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Case study · Apollo 24/7 & Apollo Pharmacy

Building the team first: year-long projects in six months

Transforming Apollo 24/7 and Apollo Pharmacy meant transforming the design team first. I staffed it properly, gave people real career paths and processes, and built a culture that shipped year-long projects in six months.

Role
Design Lead
Timeline
8 months
Team
4 UX designers, 2 visual designers and 1 motion designer, growing to 10+
Skills
Design leadership · Hiring & growth · Design operations · Mentorship
Apollo 24/7 design org: year-long projects shipped in six months, the org doubled in two months and grew capacity 3×+ over my tenure, beside the Apollo design principles poster: simple, scalable, consistent; design with intent; be empathetic and inclusive; imbibe trust.
  • 2×Org size in my first two months
  • 3×+Team capacity over my tenure
  • 12 → 6 moProject delivery time
01

The mandate

The products could only get better if the team did

I led a design team working across 5+ digital healthcare services, on iOS, Android, web and tablet. The mandate was ambitious: innovative products with real business results, without letting app-store ratings slip while we invested.

But on arrival, two problems stood out. The workload was unsustainable, and nobody could see how to grow. These were the people building our flagship products, so keeping them was the strategy.

02

Hiring & retention

Keep the people, then grow the team

I doubled the team in my first two months, staffing properly across UX, visual and product design, UX writing, design systems and accessibility. With my peers I built clear career paths, and within six months several designers moved into senior and lead roles along them.

I also partnered with executives across the company to make the team’s work visible. That gave the team a sense of mission and belonging, and its capacity grew 3×+ during my time there.

Retention first, then growth.
03

Operations

Growth needed an operating system

A bigger team without process is just more chaos, so the foundations came next:

Every file, owner and handoff, tracked per product area.
  • Sprints in step with techDesign sprints aligned with product and engineering, so planning moved as one.
  • Visible workOne tracker for timelines and handoffs: speed with accountability.
  • Review ritualsWeekly design reviews, daily stand-ups, retros and honest postmortems.
04

Craft

Growing the craft together

Once the team passed 10 designers, I started peer-to-peer learning sessions: documentation, UX writing, design systems, prototyping, research and critique. We workshopped the design principles together, and they became how the team made calls.

Workshopping the design principles as a team.
The principles the team ships by.
A new illustration language, from the visual revamp.
1 / 3
05

Results

Year-long projects, shipped in six months

With the right team, rituals and learning in place, we consistently shipped critical projects in half the time. Two initiatives carried most of it: shared design principles, and Capsule, our design system, which has its own case study. And we did it without dropping the score.

Still 4.7★ across 125.6K ratings, and №1 in Medical.
06

Lessons

What I’d take into the next role

Three lessons I’m taking with me.

  • Keeping people is the first strategyCareer paths did more for delivery than any new process.
  • Scale needs structureGrowth only paid off once sprints, tracking and reviews were in place.
  • Teams grow by teaching each otherPeer learning raised the craft faster than top-down training.