Timothy Salter-Hewitt

Kooth: IDEO to in-house design transition

Kooth: Scaling design

Context

Company: Kooth
Scale: ~600 people
Product: Behavioural and mental health app and website, operating in the UK and US.

Kooth provides digital mental health support to young people and adults, with a growing international presence including expansion into the US.

My role

Title: Head of Product Design (previously Lead Product Designer)
Team at start: 2 designers
Team after scaling: 6 designers
Structure: 4 product feature squads

I was responsible for leading product design across the organisation, planning and executing the growth of the design team to support Kooth’s US expansion, and hiring all new design roles.

The challenge

Kooth needed to scale its product teams to support rapid growth and international expansion, including building a new app, Soluna, for California. However, it wasn’t initially clear how large the design and research functions needed to be, as engineering and product were scaling in parallel.

At the same time, IDEO were providing external design support for the new app, meaning I had to scale the internal team while coordinating with an external partner and planning for a future transition to a fully in-house model.

The challenge was balancing short-term delivery needs, long-term team structure, and uncertainty around product and engineering scale.

What I did

I planned the growth of the design team based on the future product structure, using the emerging feature squads for the Soluna app as a way to estimate design capacity needs across different areas of the product.

I embedded myself deeply into IDEO’s working practices, acting both as an individual contributor and as design leadership for Kooth. I attended IDEO design reviews, collaborated closely with their team, and ensured strong alignment between external and internal design work.

As I hired designers into the Kooth team, I deliberately partnered them with IDEO designers to enable knowledge transfer and prepare for a future handover to an in-house model. We ran shared review sessions, stand-ups and regular collaboration rituals to integrate ways of working.

I made a key leadership decision to move Kooth’s internal designers into embedded roles within product feature squads, rather than operating as a centralised design team. This created tension with IDEO’s preferred centralised model, but I believed embedded design was essential for effective delivery and alignment with real product priorities.

Impact

Design became fully embedded into product delivery, with designers aligned to feature squads and focused on shipping the features required to support the Soluna app launch, rather than exploring speculative future concepts.

User research became more frequent and integrated into day-to-day work, with researchers collaborating closely with designers and influencing product decisions throughout the delivery cycle.

Kooth successfully transitioned away from IDEO as the primary design function. Over a three-month period leading up to launch, dependency on IDEO was reduced from three designers to a single lead, with full ownership handed over to the in-house team shortly after launch.

The internal design team was able to support delivery at pace and meet launch deadlines, contributing to the successful on-time release of the California Soluna app.

Design had a lasting influence on the product, with the experiences created during this period forming the foundation of features that continue to be iterated on today.

Kooth: IDEO to in-house design transition

Context

IDEO were originally brought in to provide design expertise for the proof of concept of Kooth’s California app, Soluna. The initial engagement lasted around three months and focused on shaping and validating the concept.

I was heavily involved in the creation of this proof of concept, which ultimately helped Kooth secure the California contract. Following this, IDEO continued to support Kooth to evolve the proof of concept into a fully fledged product, working alongside an external engineering partner to prepare Soluna for launch.

IDEO’s role shifted from concept exploration into more detailed product design, fleshing out features and supporting delivery as the app moved towards launch.

My role

I acted as the design lead on the Kooth side, responsible for both managing Kooth’s internal designers and overseeing the design work produced by IDEO.

I worked closely with IDEO to ensure design quality and continuity, developing a deep understanding of the experience decisions they were making and how features were being shaped.

Alongside the VP of Product, Head of Product and Head of User Research I was responsible for aligning IDEO’s work with Kooth’s product strategy and ensuring that the internal design team I was building would be able to seamlessly take ownership of the product once the external engagement ended.

In parallel, I also led the design of Kooth’s internal service delivery product, where IDEO contributed design support but experience direction and requirements were primarily owned by myself and the Head of Product.

The challenge

The transition from IDEO to an in-house design team carried significant risk. IDEO had originally designed the core features of the product, meaning there was a real danger of losing critical product and design knowledge as the external engagement came to an end.

At the same time, Kooth needed the internal design team to maintain the same level of design quality and momentum that IDEO had established, while also adopting a different operating model more suited to embedded, delivery-focused product teams.

This all needed to happen under tight time pressure as the organisation prepared for the launch of the Soluna app, with multiple critical activities happening in parallel: scaling the internal team, managing external partners, and delivering a complex product to a fixed deadline.

Another challenge was integrating Kooth’s internal designers with external designers and engineers who already had strong working relationships. The external teams were highly effective together, and the risk was that Kooth’s team would struggle to build the same level of trust and collaboration quickly enough to take ownership of the product.

There was also a fundamental tension between IDEO’s vision-led approach, shaped by their work on the proof of concept, and Kooth’s deeper understanding of its business, operational constraints, and what the product would realistically need to deliver at launch.

What I did

I embedded Kooth designers directly alongside IDEO designers on a one-to-one basis, ensuring that each internal designer had clear ownership of a product domain and a corresponding IDEO counterpart. This created strong knowledge transfer and allowed internal designers to build deep understanding of the product areas they would later own.

I deliberately hired early enough to create meaningful overlap between the external and internal teams. This gave Kooth designers sustained exposure to IDEO’s ways of working, design quality, and accumulated product knowledge, rather than relying on a rushed or document-based handover.

To manage the tension between IDEO’s centralised design model and Kooth’s delivery needs, I made a clear leadership decision to embed Kooth designers within product feature squads. I used the product roadmap and upcoming launch milestones to demonstrate why designers needed to align closely with squads responsible for shipping specific features.

I stood behind this decision despite IDEO’s preference for a more centralised approach, believing that embedded design was essential for effective delivery, clearer ownership, and stronger collaboration during the critical pre-launch period.

Alongside this, I aligned Kooth’s internal design ways of working with product and engineering teams, ensuring that designers were fully integrated into delivery rituals, QA processes, and day-to-day product decision-making.

Impact

The transition from IDEO to an in-house design team was fully successful. Kooth designers were able to take ownership of the relevant product domains and continue design delivery without disruption.

Kooth assumed full ownership of the Soluna product alongside an external engineering partner, who was later ramped down, leaving the internal team fully responsible for ongoing product development.

Dependency on IDEO was removed within one to two months of the handover, with design quality and delivery maintained by the internal team.

The decentralised, embedded design model introduced during this transition has proven sustainable over time. Two years later, product teams continue to operate in this way, with designers successfully iterating on Soluna and collaborating closely with product and engineering.

The impact of this transition extended beyond the initial launch, establishing a long-term operating model for design that continues to support effective product delivery.

Just Eat: Restaurant orderpad redesign

Context

Just Eat’s Restaurant Orderpad is a core product used by restaurant partners to manage incoming orders, update order statuses, and run day-to-day operations on the platform. It supports millions of orders globally and plays a critical role in the success of both restaurant partners and the wider Just Eat marketplace.

By the time this project began, the Orderpad had grown in complexity and no longer reflected how restaurants were actually working, with increasing expectations around speed, clarity, and reliability.

My role

I was the Lead Product Designer embedded within the Orderpad feature squad, owning the end-to-end design of the product alongside Product and Engineering.

I worked closely with a UX designer on the project and partnered with user research to validate design decisions, while maintaining overall responsibility for experience direction, design quality, and delivery.

The challenge

The existing Orderpad experience had become increasingly fragmented and difficult to use as new features were added over time. Restaurants needed to process orders quickly and accurately in busy, high-pressure environments, but the product no longer supported their workflows effectively.

The challenge was to redesign a business-critical tool used at scale, balancing the need for significant UX improvements with the operational reality that restaurants relied on the product every day. Any changes had to be carefully validated, technically feasible, and safe to roll out without disrupting live service.

At the same time, the redesign needed to support future product growth, not just solve immediate usability issues.

What I did

I led discovery work to deeply understand restaurant workflows, mental models, and pain points, working closely with user research to ground design decisions in real user behaviour.

I partnered with Product and Engineering to define a clear problem space and prioritise opportunities for improvement, ensuring that design direction aligned with both user needs and business goals.

I owned the end-to-end design of the new Orderpad experience, from early concepts through to production-ready solutions, working iteratively and validating changes through usability testing with restaurant partners.

Throughout the project, I remained embedded within the feature squad, collaborating daily with engineers and product managers to manage trade-offs, ensure technical feasibility, and maintain momentum across a long-running redesign.

Impact

The redesigned Orderpad delivered a significantly improved experience for restaurant partners, making it easier to manage orders and understand key information at a glance.

The new experience reduced friction in core workflows, improved order handling efficiency, and provided a more scalable foundation for future product development.

The project was recognised externally, contributing to Just Eat winning Incisive Media Technology Product of the Year.

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