building a Design System, establishing collaboration frameworks, and hiring strategically, we transformed the design function into a scalable, high-impact team driving user-centered solutions across Fonoa’s product suite.
Challenges
Our goal was to establish design as a key, strategic function within Fonoa, with measurable outcomes tied to user and business impact:
Building and Scaling the Design System
To streamline processes and ensure consistent design quality across Fonoa’s products, I expanded our existing UI kit into a full-fledged Design System.
The Design System enabled developers to build with high-quality, interchangeable components, minimising designer involvement before QA. This allowed us to move directly from Information Architecture to high-fidelity designs, bypassing lo/mid-fi wireframes and accelerating iteration.
I introduced the Design System Request and Critique Framework and a Contribution Playbook, setting clear standards for component contributions. This established a sense of shared responsibility between design and development, supporting high-quality outcomes.
Establishing a Foundation for User Research
To promote a research-led approach and support design’s strategic integration, Nemanja and I created a user research framework until a dedicated UX Researcher was hired.
Objective Definition and Gap Analysis
Collaborating with Product, Engineering, Tax Managers, and CX teams, we identified knowledge gaps and set research objectives, focusing on user pain points, unmet needs, and competitive benchmarking.
Standardised Research Methods
We developed a research playbook with methods for User Interviews, Discovery Sessions, and Competitive Analysis, ensuring consistency and quality in our approach.
Accessible Documentation and Knowledge Sharing
Templates for interview summaries, discovery insights, and competitive analysis reports made findings digestible and easily shareable, promoting empathy and a shared understanding of users across teams.
Evangelising Research
Regular sessions presented research findings to cross-functional teams, making insights relevant to potential product improvements and advocating for a user-centered approach in decision-making.
These ceremonies bridged silos and built shared goals, helping cross-functional teams appreciate design’s strategic value and align on user-centered priorities.
Results
Efficient and consistent Design and Development
The Design System transformed the design-to-development handoff, enabling developers to build faster and more consistently across six products and over 100 features. This minimised the need for wireframes and allowed designers to focus on high-impact iterations.
Skilled, Cohesive Design Team
Our rigorous hiring process resulted in a team of skilled designers and researchers who each brought unique perspectives, fueling product innovation and driving user-centered outcomes.