Design Manager in Careem Pay

My role:

  • Managing a team of 3 designers
  • Leading a rebrand
  • Leading a key product pillar as an IC 

Team Composition:

  • 4 designers, 6ish PMs, 20ish engineers

Complexifiers:

Pre-existing product in a difficult environment.

Absence of customer knowledge

Cross-functional dependencies to all other parts of Careem’s SuperApp.

iphone_14_pro_v2
iphone_14_pro_v2

Major Challenges


Team changes & organic growth have led to an inconsistent product experience

Absence of customer insights

Misaligned incentive structures

Introducing:


Tied initiative to company’s core values to get C-Level buy-in


Taught the C-Level what goes into a great experience and how UI Quality fits in

Solve the right problem
(Product Design)

  • People Problems Framework
  • Talking to customers
  • Gathering quantitative data
  • Forming hypotheses
  • Testing hypotheses early

Solve it in the right way
(UI Quality)

  • Visual Quality
  • Function
  • Reliability
  • Performance
  • Engineering Craft

Defined UI quality against five axes

Partnered with XFN leaders across the company to create interest and buy-in

Visual Quality

Any issues with the UI that impact customer’s perception of quality or desirability of the product?

Reliability

Does the product do what it is supposed to do for our customers, at all times?

Performance

Is the product fast? Does content load quickly? Is the app responsive?

Function

Is the product behaving as expected? Are there edge cases that we’ve missed?

Eng Craft

Is our code well-engineered, using appropriate frameworks and abstractions?



449 mobile and web screens

Overall styling

Varied styling between sections


System Feedback

Inconsistent iconography and typography
Deviations in page structure


Currency input

Native vs. proprietary keypads
Mixture of currency implementations

UI Quality