From Scattered Onboarding to Day One: Confident New Hires in Half the Time
New designers were taking most of a year to feel settled. The gap pointed to how they were welcomed, not to their talent.

PlayStation · Design operations
FY23-26
UX Manager, author of the onboarding system
New onboarding design org hires
2 Primary Designers
The situation
Onboarding documentation existed in scattered versions, each owned by an individual manager, with little continuity between them. New hires often learned only how their own team worked, which led to confusion and gaps once they collaborated cross-functionally, and to friction for new hires and the colleagues around them. New designers joined a complex, multi-platform space, and in surveys and interviews they reported needing six to nine months or more to feel fully comfortable. Ramp-up depended on whoever had time to answer questions that week. Gathering every version into one place produced a 20-page document, which made it possible to see what content existed and how to organize it.
What I decided
Rebuild it, not refresh it. Instead of revising the document, I turned it into a day-one experience in Figma, where designers already work, so it taught the tools and the domain together.
Measure confidence, not completion. A finished checklist does not mean someone feels ready, so I tracked how confident new hires felt through surveys and interviews.
Design it to outlast me. I handed the next version to the design program managers, because a system that depends on one person does not scale.
3 to 6 mo
Time to confidence, down from 6 to 9 months


How the team carried it
Recent hires shaped each round by pointing out where they got stuck. The program managers took the next version forward.
What changed
Time to confidence dropped from six to nine months to three to six, based on surveys and interviews with recent hires.
Stack
Figma · Microsoft Forms · Google Suite

“She shows up for people and leads with genuine care, from developing a mentorship program to strengthening how people get onboarded.”
Blake Manzo
Design Leadership at PlayStation
What it taught me
Belonging
Belonging
Belonging
Belonging
Belonging