About my approach as a Design Manager
It’s important for me to foster a collaborative and supportive environment where designers can thrive, share ideas, and grow.
I focus on creating structured processes, encouraging open communication, and making sure our work aligns with both user needs and business goals.
I value clean, minimalistic design and always aim to balance it with efficiency, ensuring our solutions are not just practical and impactful, but also beautiful
These are some of my favorite books that shaped my perspective as a manager, which I highly recommend to everyone:
- Scaling People by Claire Hughes Johnson
- First, Break All the Rules by Don Clifton
- Dare to Lead by Brent Brown
I’m all about learning and completely obsessed with audiobooks! If you’ve got any great book recommendations, shoot me an email at zhandarovich@icloud.com — I’d love to check them out!
About process
I believe that having the right amount of process is crucial for delivering great work. A well-defined process provides structure, ensures alignment, and helps teams stay focused, but it’s equally important to remain flexible. Every task is unique and may require a slightly different approach.
That doesn’t mean skipping essential steps like research or QA—it means adapting the depth and focus of those steps to fit the task at hand.
Design Critiques
One of the most impactful ways to elevate a design team is by fostering a culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing. Regular design critiques and opportunities to share work are essential for a team’s success.
At Tesla for our enterprise designers I established a two-pronged design critique process. In a remote work setup, smaller groups were particularly essential, as designers couldn’t have quick chats. :
1. Weekly Team Sessions (all 8 designers)
Once a week, all designers gather to share their progress, focusing on the context, challenges, and solutions of their projects. These larger sessions are invaluable for gaining diverse perspectives and creating a shared understanding of team goals.
2. Smaller Group Sessions (2-3 designers)
In addition to the main critique, I introduced smaller group sessions where designers could ask specific questions and seek advice from their peers. The smaller sessions create a safe space for focused problem-solving and knowledge sharing. In these smaller groups, designers also get to know each other’s collaboration styles, strengths, and approaches, fostering deeper interpersonal connections.
Why This Approach Works
The larger session builds alignment and ensures the entire team is aware of each other’s work, fostering collaboration on a broader scale. Meanwhile, the smaller sessions create a safe space for focused problem-solving and knowledge sharing. Together, these practices ensure the team is aligned, inspired, and constantly growing as individuals and as a collective.
Measuring Success
Measuring the success of design using both qualitative and quantitative methods is essential. It provides a clear picture of how well design efforts are addressing user needs and achieving business goals.
Collaborating with cross-functional partners to define success metrics ensures alignment across teams, creating a shared understanding of priorities and outcomes. It’s also a great way to validate design decisions, foster continuous improvement, and keep everyone on the same page.
Defining metrics at a higher level makes it easier to compare results across different projects and spot trends that inform strategic decision-making. Below are some of the key groups of metrics I encourage designers to track:
Growth & Success Metrics:
User Acquisition Rate: percentage of new users signing up for the product
WAU / MAU (Monthly Active Users)
Time to First Key Action: How quickly users perform a critical task after onboarding
Feature Adoption Rate: percentage of users engaging with a specific feature after its release
Frequency of Use: How frequently users interact with a particular feature
Usability Metrics:
Task Success Rate: Percentage of users who successfully complete a task
Time on Task: How long it takes users to complete specific actions.
Error Rate: Frequency of errors encountered during interactions.
Help Requests: Number of support tickets or FAQ accesses for a specific feature or flow.
Career Growth
Having regular chats with my team about what they want to do and how they want to grow is super important to me as a design manager. It’s not just about understanding their career goals—it’s about helping them figure out what excites them and how we can align that with the work we’re doing.
Start with Values
Asking someone about their top three values can feel a bit too direct, so I turned to an icebreaker game to help my team open up. The School of Life: 100 Questions — Work and Career Edition was perfect for our weekly Design Crits, where we review each other’s work. Questions like “What skill do I secretly wish I had?…” or “If I could try any other career for a year, what would it be?…” sparked meaningful conversations in a fun, low-pressure way.
The School of Life exercise and the practice of identifying top three values inspired me to start a Career Conversation series during one-on-one meetings with my direct reports.
Personal Map
Another exercise I introduced to my team was the Personal Map, a natural next step after exploring top values. Using a digital whiteboard, we mapped out categories like Values, Goals, Work, Education, Home, Hobbies, Family, and Friends. Each person would write down the three most important things in each category and then talk through their thoughts.
As a design manager, I used this exercise to dive deeper into what drives my team, taking notes during the conversation in a separate document to share afterward. It was a powerful way to understand their priorities and aspirations, while also fostering trust and stronger connections.
Performance: Hard Skills and Soft Skills
As a Design Manager, I believe performance management should never come as a surprise. Performance reviews are not standalone events but the culmination of an ongoing, transparent dialogue held during regular 1:1 conversations. These discussions are an opportunity to align on progress, provide constructive feedback, and celebrate achievements in real-time.
A crucial part of performance assessment is setting clear, actionable goals. To support this, I guide my team through exercises to define their hard and soft skills, uncover their unique superpowers, and reflect on areas for growth.
Scale that helps us to guide assessment:
• Best at: I can teach it.
• Good at: I can do it effectively.
• Opportunity: I know it but need practice.
• Not now: I don’t know it.
Team members mapped their skills based on company-defined competencies, starring their top 5 superpowers—skills they excel at and are the go-to person for. I highlighted 5 areas for improvement in a different color and turned them into 3-6 month development goals.
During our discussion, we reviewed their self-assessment with examples from their work, aligning their strengths and growth areas with both team needs and personal career goals. This approach created clarity, accountability, and actionable steps for development.
