I didn't build a better design team. I built a better org for design.
CAREEM · 70M+ USERS · MENA
Careem had forty designers who knew what they were doing. What they didn't have was an organisation that let them do it. I changed the structure, the culture and the processes to make sure the changes lasted.
ROLE
Global Head of Product Design
SCOPE
40+ designers · 10 verticals
70M+ users · 12 countries · 70+ cities
C-suite alignment · Org transformation
-24/+78
102 eNPS point transformation
40%
Increase in early stage involvement
2x
Designers promoted into leadership roles
300%
Improvement in team satisfaction
THE PROBLEM
Treating design as a visual layer isn't just a creative problem, it's a commercial one.
Careem is a 70M+ user super-app operating across 70+ cities in MENA. Internally it functions less like a single product and more like ten businesses inside one platform, each with its own teams, targets and pressure to deliver.
When deadlines got close, each vertical shipped whatever it needed to hit targets and shipped solutions they knew were flawed, with custom components and endless tech debt.
Every assumption that ships without validation costs more to fix than it would have cost to question and Design carried the accountability when they failed.
“With more stakeholders involved its easy to confuse momentum with success”
I stepped into the role inheriting the organisation, the unfinished super-app vision and the responsibility to align ten verticals into a coherent platform.
"Design stopped decorating decisions and started shaping them. Not because I managed people harder. Because I managed the conditions around them."
WHAT I CHANGED
"Structure & culture first,
then the process to make it last.
01
Moved design upstream before decisions were locked.
Design and research became part of the decision loop, not downstream recipients of it. The team validated assumptions before direction was set with everything connected to commercial outcomes. Design stopped decorating decisions and started shaping them.
02
Restructured the design system and its capability
Every component across a 40-person org audited and consolidated. Dozens of fragmented patterns consolidated into 16 core organisms and 10 page templates. The codebase was cleaner, tech debt was reducing every quarter and building on a new foundation.
03
Promoted designers into leadership and gave them realm ownership
Design leads ran their own verticals with direct reports and genuine responsibility for product direction. My role shifted to executive alignment and strategic direction. Two designers moved into leadership roles and the org gained new leaders, not just new output.
THE TEAM
The best thing I did was get out of their way.
01
Freedom with a framework
I gave them structure, then handed the process to them. Crit sessions, ways of working, team rituals, I guided and they designed those themselves. They owned it because they built it. The processes that came out of that are still running today.
03
Visible credited value
Designers in lower-priority verticals had felt invisible. I made sure every team had a voice in cross-vertical decisions. I held them up publicly, gave them credit and made their value legible to the wider organisation. They worked harder because they knew it was seen.
02
Air cover without isolation
I absorbed the noise from above so they could focus on the work. But I kept them in the loop on everything that affected them. When stakeholders tried to move around agreements, the team knew and had my back. Trust ran in both directions.
04
Radical honesty as the standard
My first week included ten redundancies. Within minutes I received messages thanking me for the honesty of those conversations. No surprises, no conversations in secret. That became the baseline and the eNPS reflected it.
THE IMPACT
Great teams don’t need managing. They need the conditions to do what they already know how to do.
The structural and cultural work made two things routine that were extremely rare before.
The team could justify a deliberate decision to prioritise user trust over short-term promotional revenue and now work upstream involvement meant more C-level exposure, better solutions and more sustainable foundations for our vision. The vision could finally move from slideware to live product and it was only possible once the org had the structure to carry it.
“Luke leads with intention and maturity, fostering an environment where designers feel supported, empowered and focused on impact. His ability to balance high-level design direction with the realities of execution makes him a valued partner”
At scale the enemy of good design is rarely bad designers. It is a structure that keeps them downstream, a culture that doesn't credit them and a leadership layer that mistakes control for direction.
My job was to fix the structure, build the culture, get design into the room where decisions get made and then build the processes durable enough to outlast me.