Today marks my first anniversary at Webflow as the Director of Product Design. It's been a year full of personal growth, exciting challenges, and honestly, joy. I oversee design teams across our core product, CMS, localization tool, analytics product, optimizations suite, and some of our AI offerings. It’s a large scope, and these teams have accomplished a ton in just a year:

• We acquired a company and merged their feature set into our product within months
• We built a brand new analytics product that brings website usage data straight to our users
• We redesigned our primary navigation to make room for the new products and for the future
• We launched many design systems tools from libraries to component variants and variable modes
• And we beta launched multiple AI tools that generate content and design
• And more!

I’ve learned a ton along the way. I got a crash course in building AI products in the design world. I’ve felt the pain of designing for technical designers and non-technical marketers at the same time. I broadened my scope significantly across three internal pillars, and felt the growing pains of a scaling team. I’ve hired and trained managers and ICs from early career to Staff level across four different countries. I’ve learned so much from my incredible peers in product and engineering leadership roles, and been guided by the incredible mentor, our Head of Design, Kev Wong. It’s been such a fun ride so far.

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And as I reflect back on this year, I’m most grateful for the people I’ve gotten to work with every day. My team tripled in size over my first year, from 4 to 12 product designers, with about 32 total across the whole Product and Content Design org (check for open roles). I am proud of both new hires who have hit the ground running and of our most tenured team members who paved our strong foundation of technical craft. Together, all of them bring Webflow to the next phase of its evolution.

Our product design bench is a team of craftspeople who are eager early adopters of new technologies, are highly collaborative across departments and pillars, and generate broad and deep iterations at great speed. They balance user advocacy with business acumen, and sweat the details of their craft. In short: a dream team.

But what makes this team successful? Great designers aren’t guaranteed to do great work every where they go. Some are stuck in toxic work environments, or work on teams that never actually ship their designs to production.

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We’re certainly not perfect, but after a year of working here, I think Webflow is doing a lot of things right. An environment where great designers can thrive includes:

• Challenging, meaningful work with a clear product vision
• Leaders and peers who care
• Sustainable processes with positive outcomes
• Demand for design to be both aesthetic and strategic

Webflow has evolved over the years, and a lot changed last year. Here’s how I think Webflow is doing on those fronts in 2025.

Meaningful work, clear vision

Webflow designers are truly excited about tackling substantial user experience problems in the design tooling space, and having an impact on the company and its community. And they’re able to focus on that passion in part because Webflow’s vision is clear. We are in the middle of a 3-year company strategy that has been compelling and motivating. Our mission is to move from what was merely a visual website builder to a website experience platform, where teams of people can collaborate on designing, building, and optimizing websites at scale. Product designers at Webflow start their projects not just excited for their particular slice, but also energized by how that slice fits into the bigger picture.

Remaining steadfast on this vision can be challenging. Our industry is constantly being disrupted (or at least, attempts are being made). What does the future of websites look like in a world of AI replacing search engines? A world where design and code are augmented by AI? The strength in our strategy is that it remains a relevant north star, even if the tooling we use to get there or the roadmap priorities shift within that bigger picture.

Leaders and peers who care

Webflow gained an almost entirely new leadership team in my first year here, including our CPO, CFO, VP of Sales, CEO, CMO, and CRO. This team is decisive, data-driven, and action-oriented, pivoting thoughtfully with market changes while remaining responsive to internal feedback.

Our leadership embodies the industry shift toward detail-oriented management that remains close to the work, and prioritizes quality and craft. Our CPO, CTO, and VP of Design personally review products as an EPD leadership trio before all launches, focusing on consistency across the product, speed of releases, and reliable quality.

Leadership is also deeply involved in hiring. Our VP of Design and CPO review every design hire before offer, thoroughly examining interview notes and asking critical questions when consensus isn't clear or the case isn’t airtight. This works because of the psychological safety these leaders have established with our design management team—we value their input and they values ours.

While this leadership approach isn't for everyone, it's been tremendously effective at Webflow and continues to guide us toward our vision.

Sustainable processes with positive outcomes

Designers can also do their best work because we have rituals that people respect rather than detest. Shoutout to our incredible Ops team. The sheer number of checkpoints we have in our process has been somewhat controversial, but my teams consistently say how surprised they’ve been that the checkpoints are genuinely valuable in providing direction or course correction early in the development lifecycle.

Throughout the design phase, we aim for collaboration opportunities that feel easy, including rituals like weekly design critiques, design studio for ad-hoc industry or tooling topics, and cross-org biweekly stand-ups to break down silos with transparency. This can be a real challenge in a rapidly growing organization.

We also make sure the process for getting access to tools is really simple through a Slack bot, and access to skill development is easy through in-house and 3rd party educational opportunities with speedy approval if applicable.

Our challenge here is managing what feels like substantial process for a company our size. Yet these frameworks have proven vital to our ability to deliver consistently high-quality work without shipping our org chart.

Demand for design to be both aesthetic and strategic

Most product designers I know work in organizations that treat them as purely aesthetic, where design fights for strategic influence. They feel that they’re pushing pixels late in the process on a losing strategy that someone else dictated. Fortunately, product design at Webflow is well respected as both aesthetic and deeply strategic. In fact, in cases where designers aren’t engaged in strategy early on, it sticks out like a sore thumb, and our peers request it.

This position requires respecting the time needed for discovery, research, and exploration before execution begins. While that can be challenging in our craft-focused environment, we've seen numerous successes: design-driven initiatives going through proposal phases before receiving the green light to explore, pitch, and execute.

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It's a long-winded reflection, but look backs are a really important part of my process as a leader who's constantly learning. And as a Design Director, I get a lot of questions from my network around: “What is it like to work at Webflow?” Hopefully, this sums it up well!

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