Design team should mirror your user base

You design your product for your users, but are you designing your design team to mirror your user base?

We obsess over user personas, edge cases, and accessibility—ensuring our products meet the needs of diverse audiences. But when we look at the people shaping these experiences, do we see the same diversity reflected?

That means thoughtfully building a team of different cultures, different educational backgrounds, and even different ways to breaking into design. This will help your team solve problems different, ask questions differently, and connect deeper to your users.

A design team that mirrors its users isn’t just a checkbox for representation—it’s a competitive advantage. It means:

✅ Deeper empathy—lived experiences inform better design decisions.

✅ Fewer blind spots—diverse perspectives catch issues before they become problems.

✅ Stronger innovation—different backgrounds lead to richer, more creative solutions.

If we want truly inclusive products, we need to start with inclusive design teams. That means rethinking hiring, fostering belonging, and ensuring every voice is heard.

How are you shaping your design team to better reflect your users? Let’s share strategies!

Keep having those 1-on-1s

Airbnb's Brian Chesky got rid of his standing 1-on-1 meetings. He says they're fundamentally flawed, and "you become like their therapist." I get that. But if you're a design leader thinking about canceling all those 1-on-1s and reveling in all that free calendar time, take a breath.

Chesky speaks from the perspective of a CEO who has very senior leaders as direct reports. If you're like most design leaders, you have middle managers or individual contributors reporting to you. And if that's the case, here's my case for keeping those 1-on-1s.

Your team still need you

They're still growing in their career, learning to manage up and down. That means they need more hands-on time with you and other leaders to ensure they're growing in ways that benefit the employee, the team, and the company. You invest in them, and the ROI takes shape in the team and product quality.

Build relationships for a better team

Regular 1-on-1 meetings help build closer relationships with your direct reports, which leads to better conversations, stronger results, and longer employee tenure. As the saying goes (but isn't always true)—people leave bad managers, not bad jobs. Staying connected to your team also helps you spot signs of burnout or other issues before they become serious problems.

Stay connected to the work

Regular 1-on-1s also help you stay better connected to the work. Suppose you condition your team to wait for you to check in before surfacing updates or problems. In that case, you might not get looped into projects until a problem gets bigger than it should.

Mentorship to grow them into better leaders

As a design leader, part of the 'product' you're building is the team. That means you're investing time and knowledge into your team so they can grow into those executives who one day report to the CEO. Part of the mentorship is enabling and teaching them interpersonal problem-solving skills so they don't use the CEO as a therapist.

While it's tempting to pump the brakes on your 1-on-1s, remember that if your team isn't learning good habits from you, they might be learning bad habits from others.