Create design, create future
Designing the design area at Nowports from scratch: forming the team, defining structures, processes, and a strategic vision to turn design into a key driver of growth within the product and business.
Summary version
We started with just one person, a lot to do, and zero excuses. We put everything together: team, processes, culture, vision. We gave shape (and substance) to the design within the product, immersing ourselves in every corner of the company: from strategy to pixels. Today, design is muscle, brain, and bridge. And it all started with the decision to do it right, from the beginning.
* Some figures and data have been adapted for illustrative purposes to protect strategic and confidential information.
The origin: one person and many responsibilities
When I arrived, there was only one UX designer on the team. I joined to lead it and begin building the design area within the product from there. We were in charge of designing the platform, conducting research, preparing the design system, and also collaborating with marketing, growth, operations—any team that needed to solve something from an experience or interface perspective. It was an intense and learning period, where the "we" began to take shape as a team with a shared vision.
The turning point came when our deliverables began to have a visible impact. Three of the four themes investors highlighted as crucial to our unicorn status were directly tied to the design work: the platform, the website redesign, and the mobile app. This validated us internally and gave us the support to scale.
When I joined Nowports as employee number 10 in Uruguay—out of a total team of just 100 people—I knew I was joining a young, ambitious company with real potential to transform logistics in Latin America. What I didn't know was that I would have the opportunity to build a design team from scratch within the product area and scale it to become a key pillar of the company's growth.
With growth came the need for order
I organized the design area into three complementary teams:
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Product Design : Responsible for the end-to-end experience of digital products. From the beginning, I focused on this role not only as UX designers, but as product designers with a holistic view of the product and the business. It was key that each designer understood the impact of their work on the overall strategy, business objectives, and the complete user experience, from need to conversion and retention.
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User Research: Responsible for discovering actionable insights and guiding decisions with evidence. The team was always multidisciplinary, with people from different fields such as sociology, psychology, industrial design, and UX. This diversity allowed us to apply varied methodologies depending on the objective: from in-depth interviews and usage diaries to co-creation with stakeholders and quantitative behavior pattern analysis. This mix enriched our approach and improved the quality of our decisions.
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Design Ops : Process facilitators, quality, and efficiency in the design operation. In addition to ensuring efficiency, we ensured the implementation of solid UX principles throughout the development cycle. We were responsible for defining and evolving the design system, the product's tone and voice, and establishing specific processes for Product Design and User Research. We also designed formal interactions between these teams and with other areas such as Product, ensuring fluid collaboration, a shared vision, and a consistent user experience at every touchpoint.
We created clear ways of working, defining internal and external responsibilities and formalizing our interactions with other areas. Each team knew its role and how it contributed to the whole. As a concrete example, we created a worksheet where we clearly documented the responsibilities of each design subteam, their internal collaboration methods, and how they should interact with other areas such as Product, Technology, Growth, and Marketing. We established responsibility matrices, types of deliverables, collaboration rituals (such as dailies, reviews, and syncs), and which tools and channels to use for each type of task. This document became a living guide that helped us maintain alignment, autonomy, and efficiency as we grew.
From 1 to more than 1000
The Product Design team grew from just two people at the start—a UX designer and me as the leader—to becoming a solid four-person structure, and then continuing to expand as the business grew, reaching nearly 20 people within the Product Design team. Each addition responded to a strategic need: to cover more fronts, specialize roles, and strengthen the transversal impact of design across the entire organization. Nowports also grew exponentially: we surpassed 1,000 employees and officially became a unicorn in 2022, following a Series C round led by SoftBank.
Together with other Product, Data Science, and Tech leaders, we co-designed the work structure into squads and chapters. This allowed us to scale with consistency and agility, while maintaining a focus on impact and alignment across teams.
UX Design Notes
Alongside building the team, we created UX Design Notes — a resource library to clearly document flows, decisions, and interactions, shared across Product, Development, and stakeholders. It includes reusable components like navigation arrows, contextual notes, memos, specifications, component inventory, measurements, and highlighted zones. Everything is organized to improve handoff, reduce ambiguity, and provide precise visibility into what’s happening, why, and how.
Consolidating product fundamentals from design
From the design department, we worked to institutionalize a critical, strategic, and impact-focused product culture. It wasn't just about delivering screens or features, but about solving real problems aligned with business objectives. This involved fostering hypothesis-based thinking, iterative decision-making, and continuous learning from evidence.
One of the pillars was to promote the creation of tools that would allow us to make informed decisions. Among these, we co-created a business case template to evaluate new product solutions. This document helped standardize the analysis of impact, effort, risk, and strategic alignment, facilitating prioritization and alignment across departments.
We also played an active role in defining the product's way of working, a collaborative system that mapped responsibilities, workflows, rituals, and tools necessary for collaborative collaboration between design, product, data, and technology. This structure strengthened the teams' autonomy and professionalized our practice.
Additionally, we worked on creating an internal communications system, defining a clear documentation structure and channels for each type of interaction. This initiative was implemented in both Product and People, facilitating collaboration and access to information in a context of rapid growth.
Business integration: much more than just an interface
I also developed an internal communication system for the teams, defining a clear documentation structure, channels by type of interaction, and organized G Suite sites with all the information needed to operate autonomously. I implemented this in both the Product and People teams, enabling more fluid, organized, and accessible collaboration as the company scaled.
From the start, I ensured the design team wasn't a silo. I was deeply involved with operations, marketing, and growth, aligning goals and leveraging our expertise.
Brand and product: one voice
Through marketing, we unified the visual and verbal brand across all digital touchpoints. We redefined the value proposition, developed the email marketing strategy, NPS, and the entire digital customer experience, from first impression to conversion. We also worked together to define the ICP (Ideal Customer Profile), a key process for aligning acquisition, design, and communication efforts. Through qualitative interviews, usage data analysis, and cross-functional workshops, we identified our ideal users and how to adapt to their motivations, contexts, and expectations. This impacted not only how we designed products, but also how we communicated, which solutions we prioritized, and how we measured the success of our initiatives.
Culture and values: design is also people
I also integrated Nowports' values directly into the People team, ensuring they weren't just phrases on a slide but a living part of the internal culture. These values were:
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We act with courage : we face the unknown, challenge the established, and make difficult decisions with integrity.
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We are ambitious : we think big and seek to have a large-scale impact.
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We move fast: we prioritize action and execution with responsibility.
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We build with empathy : we listen, understand, and act to generate real impact.
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We take responsibility : we own our decisions and act as owners. I participated in defining the strategy and how it would be communicated and internalized, from talent selection to the employer brand narrative. I contributed a design perspective that allowed us to translate abstract values into concrete behaviors, rituals, and experiences.
I worked with People to define the company's values and build a coherent communications strategy. From onboarding to internal and external branding (employer brand), we designed experiences that conveyed who we are and what we want to be.
Design with vision
Designing a team and a product culture from scratch in a hypergrowth environment was an opportunity to prove how design can become a strategic, cross-functional, and transformative force within a company.
Design isn’t an isolated phase — it’s a way of thinking, building, and connecting. The best solutions don’t come from fast execution, but from a deep understanding of the problem and honest conversations between diverse teams. That’s why we’ve always pushed for a product culture grounded in critical thinking, business empathy, and an obsession with impact.
We knew that scaling without purpose is just empty growth. That’s why every structure, every process, and every team was intentionally designed to evolve alongside the value we wanted to create. We supported that growth with solid principles, shared frameworks, and dynamics that kept the user at the center — without losing sight of the business.
We understood that while processes provide structure, what truly sustains them are relationships, trust, and a shared purpose. And that the real role of design isn’t only on a screen — it’s also in strategic conversations, tough decisions, and cultural spaces.
That’s what drove us: designing with vision, with structure, and with real commitment. Because when design is lived this way, it stops being just a function — and becomes a way to move everything forward.