Role: Product Design Lead (CMS)
I led design for Napster’s content management platform, website and campaigns, working remotely with teams across the US, Europe and APAC. I split my time roughly half and half between hands-on design and directing.
Context & Challenge
Napster’s CMS tools varied widely by region and channel, leading to repeated design work, inconsistent experiences, and inefficiencies in content publishing. The organisation needed a shared design approach that could scale across the US, Europe, and APAC teams without slowing ongoing delivery.
Approach & Decisions
I started with research: interviews with internal CMS users and with partners at the major record labels, alongside audits and workshops to uncover patterns of inconsistency. From that work, my team and I:
- Defined a CMS design strategy focused on reusable components and clear workflows.
- Built and delivered a core design system with patterns, documentation, and usage guidance.
- Partnered with product leadership to streamline core publishing workflows and reduce friction.
- Took an integration-first approach to the partner portal, because the record labels already relied on several systems to track artists and performance.
- Explored concepts for new products alongside the core platform work.
- Mentored regional designers on adoption, usage standards, and quality expectations.
The emphasis was on establishing sustainable patterns rather than producing isolated UI screens.
Outcome & Impact
- Reduced design and development time for new CMS features by over 40 percent.
- Shortened content publishing turnaround from multiple days to same-day delivery in key regions.
- Improved UI consistency across web and mobile by approximately 35 percent.
- Strengthened cross-regional collaboration through shared patterns and governance.
- The integration-first partner portal was starting to ship when I moved on.
Stakeholders noted the shift from ad-hoc tools to a predictable, scalable approach that improved both speed and quality.
Reflection
The most important leadership outcome was moving the organisation toward a system-first mindset. By prioritising reusable patterns and shared workflows, we reduced duplication and enabled teams to focus on higher-value work. Future efforts would emphasise tooling and metrics to further embed quality checks and system usage.