Hiya Connect
Building the Team and the Strategy Behind a B2B SaaS Growth Engine
Hiya Connect lets businesses display custom branding when they call customers — cutting through spam labels and dramatically improving answer rates. My job was to transform a proof-of-concept into a scalable SaaS platform, and to build the design organization capable of getting it there.
The challenge
When I joined Hiya, Connect had potential but no real foundation. It was a loosely connected set of features with a white-glove onboarding process, a sales-dependent purchase flow, and no path to self-service. To become a primary revenue driver, it needed to become a platform customers could evaluate, purchase, and operate entirely on their own.
That required two things working in parallel: a clear strategic vision for the product, and a design organization with the structure, skills, and autonomy to execute it.
Leadership
Building and scaling the design org
I joined as a Senior Product Designer and grew into the Director role by building the function from the ground up. Growing the team wasn't just about headcount — it was about creating the conditions for high-quality, autonomous work at scale.
Growing the team wasn't just about headcount — it was about creating the conditions for high-quality, autonomous work: clear ownership, shared design standards, career rubrics, and strong partnerships with PM and engineering counterparts.
From proof-of-concept to a major revenue driver
Strategy
The bet on self-serve
Early in my tenure, I identified that the biggest opportunity wasn't a feature, it was a fundamental shift in how the product worked. A white-glove, sales-led model had a ceiling. A self-serve experience didn't.
I built the case for this strategic direction, aligned stakeholders across product, sales, and customer success, and partnered with engineering leadership to prioritize the capabilities that would make it possible. This wasn't a UX improvement – it was a repositioning of the product's go-to-market model, and design led the charge.
I guided the team to systematically reduce customer dependence on human support, shipping dashboard features, user management tools, and onboarding experiences that gave customers real autonomy. We tracked progress and validated that the experiences we were building were delivering value, not just shipping features.
"Ease of use" isn't an accident — it's a sustained leadership decision to prioritize value over volume, made repeatedly over time
Platform Design
From product to platform
A core part of scaling the design org was building the infrastructure that allowed it to work faster and more consistently. I established the Connect Design System from scratch — improving consistency, accessibility, build velocity, and cross-team alignment.
As Hiya Connect grew from a single-feature product to a full platform (adding dashboards, reporting, and user management), the design system became the connective tissue that kept the experience cohesive across an expanding surface area and a growing team.
Impact
Outcomes
The results were durable, measurable, and directly tied to strategic design decisions.
🏆 Hooray for Design ROI!