Director of Product Design
at Fuze
The company
Fuze was a UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) company, creating software for Telephony, Chat, and virtual Meetings.
For customers, the value proposition of Fuze was twofold. First, they were often signing up for cloud-based telephony for their employees, which offers many advantages over the traditional on-site hardware they had, including cost, easier maintenance, and a better UX for users, who could use their work phone on any device.
Secondly, Fuze offered a unified communications platform, meaning users could use one single application for phone, chat, and virtual meetings, which made for a good experience for them and also an improvement management experience for IT admins.
My role
I led the Product Design organization, reporting to the CTO. I led a team of around 10 people, including managers, designers of all levels, and a dedicated UX researcher. As a team we owned the design of the entire Fuze product line, which included the end-user software on Desktop, Web, and Mobile, as well as administrative applications and a data platform.
In addition to overseeing design across the product line, I was a on the Product Leadership team, partnering on Vision, Strategy, and Roadmapping initiatives.
Quick Reference
Customers
Fuze was a B2B company, selling to businesses of all sizes, from SMBs up to large enterprises. Users for the primary product were employees of those companies in any role that might use a phone, chat, or meeting (so, basically anyone). We had a wide range of personas to support, from people struggling to use a software phone for the first time, through digital natives who needed a powerful chat and meetings tool.
For the administrative tools, the users were IT admins at our customers.
Products
Fuze had a complex set of interconnected products, including the end-user software, which combined telephony, chat, and virtual meetings into a single experience. This product was available in native desktop applications, a web-based version, and native mobile applications for iOS and Android.
In addition, there was also a significant suite of functionality available as an addon for use in Contact Centers, both for those receiving the calls and those managing them and overseeing call volume, response time, and the call queues.
Lastly, we also offered an in-depth administrative platform for the IT administrators who were managing all of this, as well as a data and analytics tool for them.
Design Team
The design team was comprised of Product Designers of different levels, including one manager, as well as a dedicated User Researcher.
Design System
We had a robust design system, used by the designers across the product suite to ensure quality and consistency of our designs, both across versions of the same software (e.g. Desktop to Mobile) as well as across product lines (e.g. End user to Call Center to Admin)
