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Pluto TV | Scaling Product Design Across Teams

Establish a shared product design operating model to improve cross-team decision-making and scale consistent experiences across the platform.

Focus

Design Operating Model | Cross-Team Alignment | Decision Frameworks | Research Integration | Scalable Experience Principles

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Scope

Org-Wide Initiative | Product Design Organization | Multi-Team Collaboration | Product Development Lifecycle

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Role

Senior Director, Product Design

 

Organization

Pluto TV​​

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Partners

Product | Engineering | Design Systems

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Product Context​​

As product organizations scale, the challenge often shifts from generating ideas to making clear, consistent decisions across teams. Without shared operating principles, design efforts can become fragmented across product areas, slowing delivery and creating inconsistent user experiences.

 

Within the Pluto TV organization, I helped introduce a product design operating model aimed at improving cross-team alignment, accelerating decision-making, and strengthening collaboration between design, product management, and engineering.

 

The initiative established a shared framework for how teams align on problems, explore solutions, implement product decisions, and deliver outcomes—ensuring design insights could translate more consistently into product strategy and roadmap execution.

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The Operating Model

The framework defined five phases of product development, giving teams a shared language for how work progresses from early problem framing through delivery.

 

Each phase included recommended tools, collaboration patterns, and expected outcomes to help teams choose the appropriate methods for the problem they were solving.

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The model was intentionally designed as a toolbox rather than a rigid process, allowing teams to adapt methods depending on the product challenge and timeline.

Phase Structure​

Each phase of the model clarified:

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  • collaboration expectations

  • tools and research methods

  • design outputs

  • decision checkpoints

 

​This helped teams understand how design contributes at each stage of product development.​​

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Align​​

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The Align phase ensured teams began with a shared understanding of the problem, business goals, and success metrics before design work began.​​

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​​Typical activities included:

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  • stakeholder interviews

  • OKR alignment

  • defining success metrics

  • identifying research needs

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Outcome: teams begin with clear problem framing and shared expectations.

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Understand​

The Understand phase focused on synthesizing research and product insights to define user needs and opportunity areas.

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Activities included:

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  • user research

  • journey mapping

  • competitive analysis

  • opportunity mapping​

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Outcome: teams develop a clear understanding of user needs and product opportunities.

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Explore​

The Explore phase encouraged teams to generate and validate multiple solution concepts before committing to a direction.

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Activities included:

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  • ideation workshops

  • prototypes

  • usability testing

  • stakeholder reviews

 

Outcome: early design concepts are validated and refined before implementation.

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Implement​

The Implement phase translated validated concepts into production-ready design specifications and engineering collaboration.

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Activities included:

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  • component creation

  • design system integration

  • documentation and annotations

  • engineering reviews

 

Outcome: solutions are technically feasible and ready for development.

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Deliver​​

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The Deliver phase focused on launch quality and ongoing product improvement.

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Activities included:

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  • design reviews during development

  • build validation

  • monitoring performance metrics

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Outcome: high-quality releases with reduced design debt.

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Organizational Leadership​

Implementing the model required introducing new collaboration patterns across multiple product teams.

 

My role focused on:

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  • defining the framework and principles

  • aligning leadership across design, product, and engineering

  • ensuring the model supported existing product development practices

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Design leads across the organization then applied the framework within their teams, adapting tools and methods to the needs of their specific initiatives.

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Outcome

The operating model introduced a shared structure for how product teams approach discovery, design, and delivery.

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This framework helped the organization move from ad-hoc design practices toward a more consistent and scalable approach to product development.

 

As a result, teams were able to:

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  • align earlier on problem definition and success metrics

  • integrate research insights into roadmap decisions

  • reduce cross-team ambiguity during product development

  • maintain more consistent design quality across initiatives

 

Over time, the framework became a shared reference point for how design engages with product strategy across the organization.

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Leadership Signals​

  • Establishing a shared design operating model for a growing product organization

  • Enabling cross-team alignment without introducing rigid process constraints

  • Connecting research insights to product decision-making

  • Scaling design quality across multiple teams and initiatives

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© 2026 Keith Sirois

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