What does a head of design actually do — and do you need one?

Design is still a relatively new discipline compared to engineering or product management. And design at the senior leadership level — a head of design with a seat at the table alongside other department heads — is even newer. It tends to be the more design-forward companies that are willing to put someone from a design background in that kind of strategic position.

So what does the role actually involve?

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More than pixels and prototypes

The core of a head of design role is overseeing all design efforts and helping shape where the product is going — not just how a feature looks, but whether it's the right thing to build at all. It sits at the intersection of user experience, business goals, and product strategy.

Every stage of the user journey has a design component. From the moment someone lands on the marketing site, through onboarding, first use, and the ongoing question of why they stay or why they leave — design has a hand in all of it. A head of design's job is to think across all of those stages, not just the ones with active design tasks attached.

That means understanding the business, not just the product. What is the company trying to achieve? What's getting in the way of growth? Where are users dropping off, and why? These aren't purely design questions, but they all have design implications — and someone needs to be asking them at a strategic level.

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It's not just for large companies

The title tends to be associated with larger organisations, but the thinking behind it applies at any size. Even at startup level, having someone dedicate real time to strategic design thinking — not just execution — changes how a product develops.

Bad strategic decisions made early are expensive to fix later. Building in the wrong direction for six months, then realising the product needs to be rethought — that's a far higher cost than getting someone involved in the strategic conversation from the beginning.

The challenge for smaller companies, typically those in the 50 to 100 person range, is that they need that kind of senior oversight but often can't justify a full-time hire for it. The business is big enough to need real design leadership, but not big enough to make a head of design a full-time role on its own.

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What I bring to that gap

This is exactly where the fractional model I offer fits. When I come into a client, the senior design lead is present in the strategic conversations — understanding the roadmap, the business goals, the constraints. That thinking feeds directly into what gets prioritised, what gets built, and how it gets built.

The day-to-day design work runs in parallel through the dedicated designer. But the strategic layer is always there — making sure the product is moving in a direction that actually serves the business and the users, not just shipping whatever's next on the list.