All work · Design leadership
Building Pura’s UX team
I created and managed the UX team at Pura as a player-coach. I hired three designers, set the weekly rhythm the team ran on, and directed the work across the smart-home app and the retail site.
- ClientPura
- RoleSenior Manager, User Experience
- DurationMar 2023 – Oct 2024
- TeamFive, including me as player-coach
The starting point
Pura is a smart home fragrance technology company. Its UX team owns every user-facing experience: the app that controls the home and car devices, and the direct-to-consumer retail site. I created that team and managed it.
Building the team
I hired three really good designers, which brought the team to five, including me.
Player-coach
I led the team and kept designing alongside it. The Activation project, which cut device setup from 17 steps to three screens, was my own work as an individual contributor.
Hiring, reviews, and growth
I owned hiring, performance reviews, and career growth for the designers on the team.
A weekly rhythm
I set up the cadence the team ran on. Each meeting had one job, so designers always knew where a question belonged.
Coordination
Team meetings to line up the work: who is on what, what’s coming, and where projects depend on each other.
Trade craft and accountability
Sessions on the work itself, where designers showed what they were making and we held it to a shared standard of craft.
1:1s
Time between manager and designer for the context a group meeting can’t hold: workload, mentoring and coaching, and the personal things that affect the work.
Leading beyond the design team
A design team does its best work when it’s connected to the rest of the company. I met regularly with the departments around us, so the team designed with the full picture.
Hardware
I worked with the hardware team to understand what the devices could and couldn’t do today, and pushed for exploration and investment in hardware that would make the experience better for customers, in the product and in the app.
Customer support and analytics
Customer support brought feedback from the field. The analytics team brought data on how people used the product. I met with both regularly, so our decisions rested on what customers were saying and doing.
Product and engineering
I partnered with product management and engineering to remove roadblocks and keep every product trio moving.
I built rapport quickly with the other leaders and worked hard to earn trust and coordinate the work across disciplines. Together we improved communication, cadence, and delivery, which contributed to Pura’s growth and bottom line.
What the team shipped
The work below was designed by the Pura UX team under my direction, alongside Pura’s cross-functional partners.
The app
The UX team led a complete rebrand and usability redesign of the app that controls Pura’s home and car devices: rooms and diffusers, scent details, schedules, and intensity.
To introduce its new look and features, we worked with the motion designers on the marketing team to produce this film.
The retail site
On the direct-to-consumer site, the team designed the launch page for Pura Plus: the product story, an exploded view of what’s inside the device, and how it fits with the rest of the family.
What changed
The app’s rebrand and usability redesign had stalled for two and a half years before I took over the team. We delivered both in six months, and NPS rose after launch.
From stalled to shipped
What the company had wanted for two and a half years shipped in a matter of months. The difference was a team with clear ownership, a steady rhythm, and a standard for the work.
During record growth
The team’s work on the e-commerce site, the smart home app, and the device ecosystem came during the growth that earned Pura recognition as the #1 fastest-growing tech company on Utah Business’ Fast 50 list for 2024.
Recognized
I was promoted from Head of UX Design to Senior Manager.
What colleagues saw
The clearest measure of how a team is led is what the people around it notice.
“As I’ve witnessed David managing his team, I’ve seen him be both respectful and empowering, always advocating for his team and aligning their strengths to create value.”
Rachel Beckstead, Sr. Director of Product Management at Pura