SurveyMonkey

Company & Product Context

By late 2023, SurveyMonkey was at an inflection point. Once a category-defining PLG product, it had gone through leadership upheaval, failed acquisitions, and shifting strategies. At the same time, engineering was deeply invested in moving off bespoke legacy infrastructure onto a new React-based architecture, which risked consuming attention at the expense of actual user experience improvements.

The survey creation (Pre‑Deploy) experience—Create, Style, Logic, Forms, Connect, Collect, Integrations—was central to SurveyMonkey’s business but had become complex, inconsistent, and tightly intertwined with legacy decisions. Mobile and Market Research Solutions faced similar fragmentation. My remit was to help bring coherence and ambition back to the product: modernize authoring, make it competitive again, and reconnect design work to real-world customer and business outcomes.

Mandate & Leadership Scope

Formal role
As Director of Product Design, I led design for survey creation, Market Research Solutions, and SurveyMonkey’s three native mobile applications, partnering with product, growth, engineering, and finance to align our roadmap to PLG, AI, and market goals.

What I really did

• Worked with product and engineering leaders to define a unified vision for the survey creation experience on top of the new React architecture, turning a migration-heavy backlog into a product- and user-centered roadmap.
• Led global design teams across time zones, including hiring and building the Bengaluru design team and creating onboarding, communication, and collaboration systems so we operated as one organization, not separate offices.
• Drove a comprehensive UX and content audit of the existing platform, then partnered with content and product teams to overhaul product language with a style guide aligned to the Wrench Design System.
• Developed and presented an end-to-end connected design vision from Pre‑Deploy to Post‑Deploy to the CEO and executive leadership, framing tradeoffs and helping secure investment in SurveyMonkey’s first AI enhancements.
• Helped reorganize Growth design work around clearer scopes and hypotheses, reducing overlap between teams and focusing efforts on well-defined, conversion-driving experiments.

Work Pillars

1. Reimagining Pre‑Deploy: From Fragmented Flows to a Connected Creation Experience

The Pre‑Deploy phase—Create, Style, Logic, Forms, Connect, Collect, Integrations—was central to SurveyMonkey’s value but had become confusing and upgrade-hostile. Logic was locked behind paywalls at the wrong moments; once unlocked, it presented overwhelming, dated UIs. Connect and integration workflows were critical for value realization but hard to discover and configure.

Together with product and engineering partners, I took responsibility for aligning Pre‑Deploy across multiple surfaces (web, native mobile, Market Research Solutions) under a single experience vision instead of treating them as separate tracks. We consolidated a scattered, migration-focused backlog, stack-ranked initiatives, identified cross-dependencies, and reframed the work around key outcomes like conversion, time-to-value, and ease of setup.

We grounded this work in a UX audit that identified more than 20 key pain points in authoring and related flows, then translated those into actionable design and product opportunities. Importantly, we sequenced these improvements alongside the React migration so we were moving architecture and UX forward together, not serially.

This provided a clear north star and roadmap for reimagining survey creation, and allowed us to deliver 15+ meaningful enhancements rather than purely technical changes.

Not every idea we had survived contact with reality. A few early changes made the experience more complex instead of simpler, and we had to be candid about that and roll them back. Those missteps helped us sharpen our criteria for what “better” meant in the creation flow.

2. Building a Global Design Organization

Context
SurveyMonkey needed to scale design capacity and operate globally, but there was no existing design presence in Bengaluru and collaboration across time zones required stronger systems and rituals.

We built the Bengaluru design team from scratch—6 designers and 1 Senior Manager in 6 months. I led the hiring, onboarding, and coaching strategy, spending time on the ground to embed the new team in their domains and give them the context they needed. We created shared onboarding materials, processes, and expectations for new hires, and set up communication rituals (standups, crits, async documentation) so Bengaluru and the rest of the org functioned as one team, not separate satellites.

Impact

• Enabled SurveyMonkey to operate as a cohesive, global design organization, not a set of disconnected offices.
• Increased design throughput and coverage across Pre‑Deploy, Market Research Solutions, and mobile, while maintaining consistent standards and practices.

3. Content Design & Systematic Language

Context
Over time, inconsistent language and UI text had accumulated across the platform, increasing cognitive load and making key flows—like connecting third-party applications—harder than necessary.

Together with content and product partners, I led a content audit of key areas of the platform and built a content design style guide that dovetailed with the Wrench Design System, aligning visual and verbal language across critical flows like Connect and Logic.

4. AI, Growth, and Executive Alignment

SurveyMonkey needed to modernize not just UX but also its value proposition—AI-enhanced creation, better automation, and clearer growth levers were central to staying competitive and returning to profitability.

I developed and presented an end-to-end connected design vision from Pre‑Deploy to Post‑Deploy to the CEO and executive team, showing how AI and UX investments could improve customer value and business outcomes. Those conversations often meant reconciling ambitious AI ideas with real constraints in our stack and staffing; my role was to frame the tradeoffs clearly so leaders could make informed calls.

I then partnered on Build with AI, Style with AI, Logic, and Integrations as part of a broader push to modernize and differentiate survey creation. At the same time, I helped organize the Growth team’s design efforts, clarifying scope and responsibility so teams weren’t duplicating experiments or stepping on each other’s work, and centering Growth design on a smaller number of well-defined, conversion-focused bets. A few of our early AI concepts didn’t meet the bar in testing; shelving those ideas and folding the best parts into simpler improvements was an important part of keeping the roadmap focused on real impact, not novelty.

5. Interim Design Leadership & Hiring

Context
After the departure of the VP of Design, the organization needed steady leadership, hiring rigor, and a strong voice for design at the executive level. I became a go-to interviewer across design, engineering, and product, and helped raise the bar for how we evaluated talent. During the VP search, I worked closely with our executives to evaluate candidates and ultimately advocated for the leader I believed would best support the team long-term.

What I led

• As the most externally experienced design leader on the design leadership team, I effectively served in an interim head of design capacity in close collaboration with other design leaders, continuing to steer strategy and execution.
• Participated in 20+ hiring processes for design, plus ~20 for full-stack engineering and ~10 for product management, becoming a go‑to interviewer and helping raise the bar for how we evaluated talent.
• Led the executive search for a new VP of Design, interviewing candidates and ultimately advocating for the leader I believed would best support the team’s long-term success.

Impact

• Maintained leadership continuity during a transitional period, preventing loss of momentum on critical initiatives.
• Elevated the quality and composition of the broader product organization through heavy involvement in hiring across disciplines.

Metrics & Outcomes Snapshot

• Led design for Authoring, Market Research Solutions, and three native mobile apps under a unified vision.
• Built the Bengaluru design team (6 designers + 1 Senior Manager) in 6 months and implemented global onboarding and communication systems.
• Conducted UX and content audits, then implemented a content design style guide aligned with the Wrench Design System.
• Over the course of 15+ releases, our team significantly improved the creation and Pre‑Deploy experience. These improvements contributed to SurveyMonkey regaining the #1 spot in the G2 Online Form Builder category and a 4.7/5 rating, and played a role in the company’s first profitable quarter in 16 quarters.

How SurveyMonkey Shaped My Leadership

SurveyMonkey deepened my experience as a global design leader working in turnaround conditions. I learned how to stabilize and grow a distributed team, bring coherence to a roadmap dominated by technical migration, and tie AI and UX work directly to profitability. It also sharpened my ability to lead without formal title—holding the line on quality and direction as the most senior design leader, while hiring and advocating for the next VP to carry the practice forward.