Elevating Design's influence, impact, and strategic value at OLX Europe

The challEnge

OLX is part of Prosus/Naspers, one of the world's largest consumer internet groups. Here we create global leading marketplaces, serving 350 million people every month. Its Lisbon hub is home for the Motors vertical, where we create Europe's leading destinations for buying and selling new and second-hand vehicles.

Despite the enormous business success achieved over many years, only recently OLX started to look more seriously into Design, dramatically growing Design's headcount in a short period of time. Before long, this increased momentum revealed new challenges such as:

• Gaps in communication, Design ceremonies, career development, and team management.
• Design's limited influence on product vision, goals, discovery, and explorations.
• Misunderstandings about Design workflows and ways of working.
• Business leaders not yet familiarized with what Design can do beyond "pushing pixels."

Within this context, I took on the challenge of spearheading Design in the Lisbon hub.

Approach

Strategic Impact:

• Co-led with the CPO the creation of the Product Vision guiding the planning and work of all business units across Europe towards our upcoming IPO.
• Launched and led Experience Vision for both B2C and B2B sides of our platform, shaping the redesign of our product and guiding our teams towards our 3-5 years ambition.
• Established a UX measurement program to provide data-driven insights that inform our design decisions, ensuring that our products are consistently user-centric and aligned with our strategic objectives.
• Pitched, created, and scaled a Design System team that now serves multiple products.

People Management and Culture:

• Managing and scaling a multicultural team of 40+ including UX and Product Designers, Content Designers, Ops specialists, and leadership layers of Heads of Design, Design Managers, and Leads.
• Consistently holding top Culture Amp engagement scores, demonstrating a commitment to building a positive, inclusive, and empowering work culture where designers feel valued and engaged.
• Established comprehensive career frameworks and blueprints for Product Design, Content Design, and Operations, providing clear pathways for professional growth and development.
• Assessed and elevated product design maturity through training, knowledge sharing, candid feedback, and mentoring, empowering designers to reach their full potential.
• Sourced and hired design leaders to strengthen the function across the group, ensuring that we have the expertise and talent to drive our design vision forward.