Everyone at the table deserves to feel valued and heard. The best work comes from diverse perspectives, strong advocacy, and elevating the people around me to drive meaningful change.
Andrea Barros — Design Leadership
Senior Product Design Manager at EchoStar — leading the Dish and Sling TV growth design teams across acquisition, retention and interactive experiences. Shaping the future of video services at EchoStar.
How I got here
Physical to pixels
Started in Hong Kong, shaping exhibition and retail brands. Moved from physical to print and digital, learning how omnichannel experiences connect.
Range across sectors
Agency work broadened my scope—designing for voice, TV, gaming consoles, wearables, and automotive. Led a design team of 12, focused on accessibility and cross-platform design systems.
Systems of people
Organizations are the most challenging systems to transform. During this time, I built a design team from the ground up as VP of Design.
Foresight and futures
Now leading two growth teams at EchoStar, using systems thinking to shape direction, not just ship features. Also pursuing a MDes in Strategic Foresight and Innovation.
How I lead
Listen, be kind, stay curious and choose diversity over monoculture.
My role as a leader is to clear the road, not to occupy it. I lead by caring personally and challenging directly — working and advocating for my team, and building a space where everyone at the table is invited as a co-creator.
Advocacy builds partnership
I prefer working with cross functional pods with clear decision making authority, and I trust the subject matter experts I hire to lead where they have expertise. To me, design advocacy and inviting co-creators into the process is how trust is built and strong internal partnerships take shape.
Everyone at the table is a designer
Engineers, PMs, copywriters, and customer service teams all contribute to the work in meaningful ways. Some of the strongest insights have come from people whose title wasn’t “designer”, and I’ve learned that the best outcomes come from humility, curiosity, and shared ownership.
Experimenting towards direction
I don’t believe in waiting for the perfect direction. Instead, I facilitate conversations to clarify goals and intent. I experiment and share early and frequently to motivate and propel things forward.
What I specialize in
My specialty is building design teams — DesignOps leadership that bridges discovery and strategy.
That covers hiring and onboarding, improving operational efficiency as a company scales, and managing design production across digital and physical omnichannels — from discovery and research through to strategy led execution.
I'm passionate about finding new methods to create thoughtful, user-centric experiences that meet both customer and business needs. Investment in research and testing is what surfaces areas of opportunity, but experiential design is what builds retention and draws new customers in.
Areas of practice
- DesignOps and team structure — hiring, onboarding, scaling process as the org grows.
- Research validation — facilitator and observer across qualitative and quantitative studies.
- Design systems and growth funnels — acquisition and retention.
- IoT experience design — TV, console, and connected devices.
- Design facilitation — using foresight and co-creation methodologies to find new verticals.
By the numbers
Experience
Senior Product Design Manager, Growth
Senior Product Design Manager, Interactive Experiences
VP of Design
Senior UX Consultant
Design Manager
Senior Interactive Designer
Teaching
iSchool Industry Partner
UX Instructor
Education
Currently pursuing a MDes in Strategic Foresight and Innovation at OCAD University
Why am I pursuing a Masters? I kept hitting the limits of what user research can tell us. Research captures the present well, but it doesn’t always reveal where behavior is heading next based on trends and macro factors. I use foresight methods like causal layered analysis and Three Horizons to look beyond litany, understand deeper worldviews, and frame a path from the current system to a preferred future.
Sample research study: The Systems of Information Dissemination, a systems study of the causes of disinformation that was presented at Systems Thinking Ontario.
Also
- MDes, 2023-Ongoing, OCAD University (SFI), Toronto
- BDes (Hons), York University / Sheridan College (YSDN), Toronto
- Front-End Web Development — Bitmaker, Toronto.
- UX Designer Certificate — Akendi, Toronto.
Community & Volunteering
I've spent a decade mentoring, teaching and speaking about a variety of design topics.
Past panelist and workshop facilitator for The Design Clinic, CIBC, Women and Color, Women Who Code, and Canada Learning Code, where I served on the UX Advisory Board consulting on curriculum for teen workshops and full-time classes. I've also volunteered as a teaching assistant with Bridge School's Product Design cohort, and led design for TEDxYouth@Toronto across four years of brand identity, digital and print collateral.
Roles
- UX Advisory Board Member — Canada Learning Code, Toronto.
- Teaching Assistant — Bridge School, Product Design Cohort 3.
- Design Lead — TEDxYouth@Toronto, 2013—2016.
- Speaker & workshop facilitator — various design events, Toronto.
