Summary
For a rapidly-growing company like Wayfair, scaling in all functions and optimizing at both micro and macro levels, a constant state of change is normal. Wayfair’s hiring landscape has exploded in the past two years with new offices in CA, Austin, Toronto and Berlin, requiring new ways of working, across disciplines, timezone and borders to be effective. In order to ensure connections and best practices across disciplines (product design, user research, content strategy) and end-user teams, strategic ways of working must be put in place to successfully serve our customers, and each other. We not only instituted ceremonies and best practices that have proven to successfully accelerate shared learnings in the last 2 years, we continually optimize those practices, as changes inevitably present themselves. In this talk, we’ll take a closer look at the practices in Wayfair’s Supplier space (also known as Partners), which has 50+ team members.
Key Insights
-
•
Wayfair’s Global Experience Design team stretches across six locations and speaks 27 languages, requiring mindful and inclusive collaboration strategies.
-
•
Traditional in-office rituals like sticky notes and whiteboard sessions did not translate well to remote work, prompting new collaboration methods.
-
•
The team intentionally designed rituals to avoid screen fatigue and to be inclusive across time zones and cultures.
-
•
Collectives, or communities of practice, allow individuals with shared interests to deepen skills and support each other organically.
-
•
Formal growth programs, like a nine-week UI growth course and the Research Empowerment Program, provide structured skill development and build confidence.
-
•
Informal 'coffee chat' bots pair team members randomly every two weeks to recreate spontaneous in-person connections and cross-team knowledge sharing.
-
•
Biweekly show and tell sessions encourage sharing work-in-progress to foster alignment and build presentation confidence without critique pressure.
-
•
Small design review sessions (XD Collabs) create tighter networks offering deeper, ongoing feedback among peers.
-
•
Global meetings (GXT quarterly all-hands, mentorship programs, and internal mobility initiatives) strengthen company unity and career growth.
-
•
Intentional experimentation, feedback collection, and willingness to scrap ineffective rituals are key to balancing connection and deep work in a distributed team.
Notable Quotes
"I love analog as much as I love digital—physical analog and digital coexist for me."
"One day we were in the office, the next day suddenly remote—there was no choice but to adapt."
"Sticky notes and whiteboards just wouldn’t translate online, so our collaboration rituals had to change."
"We were like islands with no bridges, trying to connect while remote, but it wasn’t so easy."
"Sharing unbaked pots and showing vulnerability is central to our process—it helps us collaborate through uncertainty."
"The coffee chat bot pairs two people every two weeks with no agenda, just like a kitchen chat that wouldn’t happen in remote life."
"Show and tells are not critiques, they’re chances to share progress and practice presentation without pressure."
"We broke those islands; now everyone’s connected, which deepens empathy for our suppliers and their journeys."
"Wayfair’s design team is design thinking led, inspiring other functions to form communities and grow together."
"We’re not afraid to scrap rituals that don’t work anymore to protect time for deep work and be mindful of team energy."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"What would it look like if we could ask, how do I make this the absolute best environment for complex problem solving, instead of how do I take away all the annoying hard problems?"
John CutlerThe Alignment Trap
November 29, 2023
"Our mission is to empower everybody to learn; not the few learning on behalf of the many."
Monty HammontreeThe Future of UX Research
December 3, 2020
"The pressures in large organizations make it hard for teams to see the value of empathy and cross-team connection."
Matt StoneScaling Empathy, A Case Study in Change Management
June 11, 2021
"Profit is simply revenues minus costs, so we measure design’s contribution by the effect on either side."
Gonzalo GoyanesDesign ROI: Cover a Little, Get a Lot
September 8, 2022
"I was able to create user segments to analyze sustainability-related user journeys and identify gaps."
Amy ParnessScaling Sustainability: Complementary strategies that drive long-term success
May 29, 2025
"We’ve got Tim Gilligan, Meredith Blackbrand, and Bria Alexander on a panel about the future of design ops."
Alana WashingtonTheme 3 Intro
October 1, 2021
"Most AI systems today cannot be retrofitted easily to comply with regulation."
Patrizia BertiniDesigning Within the Lines: How the EU AI Act Can Spark Better AI Innovation
December 11, 2025
"Emotional responses to research participants are human but must be balanced with maintaining professional boundaries."
Jane Reid Janice HannawaySelf-care in User Research
April 2, 2020
"Short-term pairings with different design people help bring back contributions into the central system."
Nathan CurtisBeyond the Toolkit: Spreading a System Across People & Products
June 9, 2016
