Design Thinking (Innovation) Playbook
A strategy for changing the perception of design, creating a culture of innovation & collaboration to deliver more value for our customers.
Overview
When I joined Fluent Commerce as Head of Product Design, the company was entering a critical stage of growth. As a rapidly scaling SaaS business and emerging leader in composable Order Management Systems (OMS), the organisation faced increasing product complexity, expanding customer needs and the challenge of scaling its ways of working. Following the departure of the existing design team, I had the opportunity to establish a new Product Design function and redefine the role Design could play within the business.
Before introducing new processes or frameworks, I invested time in understanding the organisation—its products, customers, technology, culture and existing product development practices. I spoke with stakeholders across Product, Engineering and Customer Success to understand not only the challenges they faced, but also how they perceived Design and where they believed it could add value.
Those insights became the foundation of this Design Thinking Playbook.
More than a process guide, this playbook was designed to establish a shared approach to innovation. It articulated how we discover customer problems, collaborate across disciplines, validate assumptions and make evidence-based product decisions. It provided the Product Design team with a common language, practical tools and repeatable methods while helping the wider organisation understand how Design contributes to better products and better business outcomes.
Within my first three months, I introduced the initial version of the playbook and began embedding its principles into everyday product development. In an engineering-led organisation, change wasn't achieved through documentation alone—it was earned by consistently applying these practices to real customer challenges, refining them through experience and demonstrating their value through better decisions, stronger collaboration and improved product outcomes.
This playbook captures that journey. It reflects the principles, practices and mindset that helped transform Design from a delivery function into a catalyst for innovation at Fluent Commerce.
Business Objective
As Fluent Commerce transitioned from startup to scale-up, the business needed to innovate with greater confidence while reducing delivery risk. Success depended on deeply understanding two customer groups—business users and implementation partners—and embedding Human-Centred Design into product development to solve the right problems before building solutions.
Customer Challenge
Research revealed growing pressure to improve innovation and implementation speed. Partners wanted more valuable capabilities for customers, while Sales identified competitors offering more complete out-of-the-box solutions that reduced implementation time and cost.
Design Challenge
Create a scalable Design Thinking framework that improved customer understanding and established a consistent approach to discovery, validation and delivery. The framework needed to align Product, Engineering and Design around shared customer insights while enabling faster, evidence-based decision-making.
Outcomes & Impact
Established the Design Thinking operating model that became the foundation of Product Design at Fluent Commerce.
Embedded Human-Centred Design into the product development lifecycle, improving collaboration and product decision-making.
Expanded Design Thinking beyond Product into Engineering and platform initiatives, strengthening innovation capability across the business.
Elevated Design from a delivery function to a trusted strategic partner influencing product direction.
Built strong momentum and executive support through the successful delivery of high-impact initiatives.
Led discovery for the *Unified View of Inventory (UVOI)** initiative, producing customer insights and solution direction that the SVP of Product described as "epic", despite the project proceeding without a dedicated Product Manager.
Credits
Product Name: Design Thinking Program (Fluent Commerce)
Role: Head of Product Design
Website Link: https://fluentcommerce.com/