Setting a North Star for Mobile

A vision is only useful if people can make everyday decisions with it. Writing it was half the work; building the structure around it was the other half.

Organization

PlayStation · Mobile Experiences program

Timeline

FY26

My role

Program lead and people manager

Team

7 to 9 designers, within a mission group of about 17

Platforms

Mobile, with console touchpoints

The situation

Mobile shipped monthly while console ran on longer cycles, which made the PS App the place to test what to build next. The program spanned many surfaces and partners, and it needed one shared story about what mattered.

What I decided

Five priorities, not fifteen. I framed the FY26 North Star around connected PlayStation experience, adaptive home, building the right things through betas, notification relevance, and player retention and engagement.

Principles as decision tools. I distilled how we would judge work into five words: clarity, speed, simplicity, focus, personalization.
Make ownership explicit. I built a roles framework for the mobile design team (program lead, feature lead, support, consulted, informed) so every feature had a clear owner.

5

Program priorities

5

Design principles

1

Roles framework adopted by the team

How the team carried it

Designers adopted the roles framework as their reference. One called it "awesome to have as a source of truth," and another said it was better to be more prescriptive than less. Mobile office hours made sure work touching mobile got the right eyes early.

What changed

I presented the North Star at the FY26 kickoff, and peers called out the framing directly. Feature results were still in progress when I moved on.

Stack

Figma · Miro · Google and Figma Slides

“She has a real talent for taking complex topics and breaking them down into clear, digestible narratives that are easy for others to understand and engage with.”

Jacquelynn Dess

Program Manager at PlayStation · Partnered with Julie from the PMO side