Design leadership for product companies in transition.
Building and leading design functions.
Previously at Kry, Viaplay, Mentimeter and Relex.
Track record
Service → Strategy
Design functions that move from delivery to strategic partner, with the teams to match.
New capabilities
Research, design ops and content design, established as functions that sharpen insight, lift quality and streamline delivery.
Ways of working
Career frameworks, a feedback culture and rituals that build a strong team, well integrated with product and engineering.
Vision & narrative
Visions, prototypes and stories that give a product direction leadership commits to and teams align around.
What I do
Interim design leadership
I lead your design team between leaders, or take it to the next level, and help you hire the right permanent leader.
Design function setup
I help you work out what design should be in your company: which roles to hire, where design belongs, what to expect from it and what value it should create.
Product direction
Getting a product bet from vague to concrete. Discovery, concept and prototype, and a validated strategic narrative a leadership team can actually align behind.
Thought partnership
Recurring one-to-one sessions for design leaders working through team, org and career decisions without a peer to test them on.
About
I’m Christoffer Kittel. For more than ten years I have led design in product companies that are changing faster than their organisations. Alongside leading, I still design and build myself, mostly where it sets the direction or raises the bar for the team.
Case Studies
Mentimeter
From start-up to product organisation
As the first design leader, changing how a product department made decisions: product trios, a real design function, and testing what everyone already knew.
Kry
Building design through hypergrowth
Growing a team of five into a design organisation of more than fifty, across four markets, through hypergrowth and a pandemic.
Viaplay, Kry, Mentimeter, Epidemic Sound, Relex
The power of design sprints
Using design sprints across five companies to turn stuck questions into shared pictures, and adapting the format to fit each problem.
