Early in my time at Dropbox, I worked with a junior designer—we’ll call him Alex—who had an incredible eye for UI craft. He was pixel-perfect, fast, and reliable. But over time, he felt stagnant. His visual skills were improving, but he wanted to become a product designer—someone who could design whole features, not just polish the surface.
As his manager, my role was to make that ambition real.
Shaping the Path
We started with a career conversation. Alex and I reviewed his past goals and reframed them to better match his ambition. Instead of me prescribing the “how,” I asked him to set his own goals, then worked alongside him to figure out the steps to achieve them.
We mapped those goals onto Dropbox’s career framework, which I often used to align development with promotion pathways. That gave us a shared language: what skills Alex needed to build, and how I could support him.
Growth happens in the Zone of Proximal Development—when leaders create stretch opportunities and surround them with scaffolding that supports success.
The plan was simple but intentional: find a project that stretched Alex beyond UI polish and into holistic experience design. To make it safe but challenging, I paired him with a senior designer, gave him ownership of the UI (his strength), and set expectations that he’d contribute heavily to UX and cross-team thinking.
Creating the Opportunity
I scanned roadmaps across my group, talking with other managers to find the right fit. Eventually, we landed on a mobile project around upsells and downgrades. It wasn’t deemed too risky, but it had the scope to stretch him: connecting experiences across multiple teams, balancing UI and UX, and navigating trade-offs.
This is where the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) comes in. People grow most when they’re challenged just beyond what they can do alone, but not so far that they’re set up to fail. This project was scoped to sit right in that zone—demanding enough to push Alex, but with the right supports in place.
Creating the Proximal Zone
A stretch project alone isn’t enough—you have to create the scaffolding around it. Here’s how I set up Alex for success:
- Co-working sessions: weekly working sessions where I could observe, review, and iterate with him directly.
- 1:1 reflections: regular space to check in on his goals, build self-awareness, and adapt how we were approaching the project.
- Design critiques: giving Alex exposure to broader feedback loops while modeling how to take critique and iterate productively.
- Cross-functional alignment: I checked in regularly with the PD manager and PM leading the project, so I could stay aligned, provide support, and ensure Alex had coverage where he needed it.
Together, these layers created the “proximal zone” where Alex could stretch without breaking—pushed far enough to grow, but always supported.
The Growth
Alex nailed it. He led the UI design with polish, contributed meaningfully to UX flows, and learned how to work across multiple teams. The success didn’t just ship a better product—it shifted his trajectory.
Within months, Alex was fully focused on mobile design. Within nine months, he was promoted.
The project became a launchpad, and more importantly, Alex no longer felt stagnant. He’d grown from being a reliable executor to someone who could own bigger pieces of the product.