Leading Product Design at Keen
Balanced individual contribution and team leadership to deliver measurable product improvements, mentor designers, and launch Keen’s first design system.
Role: Senior UX Designer & UX Team Lead
Company: Keen.com
Team: 8 Designers (UX team) plus collaboration with PMs, Engineering Devs, Branding Team
Core Focus: Team Mentorship, Design Systems (Clarity), Growth Strategy & Ops
Impact: Managed a team of 8 designers while leading the 0-to-1 launch of the company’s first design system.
About Keen
Keen.com is a high-traffic B2C marketplace connecting users with spiritual advisors for live guidance. Operating in a complex, data-driven environment, the company prioritizes rapid growth experimentation and conversion optimization.
Project Scope & Challenge
I joined as a Senior UX Designer focused on Growth, but my role quickly evolved into Acting UX Team Lead. I was tasked with a dual mission: driving measurable product growth through experimentation while simultaneously professionalizing design operations for a team of 8 designers.
Strategic Impact:
- • Mentorship: Directly coached designers through career transitions (Junior to Mid-Senior).
- • Scalability: Initiated and launched Clarity, Keen’s first design system, to eliminate cross-team inconsistencies.
- • Recognition: Twice awarded Employee of the Month for balancing high-velocity product delivery with empathetic team leadership.
Team Leadership & Mentorship
As the acting UX Lead, I:
- • Mentored two designers through key career milestones, successfully leveling them up (Entry to Junior; Junior to Mid-Senior) within a single year.
- • Facilitated weekly design reviews and cross-functional critiques to align product, design, and engineering.
- • Championed consistent UX standards at the leadership level, aligning design initiatives with broader organizational priorities.
This role helped establish stronger collaboration patterns, and significantly increased the design team’s confidence and influence within the company.
Growth & Product Impact
As the solo designer for the Growth pod, I oversaw the execution of high-velocity experiments designed to move core business metrics. By aligning design strategy with data science, we delivered measurable lifts in both user acquisition and retention.
- • Conversion Optimization (Collision A/B Test): Led the design of a new connection logic that resulted in an 8% boost in user-to-advisor connections.
- • Efficiency Gains (Best Match Revamp): Restructured the matching algorithm UI, successfully reducing cost per acquisition (CPA) while increasing the First Billed Minute rate.
- • Engagement Lift (Keen Rewards Widget): Designed a new loyalty touchpoint that drove a 20–25% increase in dashboard interactions, adding 200+ active users per day.
- These initiatives didn't just improve UX; they directly optimized company spend and increased the lifetime value of the customer base.
Design Operations: Scaling with Clarity
In parallel with product delivery, I initiated and led the creation of Clarity, Keen’s first unified design system. I launched this project to resolve growing visual inconsistencies and eliminate redundant work across the product and engineering teams.
This effort:
• Centralized shared components, typography, and design tokens in Figma, creating a single source of truth for the entire organization.
• Drastically reduced design-to-engineering friction by standardizing handoff documentation and component naming conventions.
- • Established the governance and rituals needed to maintain the system, ensuring it could evolve alongside future product growth.
- Combined with team rituals and clearer documentation, this helped bring design and development into closer alignment.
Outcomes & Recognition
• Delivered measurable lifts in conversion, engagement, and acquisition across the platform’s core user funnels.
- • Successfully mentored entry-level and junior talent into higher-impact roles, increasing the team’s overall autonomy.
- • Launched and integrated a foundational design system (Clarity) that remains the standard for product development at Keen.
- • Awarded Employee of the Month twice—honored by leadership for my ability to drive product outcomes while fostering a healthy, collaborative team environment.
What I Learned
This experience solidified my belief in leading with empathy and intention. Investing in people, setting up systems, and focusing on outcomes — all while staying grounded in the work — enabled real, measurable impact across both product and team culture.
If given the opportunity again, I’d push to bring stakeholders into UX strategy earlier to scale impact even faster.