Role
Head of UX

Scope
Tele2, Com Hem TV & Play and Comviq digital products

Team
Scaled and led a design organisation of 16 designers

Focus
Design culture, organisational structure and product collaboration

Impact

• Built a unified design organisation after the Tele2–Com Hem merger

• Introduced design rituals and collaboration models across teams

• Improved internal satisfaction scores from low to top tier

• Introduced scalable design tools and processes

• Introduced a dual-track career model for designers

The Situation

When I joined Tele2, the design capability was fragmented across teams and products. Designers often worked in isolation, with limited shared practices or design direction.

At the same time the organisation was responsible for a complex digital ecosystem spanning TV platforms, mobile apps and self-service products.

The upcoming Tele2 and Com Hem merger created a need for a stronger and more unified design organisation.

The Goal

The goal was to establish design as a stronger capability within product development by:

• building a unified design organisation

• introducing shared design practices

• improving collaboration with product and engineering teams

• strengthening design culture and craft

Key focus areas

To transform the design capability I focused on four areas:

Organisation
Building a centralised design organisation after the merger.

Process
Introducing shared design rituals and collaboration models.

Culture
Strengthening design culture through critiques, studio sessions and learning initiatives.

Product collaboration
Working closely with product and engineering leadership to improve design impact.

Building the design organisation

After assessing the existing team through one-to-one conversations I defined a new team structure.

The organisation included a design leadership group together with product designers embedded in four product areas, working closely with product managers and engineering teams.

This structure helped balance hands-on product work with stronger design leadership and coordination across teams.

Establishing design rituals

To strengthen collaboration and craft we introduced a small set of recurring rituals:

• weekly design critiques

• bi-weekly department meetings

• user testing sessions

• design studio sessions for cross-team collaboration

These rituals helped create shared ownership of design quality and improved knowledge sharing across the team.

Defining design direction

Inspired by the McKinsey Design Index and design maturity models, we used our first team kickoff to assess the current design maturity and define where we wanted to go.

This helped the team align around a shared ambition to move towards a more design-driven organisation.

Product design process

We introduced a product design process combining human-centred design with agile development, inspired by Marty Cagan’s discovery and delivery model.

A key step was introducing regular user testing to support product decisions and help teams validate ideas earlier in the development process.

Scaling design operations

We improved the operational foundation for the design team by:

• consolidating design tools into Figma

• introducing shared UI libraries

• defining clearer role expectations

• implementing a dual-track career model for designers

This created a stronger foundation for scaling design within the organisation.

Organisational changes

During the Covid period the organisation needed to reduce the size of the design team.

This required scaling the team down from 16 to 12 designers while still supporting the same product areas.

To maintain quality we introduced lead designers in each product area to strengthen coordination and experience ownership.

What I learned as a design leader

The experience strengthened my understanding of how design organisations evolve.

I learned the importance of listening, creating trust within teams and handling difficult situations during organisational change.

Through continuous feedback and open conversations we improved collaboration and eventually achieved some of the highest leadership satisfaction scores in the organisation.