Building Quality Features Fast

It started small

When Lithia leadership started talking about customer loyalty and omni-channel experience, I asked to be part of it.

The initial agency engagement was modest: two engineering teams, two designers, two project managers. Rather than let them work autonomously, we integrated them with Lithia full-time employees. As Lead Product Designer over My Driveway, I was the SME for the agency designers.

I treated them like FTEs.

Same onboarding. Same standards.

Documented design process. Figma starter file walkthrough. Extensive design system tour with the design system lead. Daily stand-ups, weekly design crits, all the regular ceremonies.

Beyond the tools, I was teaching them how to think. How to iterate. How to prioritize UX before UI. How to recognize when to move on. How to work within scope boundaries without losing the plot. How to shoot for light and right instead of overdesigning.

Things went well enough that the business decided to scale up.

Then it got interesting

Five engineering teams. Five product managers. Twelve designers.

Twelve designers working on features within three pages of the same site is a quality control problem. I documented everything, built a more formal onboarding process, and pulled the My Driveway team out of internal ceremonies so we weren't dominating every conversation.

I met regularly with the lead product manager to stay ahead on the roadmap, so I had a point of view on IA and feature placement before a designer was ever resourced on it.

Nobody was managing the agency designers.

The program manager on the agency side eventually thanked me for providing structure and guidance to their team. That part wasn't in the job description.

One more wrinkle: the designers were non-native English speakers from Brazil and Colombia. Strong English, but I was continually verifying comprehension on feedback. Our design system lead speaks almost entirely in metaphor. I spent a fair amount of time translating. 😅

2024 was probably the hardest I'd ever worked.

What shipped

50+ features in under a year. The platform went from a thin account center to a full vehicle management ecosystem.

In 2025, the business asked every other technology team to adopt the same agency engagement model.

50+ features in under a year.

What I'd take with me

Staying ahead of the roadmap matters more than staying on top of the work. When you know where things are going before designers are resourced, you can shape the experience before anyone opens Figma.

The crits twice a week felt like overhead until they became the reason quality held. The design system only worked because we made it everyone's problem. When engineers understand what they're looking at in a spec, the handoff stops being a negotiation.