Role
Product Design Lead
Type
Leadership
STARK Design leadership: United by design
TL;DR
When I joined STARK as Product Design Lead, there wasn't a true "design team." Designers worked in isolation across different product teams with no shared practices. Design was typically brought in late for visual polish rather than to shape products from the start. I set out to change this by bringing people together, creating clarity without unnecessary process, and elevating design's value within the business. Through deliberate leadership and strategic changes, we transformed design from an executional role to a collaborative, strategic function with genuine influence.
Who is STARK?
STARK Group is a leading European distributor of heavy building materials for the construction industry. With a decentralised model, its 1,100+ branches across the UK, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway are managed locally under the motto "Local ownership. Global leadership." Sustainability is central to their mission, focusing on decarbonising construction and advancing net-zero initiatives.
My role
When I arrived at STARK, the internal digital product teams felt like stepping into a classic scale-up environment. The digital initiatives were growing rapidly, with everyone wearing multiple hats. Design was particularly fragmented, with no structured approach to how it fit within the wider product and business strategy. Designers were scattered across teams, working asynchronously and feeling disconnected from one another.
Multiple digital products were in development across different locations, with development teams split between Denmark, Poland and Portugal, adding coordination challenges to an already fragmented design approach. Without a clear framework, design wasn't always considered early enough in the process, limiting its influence on product direction.
My focus became strengthening team culture, introducing structure where it mattered, and ensuring design played a more active role in shaping products and business decisions.
My 'Leadership Playbook'
My approach to shaping a great, sustainable design culture has four parts:
Start with a solid base: Creating psychological safety and trust is fundamental. I build environments where people feel valued and heard.
Grow and evolve together: Like a Pokémon trainer, I help team members level up their skills and evolve their capabilities (no rare candies, just genuine development opportunities).
Make the day-to-day flow: Effective processes should remove friction, not create it. I establish structured workflows that enable collaboration.
Aim for a shared vision: When everyone understands the bigger picture, work becomes meaningful. I connect design efforts to broader business goals.
I applied these principles at STARK to turn our scattered design efforts into something that actually worked together. First things first: I needed to get people talking to each other properly.
The people
Building trust and culture
From the start, I focused on fostering an environment of trust and openness across the geographically split team. I introduced regular team rituals: weekly kick-offs, mid-week work reviews, Friday vibe check, and casual sessions like Best thing on the Internet to spark bonding.
We also established a dedicated weekly collaboration day; a focused time when team members based in the office in Denmark would sit together in one shared workspace, while remote team members joined via Teams. This helped foster a stronger sense of connection, ensured better knowledge sharing, and reduced feelings of isolation.
I was mindful not to overload with meetings. Instead, we kept our touchpoints intentional, creating space for collaboration while ensuring everyone felt heard. Over time, these rituals built a foundation of trust and belonging, helping the team feel genuinely connected despite the distance.
Playbook principle: Start with a solid base (and coffee)
Why it matters?
A strong foundation sets the tone for the team, building trust and ensuring everyone feels safe and valued.
Core principles:
Clarity and transparency: Communicate clear goals, roles, and expectations
Psychological safety: Encourage open dialogue, view mistakes as learning opportunities
Intentional leadership: Lead by example through active listening and clear direction
Shared purpose: Strengthen team identity so everyone feels connected
Understanding the landscape
Before making changes, I needed to understand how design was perceived across the business. I spoke with stakeholders, including Product Owners, SMEs, Scrum Masters, Engineers and Developers, to understand their perspectives.
Consistent themes emerged:
Design was often brought in too late in the process
There was no clear collaboration process between design, product, and development
The wider business had limited understanding of what design could contribute beyond execution
The term Product Design was new to the business, and the role of a Product Designer wasn’t fully understood. Many saw UX and UI as separate roles rather than a discipline that included research, strategy, and problem-solving. Part of my role was to help the wider organisation understand the broader value of this.
Creating structure for design growth
As the team expanded, we needed clarity on roles and skills, both for existing team members and new joiners. Without this, we lacked a foundation for proper growth and integration.
We mapped out current skills and growth goals through team workshops, which I used to shape role definitions for Designers and Researchers at different levels. This collaborative approach ensured everyone felt invested in the framework we were building, and it brought clarity around expectations and progression.
I also made sure existing team members' titles accurately reflected their responsibilities in the new Product Design team structure. This clarity helped others across the business understand the team's purpose and contribution.
Playbook principle: Grow and evolve together
Why it matters?
Nurturing talent is key to keeping the team vibrant and future ready.
Core principles:
Smart hiring: Bringing in diverse skills and perspectives
Always learning: Creating space for training, mentoring and knowledge sharing
Clear roles: Showing everyone how they can grow in their role
The process
Improving daily collaboration and visibility
With the team culture stabilised and clear roles in place, I turned my attention to workflows. Design work had no dedicated space in Microsoft Azure DevOps, making it difficult to track progress or plan effectively.
I identified a product team to trial a more structured approach. We set up a dedicated design backlog to improve visibility and prioritisation and shaped a workflow that encouraged earlier conversations between design, product, and development.
We ran a three-week sprint trial and documented the process. The results were immediately positive: teams worked together more smoothly, feedback loops were shorter, and last-minute design changes were reduced. Other teams quickly took notice, and FOMO kicked in. They wanted to trial it as well, which was exactly the kind of organic adoption I was hoping for.
Playbook principle: Make the day-to-day flow
Why it matters?
Good processes help teams focus on meaningful work instead of dealing with confusion.
Core principles:
Clear workflows: Give design a structured process without overcomplicating things
Cross-functional alignment: Make sure design, product, and development work together smoothly
Iterative improvement: Regularly check what's working and tweak as needed
Introducing a design system
With improved collaboration processes in place, we faced another challenge. Our products lacked visual and technical consistency. Each product had reached different levels of design maturity, making them appear disconnected from one another.
Some products were already using Tailwind CSS, while others had more custom setups. As more teams started adopting our structured way of working, it felt like the right moment to bring in more consistency. Not to make everything look the same, but to start thinking about a Design System. I called it the "red thread", a way to connect our products, keep their individual personalities, and still make it clear they belonged to the same family.
We focused initially on STARK's internal digital products, with plans to extend to customer-facing applications once the system reached maturity. Given STARK's legacy landscape, we needed a pragmatic "evolution over revolution" approach. We started small with atomic design principles: core elements, atoms, molecules, organisms and design tokens in Figma. We selected one product as our test case and worked closely with front-end developers to ensure technical feasibility.
We structured this as the STARK Global Design System providing the overarching framework, with individual product design systems inheriting these core components while maintaining their unique identities. This allowed for consistency where it mattered most while preserving each product's character.
The Product Design team led this effort collaboratively, with team members stepping up to take ownership of key areas like accessibility, documentation, and Figma libraries. To support adoption, we looked for allies across the business, working with developers and Product Owners who saw the benefits of a more standardised approach.
Playbook principle: Aim for a shared vision
Why it matters?
A united vision connects daily work to broader strategic goals.
Core principles:
Strategic alignment: Ensure design work contributes to overall business objectives
Ambitious yet achievable goals: Set targets that challenge and inspire.
Inspiring communication: Clearly share the 'why' behind initiatives so everyone understands their impact.
While still in its early stages, the approach was already showing promise. Our test case team provided positive feedback about the improved clarity, and internal stakeholders noted improvements in the user experience. This early success encouraged organic adoption across other teams in the organisation.
Results
Impact
As the design system came together and collaboration improved, I focused on clearly connecting design work to business outcomes. By introducing better workflows, we significantly reduced confusion and improved efficiency across teams. Regular check-ins with Product Owners, Tech Leads, and senior stakeholders helped align design closely with broader business goals. This wasn’t just helpful for teams in the same location; it also noticeably improved collaboration across our asynchronous teams.
These changes brought clear results. We saw fewer last-minute design changes, shorter daily stand-ups, and projects became easier to plan and track. Team members reported greater satisfaction thanks to clearer roles, improved communication, and more effective collaboration.
As the business started seeing these improvements, leadership increasingly recognised design as a strategic partner, able to actively contribute to decision-making and direction setting. By connecting clearer workflows, better alignment, and improved team collaboration, design’s role became stronger and more impactful.
My Leadership style
Looking back at this experience, my approach to design leadership is fundamentally about people. I believe the best work happens when everyone feels trusted, supported, and clear about what they're trying to achieve.
I aim to cultivate a culture of inclusivity, mutual respect and candid communication, where team members feel comfortable sharing ideas, concerns, or feedback without hesitation. I spend time genuinely listening to people, understanding their ambitions, challenges, and motivations, so I can offer meaningful support.
Collaboration matters hugely to me. Instead of making decisions in isolation, I prefer a collaborative, inclusive approach that gives everyone space to contribute and feel ownership over what we create. I set clear expectations, but I don't micromanage. I trust the team's expertise, empower them to take the initiative, and support them whenever they need help.
While I take the work seriously, I don't believe we need to take ourselves too seriously. I bring my authentic self to leadership, which includes the occasional nerdy reference or timely joke. These moments of humour spark creativity and remind us that humans create design. Whether comparing products to Pokémon or sharing memes in our channels, this approach professional yet human creates an environment where people feel comfortable bringing their whole selves to work.
Ultimately, I measure my leadership success by how well my team thrives and how effectively we help the business achieve its goals. It's about creating clarity, building trust, encouraging genuine collaboration, and helping design become a confident, strategic voice within the organisation.
"I had the opportunity to work under Chantal during her time as Product Design Lead at STARK. She was a very approachable manager who fostered a supportive team environment.
Whenever challenges arose, she was willing to step in and help find solutions, keeping the team moving in the right direction and in good spirits.Chantal provided solid guidance and was always open to discussions, making collaboration easy. Her leadership helped shape our workflow, and I appreciated her willingness to support the team at all times.
I’m glad to have worked with her, and any team would be lucky to have her on board."
