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Case Study · T-Mobile · Confidential
Role
Sr. Manager, Product Design
Timeline
6 months
Year
2023–2024
Web was T-Mobile's forgotten surface. The app had all the attention. Web was inconsistent, under-resourced, and nobody owned the quality bar across teams. That had been the state for roughly two years.
My VP pulled me into her office and asked me to take it over. Two sentences. No scope, no budget, no playbook. I built one.
The mandate
"Elevate the craft, consistency, and quality of all web design work — ensuring our web presence reflects the strength of our brand."
Build accountability
Rally the right principals to set the bar before asking anyone else to meet it.
Create standards + governance
Give teams a toolkit and a quality bar they could actually work from.
Define the vision
Hire for what web could become — not just what it was.
Part one
Built a group of 7 principals across 6 teams: Foundations, Design Systems, Commerce, T-Mobile for Business, Frontline/Assisted, and Service.
We ran a weekly web design crit — principal-led, open to all designers across teams. No one had created cross-team accountability on the web surface before. We did.
7
principals aligned
6
product teams
Part two
Web Governance role
Created a new Principal of Web Governance + IA role — owning standards, components, and information architecture across the surface.
v1 Web Toolkit
Shipped within 90 days of kickoff. 15 new and refined components added to the design system. A starter set that gave every team a shared foundation.
Responsive standards
Standardized responsive breakpoints — mobile, tablet, desktop, large desktop — applied to 100% of all new web designs.
Global nav redesign
Built alignment across Business, Product, and Marketing on a navigation system that could scale with new products and AI-driven entry points.
Part three
Brought in Vidal Men with a specific mandate: define what web could be, not what it was.
Month one: established the web design principles the entire surface should work from. Evolved into a research-grounded, stakeholder-aligned prospect journey vision — used as the north star for future web investments.
The mandate
Define what T-Mobile web could become.
Month one
Web design principles established for the entire surface.
The outcome
A research-grounded prospect journey vision used as the north star for future investments.
What it unlocked
01
VP attention
Vidal's vision work got the attention of my VP — design was no longer just executing, it was leading the conversation.
02
A seat at the table
Design earned a seat with Marketing to lead the t-mobile.com homepage redesign. The most visible web surface in the company.
03
The tiger team
That led to a formal Web Vision Tiger Team: 6-week sprints, 4 flagship web experiences, weekly VP reviews, multi-brand scope across T-Mobile, Mint, and Metro.
"Web was the forgotten surface. I turned it into the most ambitious design initiative of my T-Mobile tenure."
Craft, culture, and momentum — in six months.
90
days to ship the v1 Web Toolkit from kickoff
100%
designer participation in weekly cross-team web crits
6 mo
from a two-sentence ask to VP involvement and a homepage redesign seat