Cerner
Seven designers, one quarter, and a team that needed a way to work together.
I came in as Lead Experience Designer for Cerner’s charting and documentation tools, which clinicians use all day. I inherited seven designers who’d been working without leadership or a shared way of working long enough that it showed.
What had happened to the team?
The team was fragmented. No central leadership, no shared cadence, no agreed way of working. Just seven talented individual contributors pointed at an enormous product surface and left to fend for themselves. The symptoms were predictable: inconsistent output, missed deadlines, and the quiet morale erosion that happens when smart people aren’t sure where they fit.
A leadership void. No rhythm, no direction, work that didn’t add up to a coherent whole.
Clinical documentation, where every change touches compliance, safety, and downstream systems. You can’t just “make it simpler.”
Give the team a way to keep improving the product.
I gave the group a cadence, clearer ownership, and room to ask for help. We still had to design for clinicians within Cerner’s enterprise and regulatory constraints. I wanted the team to keep doing that work after my quarter ended.
I took charge within a week, before I had every answer.
The team didn’t need a month of observation, it needed a point of contact and a cadence, fast. So I moved early and adjusted as I learned.
A leadership cadence
Daily stand-ups, regular critiques, standing one-on-ones. Not exotic, that’s the point. The team was failing for lack of any dependable rhythm, not for lack of clever process.
Work as a shared load
Assigned to strengths, tracked progress, balanced priorities, and deliberately watched for burnout, which in a domain this heavy produces exactly the inconsistent work the team was known for.
Mentoring, and I meant it
One-on-ones were where I understood what each person was stuck on, gave guidance, and helped grow their talent in partnership with management. Not status meetings.
The connective tissue
I became the central point across UX, UI, strategy, Foundations (design systems), Human Factors, product, and development, negotiating the vision when user, business, and product reality pulled apart.
Standards as the throughline
With seven hands on a sprawling product, the design system was what could hold the work together, so I drove consistent use, contributed patterns back, and logged non-compliant output for mitigation.
I had one quarter, and a choice: control, or autonomy.
A short runway, a team needing both immediate stabilization and durable change, in a domain where you can’t cut corners on rigor. Over-index on process and I’d be the bureaucrat nobody asked for, under-index and nothing would outlast me.
The structure
The cadences, the standards, the priorities, a frame the team could work inside.
The ownership
Inside that frame, the designers owned their work, the cadence framed it, the mentoring gave them the confidence to act without waiting for me.
That’s the difference between a team that performs while the lead is watching and a team that keeps performing after the lead leaves.
The team changed shape, and the practices outran it.
What had been a disjointed, low-morale group became a functioning, collaborative unit, meeting deadlines, producing more consistent work, with noticeably better morale. With that structure in place, the charting and documentation design got sharper and more usable for the clinicians who depend on it.
- Fragmented, working in parallel
- No shared cadence or standard
- Inconsistent output, missed deadlines
- Eroding morale, waiting on direction
- Cohesive, collaborative unit
- A dependable rhythm and shared standard
- Steadier output, deadlines met
- Better morale, acting without waiting
Same seven people. Different team. Nothing changed about the talent, what changed was the structure around it.
What it looked like from alongside.
“As a Lead in the UX field, Catherine brings structure and strong communication skills to the plate. Working with Catherine was a very enjoyable experience; she made us all better at what we do. Just within a couple of weeks into our cooperative engagement, she taught me specifically where I could strengthen my approach in being a mentor. I learned so much from directly observing her methods of support and stabilization when it came to running a healthy and diverse team of interdisciplinary UX designers. She shares her multifaceted expertise and experience with a flavor of passion & integrity that is truly inspiring.”
The playbook I’d bring to the next team.
Move before you’re ready
Install a dependable rhythm in week one, refine it as you learn, don’t spend a month observing while the team drifts.
Carry the load as one
Assign to strengths, balance priorities, and guard against burnout on purpose, one load carried together, not seven separate ones.
Make standards the throughline
The one thing that makes separate hands add up to one coherent product, and make non-compliance visible instead of letting it quietly ship.
Set structure, hand back ownership
Set the frame, cadences, standards, priorities, then hand the work back. The structure holds, and the ownership is what outlasts you.
I set a way of working, then handed ownership back to the designers.
I started stand-ups and critiques, met with each designer, balanced the work, and brought the team back to shared standards. By the end of the quarter, they could keep those practices going without waiting for me.