Krista Taylor
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DESIGN AT SCALE · TIAA · 2025—26
COMPANY
TIAA
YEAR
2025—26
ROLE
Principal Product Designer / Design Lead
FOCUS
Design operations · Delivery
Principal-level impact is not only the quality of an individual experience. It is also the ability to improve how a team learns, decides, and ships. This work focuses on that connective tissue.
The design system here is partly organizational: research cadence, decision quality, handoff clarity, and cross-functional collaboration all influence how effectively product strategy reaches production.
3×
USABILITY-STUDY VOLUME
13
HANDOFFS / 6 MO
System
DESIGN → BUILD
01
Increase the frequency of evidence
Make user research more regular so product decisions rely less on assumptions and late-stage validation.
02
Create clearer build-ready artifacts
Improve the handoff model so engineering receives product intent, not just static screens.
03
Treat delivery as part of design quality
Stay engaged through build to reduce erosion between the designed experience and the shipped one.
The goal is a tighter learning-and-delivery loop: research informs decisions, decisions become clear design intent, and build feedback improves the next cycle.
Manual workflows
Fragmented tools
Operational handoffs
Design operating loop
Reusable capabilities
Shared patterns
Scalable delivery
The result is greater design leverage: more evidence entering the product process and a stronger path from design decisions into implementation.
3×
RESEARCH CADENCE
13
HANDOFFS / 6 MO
Tighter
DESIGN → DELIVERY