Product Design & Leadership

Nicolas El Azzi

Senior Manager, Product Design

I help growing design teams regain clarity and delivery confidence when product environments become complex or unstable.

Selected impact

Business

  • Galeries Lafayette

    300k€

    Revenue generated in 3 weeks by launching a new shipping initiative.

  • Schneider Electric

    −50%

    Rejected orders cut by overhauling the B2B data governance platform.

  • Salsify

    75%

    Product page load time reduced, closing 2 new APAC deals.

Team and delivery

  • Salsify

    3 designers

    Hired & onboarded in 6 months after a full team turnover in France.

  • Salsify

    −30%

    Designer ramp-up time thanks to a redesigned onboarding program.

  • Ippon Technologies

    x2

    Design team headcount scaled through a targeted hiring strategy.

Leadership

As a Design Manager, I lead through three priorities:

  • Clarify decisions in complex domains

    Surface trade-offs early, make risk explicit, ensure product choices are grounded and actionable.

  • Build autonomous design teams

    Hire, develop, and coach designers with clear expectations, regular feedback, and accountability structures that support growth.

  • Stabilize cross-functional delivery

    Align Design, Product, and Engineering around shared priorities. Reduce duplicate work, increase predictability.

I operate hands-on during high-risk phases (discovery, critical flows),
then step back to let teams own execution.

Portfolio

  1. Rebuilding the EU Design Function

    Salsify

    Senior Manager, Product Design

    • Optimized for long-term stability over short-term seniority.
    • Built structural DesignOps foundations before scaling delivery velocity.

    3 designers Hired & onboarded in 6 months

    −30% designer ramp-up time

    −40% duplicated research

    View project

  2. Transforming a Critical B2B Data Governance Platform

    Schneider Electric

    Design Lead

    • Reframed the problem from "user journey" to "data journey".
    • Forced prioritization discipline through OKRs.
    • Embedded engineering into discovery.

    1 monthly release (vs 3 per year)

    −30% rejected orders

    −50% publishing workload

    View project

  3. Omnichannel In-Store Experience

    Galeries Lafayette

    Design Lead / UX Manager

    • Built design capability inside the project.
    • Adapted methods to retail reality.
    • Designed staff and customer touchpoints as one system.

    300k€ in 3 weeks (Ship from store)

    80 journeys in first days (Hands free shopping)

    X2 compared to target

    View project

About

Experience

  1. 2022 – 2024 Senior Manager, Product Design – Salsify
  2. 2018 – 2022 Design Lead – Ippon Technologies
  3. 2016 – 2018 Lead UX Designer – Napoleon Agency
  4. 2014 – 2015 Senior UX Designer – Commonwealth Bank of Australia
  5. 2008 – 2014 Senior UX Designer – Axance
  6. 2001 – 2008 UI Designer – AOL France

Writing & Speaking