DPG Media
Restructured how UX Research, Design, and Product teams worked together at DPG Media — turning a fragmented sales-research operation into a connected, user-centered department in five months.
Strong functions. Weak handoffs. Sales-driven products with no shared user signal.
DPG Media's sales department had ambition, scale, and complexity — but the workflows between UX Research, Design, and Product Teams were fragmented. Research happened in isolation. Design got handed conclusions without context. Product shipped against assumptions instead of evidence. Three skilled functions, three different orbits.
My remit had two layers: deliver end-to-end UX research for the sales department directly — uncovering customer needs and pain points the team had been operating around, not through. And, simultaneously, restructure how the three teams worked together so the new evidence didn't sit in a folder once I left.
"We have research. We have design. We have product. What we don't have is a way for any of them to actually inform the others."
Research as the change-management lever — not the deliverable.
The brief looked like a research project. The actual work was change management. I used the research itself as the catalyst for restructuring how three functions worked together.
Led full E2E UX research for the sales department — uncovering customer needs and pain points that the existing workflow had been working around for years. Research as substance, not theatre.
Audited how UX Research, Design, and Product Teams actually exchanged work — not how the org chart said they did. Redesigned the workflow so research output landed where decisions were being made, not in a parallel timeline.
Established new shared rituals — joint synthesis sessions, embedded design reviews, recurring research-into-product touchpoints. Process change is meaningless without the meetings that enforce it.
Acted as the connective tissue between research, design, product, and sales leadership — translating each function's language and pace so collaboration happened by default, not by exception.
Five months. Three functions reconnected.
Mapping how the three teams actually worked
Started by tracing how a typical decision moved through UX Research, Design, and Product — and where the handoffs dropped context, expertise, or evidence on the floor. The org chart said one thing. The reality looked very different.
Sales-department E2E UX research
Ran the end-to-end UX research the department had been missing — uncovering pain points that surprised even seasoned team members. Used the work as a live demonstration of what evidence-led collaboration could look like.
Redesigning the workflow
Restructured how UX Research, Design, and Product Teams exchanged work. Output: a shared way of working that made evidence the default input rather than a late-stage check.
Making the change stick
Spent the final month making sure the new workflow survived without me — coaching the leads of each team, embedding the rituals into existing meetings, and getting stakeholder leadership to own the new way of working.
Silos persist not because of broken processes — but because of missing meetings. The fix wasn't a new framework. It was new touchpoints.
Substance, structure, and stickiness.
Research evidence on one hand; the workflow + relationships to make sure it kept landing on the other.