Horizon Theme

What I did

I led Discourse's design team in taking charge of the Horizon theme project alongside our lead designer (Charlie Portier), product manager (Lindsey Fogle), and engineers from multiple teams. We established clear goals, ran weekly collaborative design sessions, and maintained transparency by posting all progress to our internal forum. Our process emphasized sketching rough concepts before detailed work and testing on both internal and customer sites.

Why it mattered

Our team wanted to prove that designers could lead major initiatives at an engineering-focused company. We were solving critical problems: designing for non-technical users who couldn't customize themes themselves, writing clean and maintainable code, and building better tools for future theme creators. Our approach built trust across the organization. People saw their feedback incorporated into designs, demonstrating the value of feedback loops and iterative development.

This project was about more than creating a theme. We were showing that designers could successfully lead major technical initiatives at an engineering-focused company. We tackled critical challenges like designing for non-technical users who couldn't customize themes, writing maintainable code, and building better tools for future creators. Most importantly, we demonstrated how inclusive feedback loops build organizational trust and improve outcomes.

The impact

Horizon became the default theme for all new Discourse sites, but the real victory for me was the process. We established a template for future initiatives and influenced how our organization approaches product development. Design now has a stronger voice in major technical decisions. Transparent, iterative processes are slowly becoming the standard across teams.

If you'd like, you can learn more about the design processes we used by reading my blog post about it.