Catriona Shedd

I'm a design director who shapes how teams work together, make decisions, and build better products.

I do my best work when the problem is still taking shape and no single team has the full answer. I partner closely with Product and Engineering to make the tradeoffs tangible through design, while helping designers build the confidence and judgment to lead those conversations themselves. I stay connected to the details because the experience people actually use has to live up to the direction we set.

… Designer Earlier work
2014–2018 Director of Product Design
2018–2020 Director of Product Design
2020–Present Director of Product Design

Case study

Order Quality at Instacart

Improving order quality meant looking at the full experience, from how customers express their preferences to the decisions shoppers make in stores. I led design across connected customer and shopper work, helping teams see where separate products needed to work together and pushing for clearer, more useful experiences within each one.

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Instacart order quality product screens showing shopper quality metrics and customer replacement preferences

Case study

Leading design transformation with AI

AI has opened up an opportunity to rethink how our team develops products. I've been changing how we review strategy and experience work, supporting hands-on experiments with functional prototypes, and helping designers build the skills for a different way of working. The focus is getting to better decisions earlier, with designers more directly involved in shaping what gets built.

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From

Designers create representations of the intended experience

To

Designers shape, validate, and improve the experience itself

Case study

Design Systems Products at InVision

At InVision, I helped the organization see a broader opportunity for Design System Manager and led design toward it. Research and customer workflows shaped a platform vision, including a pivotal decision to work with the design tools teams already used. I guided a distributed team through the redesign and launch.

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InVision Design System Manager product interface, showing documentation for typography and system foundations

How I lead

I want designers involved while a product direction can still change, with the judgment to challenge assumptions and influence the outcome. I work closely with Product and Engineering as a creative partner, and stay involved as those choices become experiences people actually use.

Shaping product direction together

Shared ownership. I expect designers to challenge product strategy, and Product and Engineering to question design decisions. Everyone should feel responsible for the experience, regardless of whose idea it was.

Ambition with evidence. I like ambitious ideas, and want to be clear about the problem and what would tell us we're on the right track. Early designs make options tangible, research moves us past competing opinions, and I test the biggest unknowns before committing.

Craft that holds up. I stay close to critique and validation because a convincing strategy still has to work in a real interaction.

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Influence framework

I developed a framework outlining four ways designers can influence decisions, when each is useful, and how to assess their own approach.

Reviews and deliverables

I clarified what each type of design review should accomplish, what designers should bring, and which decisions the discussion needs to support.

Design leadership feedback

I made it clearer when work needs input from our Head of Design and what feedback is most useful at that point.

Helping designers develop their judgment

Coach through the work. I make expectations clear and feedback specific while designers are making real product decisions. That's where they build confidence to take on harder problems.

Know when to step in. Sometimes I push hard on a direction. Other times, I help another designer lead the conversation. I want them to trust their own judgment and make calls without waiting for mine.

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Career expectations

I wrote level-by-level guidance that makes our competency framework practical in conversations about growth, and kept it current as the framework changed.

Craft guidance

I put together a guide to strong craft in everyday design work and how expectations evolve as designers grow.

Calibration artifacts

I paired designers' work with specific examples of impact for performance calibration. The format was later adopted more broadly.

Making effective ways of working repeatable

Take the guesswork out. What a review is for, who needs to be involved, and what a team needs to move forward should be clear enough for people to act on.

Share what works. When the same friction keeps showing up, I turn what we've learned into practical guidance that other teams can use too.

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Project playbooks

I wrote playbooks for strategic work, iterative projects, and internal pitches so teams knew whom to involve along the way.

Team planning

I mapped upcoming work against the design experience each area needed and used that understanding to inform staffing decisions.

Engagement analysis

I dug into survey trends and cross-functional benchmarks, then shared the approach with other design leads.

About me

I’m based in New Hope, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Penn State University’s College of Information Sciences and Technology. My career has taken me across financial services, small-business software, design tools, and commerce, which has given me a pretty broad perspective on the kinds of problems design can help solve.

I’ve also experienced a wide range of company environments, including large public companies, an agency, a startup, and fast-growing pre-IPO businesses. I do my best work with people who are curious, willing to question familiar approaches, and genuinely working toward a shared goal across Design, Product, and Engineering.

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Catriona Shedd smiling in a dark green blouse
Aerial view of the Ledge and Tide house and shoreline in Deer Isle, Maine

Experience creation is what drives me, on and off the screen.

Over the past year, I've been designing and building Ledge & Tide, a vacation home on Deer Isle, Maine. I created the brand from scratch and redesigned the house from top to bottom to create a comfortable, authentic Maine experience rooted in its setting. From the website to the rooms and the smallest guest details, I've looked for ways to help visitors connect with what makes this part of the coast special.

It's been an opportunity to shape an experience people actually inhabit. The same thing draws me to digital product design: thinking through how the pieces work together and seeing how those choices feel to someone on the receiving end.

Visit Ledge & Tide