Keeping Design’s Seat at the Table

Design does its best work in the room where the problem is still being defined, not only when screens are due. Across every program my team supported, I worked to bring design upstream and keep it there.

Organization

PlayStation ·
Mobile, platform, and media program

Timeline

FY2023-26

My role

UX Manager

Team

7 to 9 designers, product and engineering partners, platform leadership, and an external partner team

Platforms

console, mobile, web

The situation

Design typically joined product development close to when screens were needed. Partners had limited visibility into how the design team was organized, and many were used to one dedicated designer each, while my designers were often split 50-50 or 60-40 across areas. On some programs, such as a partner-built streaming experience, design's role had not yet been defined.

What I decided

Make the structure visible. I shared a single slide on how the team was organized and why split allocation kept us lean and growing, so partners knew how to work with us.

Get in early, then hand off. I handled early triage myself and passed the baton to the designer near kickoff, so ideation and the creative work stayed theirs. I sized each designer's exposure to early ambiguity by level.
Align on timing. I shared design's milestone dates in cross-functional kickoffs so delivery plans accounted for design lead times, and documented how to handle disclosed and non-disclosed work.
Define roles where they're unclear. On the partner-built streaming program, I confirmed with a director that the partner owned the program while our team stayed responsible for the holistic console experience, and built a lightweight RACI so my designer knew exactly what they owned.
Test instead of argue. When design and product disagreed about removing navigation labels, I proposed an A/B test instead of one side winning. When two stakeholders asked for opposite research scopes, I proposed two smaller, focused studies.

Make the structure visible. I shared a single slide on how the team was organized and why split allocation kept us lean and growing, so partners knew how to work with us.

Get in early, then hand off. I handled early triage myself and passed the baton to the designer near kickoff, so ideation and the creative work stayed theirs. I sized each designer's exposure to early ambiguity by level.
Align on timing. I shared design's milestone dates in cross-functional kickoffs so delivery plans accounted for design lead times, and documented how to handle disclosed and non-disclosed work.
Define roles where they're unclear. On the partner-built streaming program, I confirmed with a director that the partner owned the program while our team stayed responsible for the holistic console experience, and built a lightweight RACI so my designer knew exactly what they owned.
Test instead of argue. When design and product disagreed about removing navigation labels, I proposed an A/B test instead of one side winning. When two stakeholders asked for opposite research scopes, I proposed two smaller, focused studies.

Key Outcomes

60/40

Typical designer split across product areas

RACI

Clear ownership on partner-owned work

Approved

Third-party brand standard

How the team carried it

Partners learned they could invite design in early, and engineering gained an earlier seat in refinement so "done" meant the same thing on both sides. On the streaming program, my designer led the console review, and the team set a brand standard for a third-party TV icon that the visual design team approved. When I pressure-tested an engineering constraint on a multi-device flow, the constraint held, and the engineering lead thanked me for the challenge because it strengthened the flow.

What changed

Over time, our design lead moved into exploration, validation, and definition, not only execution. Design's role was clear on partner-owned work as well as our own.