Casey Drummond
Approach
Approach · Product

How I work with product

I lead teams from first idea to launch, side by side with product and engineering, shaping what we build and why at Zimmer Biomet, Taoglas, Illumina and CDC. Here’s how I do it.

ProductUX design &researchEngineeringVision &strategyI leadI shape
Discover
Research and discovery, shared with product, not handed off
Decide
Prioritization, MVP scoping and roadmap sign-off
Define
Product briefs, requirements and acceptance criteria
Deliver & measure
Release process, success metrics and post-launch tracking
20 daysMVP scoped and designed, Illumina
2 teamsmoved up UX maturity, Taoglas and Zimmer Biomet
+42%feature use after launch, Illumina
01 · The workflow

One path from idea to adoption

Scenario

At Taoglas’s IoT division, requests came from customers, sales and support, with no shared way to decide what to build. I mapped the release workflow and wrote the UX procedure for its ISO 9001 quality system.

Result

One fair way to prioritize every request, with product, sales, support and engineering aligned on a single path to release.

The release workflow I mappedDecision gateLoops backDecision gate
AllProductMarketingDevelopmentUXLegal1 · Intake & decide2 · Specify3 · Design4 · Build & QA5 · Sign-off & launch6 · Post-launchConcept &ideation (anyone)Research &requirementsBusiness teamreviewDecideHigh-levelfeature specMarketingframework planningDetailedfeature specResearchAnalyzePrototypeDesignSpechandoffEstimatefrom handoffMgmtsign-offJira tickets& backlogBuild: API, app,cloudTesting & QARelease notesReview sessionProductsign-offMarketingsign-off &collateralExecsign-offLegal sign-off& deliverablesPromotion& adoptionDeployEnhancements& maintenanceTrack metrics& share resultsLegal deliveryContinuous integration & delivery (CI/CD)Yesiterative loopif not approved
1Intake & decide
  • AnyoneAdd idea to the shared feature list
  • MarketingResearch & requirements
  • ProductBusiness team review
Go / no-go
2Specify
  • ProductHigh-level feature spec
  • MarketingMarketing framework planning
  • DevelopmentDetailed feature spec
3Design
  • UXResearch, analyze, prototype, design (iterative)
  • UXSpec handoff
  • DevelopmentEstimate from handoff
Mgmt sign-off
4Build & QA
  • DevelopmentJira tickets & backlog
  • DevelopmentBuild, test & QA (CI/CD)
  • DevelopmentRelease notes
  • ProductReview session
Product sign-off
5Sign-off & launch
  • MarketingMarketing sign-off & collateral
  • LegalLegal sign-off & deliverables
Exec sign-off
6Post-launch
  • DevelopmentDeploy
  • MarketingPromotion & adoption
  • DevelopmentEnhancements & maintenance
  • UXTrack metrics & share results
  • LegalLegal delivery
AnyoneProductMarketingDevelopmentUXLegalDecision gate: anything not approved loops back
Redrawn and simplified from my 2022 workflow. People and product details are omitted.
02 · Deciding

How I decide what to build

Every request became a user story in one shared list. In a regular requirements session, product, engineering, UX and stakeholders discussed the who, what and why of each one and agreed on a priority together, so no team could jump the line.

DesirabilityDo people want it? Research, support requests and usage data.
FeasibilityCan we build it? Engineering estimates from the UX handoff.
ViabilityDoes it serve the business or the mission? Management decides.
Size the research to the decisionWe chose UX activities by a feature’s priority, scope, impact and how often people would use it. Small changes got a quick check; big bets got full research.
03 · Defining

Product briefs that turn decisions into a plan

I start with capability maps, working with product managers to bring in user research, business and UX metrics, and rough effort estimates, with early and late reviews to build stakeholder buy-in. At Zimmer Biomet, I created and led a Patient Research Panel and partnered with the product team on a Surgeon Panel, which informed feature priorities.

From there, I help draft product briefs, add UX resource estimates, and take them through stakeholder, Legal and privacy review to final sign-off.

Read a sample from my own projectCora product briefProblem, users, a weekly-active-use north star, success metrics, risks and roadmap for Cora, the AI recovery prototype I built independently. Contains no employer information.
Open the PDF
04 · Measuring

Metrics across the whole lifecycle

01
Define before design
Agree on user and business metrics, tied to the mission and strategic pillars.
02
Measure in research
Test against a baseline, so “better” is a number, not an opinion.
03
Track after launch
Share what’s working and what isn’t with leadership, and point the next round of research.
+42%Feature use after a self-serve launch (Illumina)
+45%People using a public health app after relaunch (CDC)
−22%Medical-coding errors after redesign (Optum)
05 · Maturing the practice

Moving teams up the UX maturity model

I've moved two teams up Nielsen Norman Group's UX maturity model (opens in a new tab). At Taoglas's IoT division, there was no design practice, so I built one from scratch. At Zimmer Biomet, I helped take an existing practice to the point where UX was part of how products got planned.

Taoglas
StartStage 1Absent
 Stage 2Limited
 Stage 3Emergent
ReachedStage 4Structured
 Stage 5Integrated
 Stage 6User-driven
Zimmer Biomet
 Stage 1Absent
StartStage 2Limited
 Stage 3Emergent
 Stage 4Structured
ReachedStage 5Integrated
 Stage 6User-driven

How: at both, I wrote our SOPs and led my team in standardizing our processes, which meant smoother handoffs to development and QA, less rework and fewer bugs sent back to design.

06 · AI in the process

AI speeds the work, people make the calls

I use AI across discovery, scoping and prototyping to move faster without lowering the bar. It never replaces talking to the people who use the product.

01
Designing for trust
In Cora, I designed for the moments AI gets it wrong: low-confidence fallbacks, plain answers about what it can’t do, and one-tap escalation to a real person.
02
AI-assisted design reviews
Claude checks work against usability heuristics, WCAG 2.2 AA and design-system rules first, so critique stays on the big decisions.
03
Prototyping with code
I built Cora with Claude Code: guardrails designed before screens, and two versions A/B tested with seven people.
04
Ongoing training
Maven certifications in UX design for AI and in Figma UI for agentic AI workflows (2026).
07 · In practice

Product work, role by role

Zimmer BiometUX/UI Engineering Associate Director
Worked with PMs on capability maps and product briefs, led discovery with the Director of Product at hospitals and clinics, tracked product metrics and matched designers and researchers to PMs.
TaoglasUI/UX Product Marketing Manager
Created the intake-to-release process, wrote the UX procedure for the ISO 9001 quality system, and signed off on the feature roadmap and acceptance criteria with the Directors of Product and Marketing.
IlluminaSenior Human Factors / UX Designer
Led a 6–7 person cross-functional group, ran feature-prioritization workshops, and scoped and designed an MVP with MoSCoW prioritization in 20 days. Research drove single sign-on; +42% feature use after launch.
CDCSenior UX Specialist & Web Developer
Shared product work: with business analysts and public health experts, who signed off, I helped shape design and research strategy and online feature priorities, and represented my CDC centers on 5 CDC.gov standards workgroups.

All of this was done inside design and product-marketing roles, not under a product manager title. Product managers owned their backlogs and final business calls.

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