Klarna UX team management
At Klarna, I led the design team for the Shopping Incentives space during two years. During this period I helped the team work in a highly demanding context, while Klarna took steps to move from a net loss of $100m per month, to profitability.
I was responsable for both people-management and elevating design quality in the product area.
Working method
As Domain UX Design Leader at Klarna
Leading a group of 4–9 designers, in a mix of cross-functional, and central design team
2022–24
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Duarte is an excellent leader with a knack for leading and hiring designers. He's made our design process better and more efficient. He's not just passionate about design but also actively involved in the work. He's committed to user testing and follows design best practices. His energy and drive make him a great addition to any design team and I strongly recommend him for any design leadership role!
As a manager, Duarte is thoughtful, kind, and supportive. He consistently provided both positive and constructive feedback, fostering an environment of growth and development. His humane approach to leadership instilled a deep sense of trust and confidence within the team. Under his mentorship, I experienced significant growth as a designer, and to this day, he remains a great mentor and friend.
Leadership style
To help the team remain productive and creative in a demanding context, I worked with product and engineering leads to prioritise the right work. I aimed to increase collaboration and create a safe space to continue our user centric work while meeting challenging business goals.
My leadership style is rooted in transparency, enabling short feedback loops and creating psychological safety to help people work creatively and engage with what they’re doing. I work with senior stakeholders to solidify a product vision to work with, and create space for the work that makes design effective — from choosing impactful and efficient UX research methodologies, or collaborating with data to ensure we make the right decisions, to maintaining an open agile working environment with all cross functional partners to work effectively together.
Design vision
I take the lead on the formulation of a UX Vision for the entire working group. This is so helpful to ease collaboration towards a single unified and tangible goal.
Agile implementation
At Klarna, with different reorg stages, I ran workshops and sessions to continuously improve and adapt our ways of working to our needs. Adapting agile best-practices, and empowering the team to influence its working routines creates a productive and creative working environment.
Examples of adaptations to different working scenarios included the team defining adaptations to their own rituals, such as async daily standups with a synchronous weekly tactical, or shifting between fully cross-functional teams, and an adaptive central design team based on evolving design needs and staffing for the domain.
Feedback loops
Throughout my time leading the team, I aimed to continuously shorten feedback loops by guiding sessions and setting up different opportunities for feedback. Developing templates for different purposes, from day-to-day peer feedback, to complex stakeholder alignment sessions managing conflicting needs. This structured approach speeds up the review processes while making it focused and useful for individual designers.
Design playbook
I developed Klarna’s Design Playbook to outline a design process — understanding problems, exploring solutions, and enabling continuous iteration. The aim of this is twofold: to support designers with guidance on their working process, but also to bridge knowledge gaps with cross functional partners on how to best collaborate with design.