This is the letter I sent to my my to wrap up our challenging yet fruitful 2024. Some sensitive infomation was removed.

To my incredible team,
As we wrap up another transformative year, I’m filled with pride reflecting on our journey together through 2024.

Chapter I - the evolution

A year ago when we were summarizing our 2023, we used the metaphor that our scope had been increased at an exponential speed, that sometime it felt like being sucked into a blackhole and couldn’t get out.

But professor Stephen Hawking has a theory, that in the middle of a blackhole lies a singularity. Rather than trying to escape, we can change our mindset to embrace the challenges and take them as opportunities and seek for the singularity. Eventually it will take us to a whole new world on the other side of the universe.

And I’m glad that we were able to embrace the spirit and found the new world, we received overwhelmingly positive feedback across different part of the company, and with that we moved into an even more challenging 2024.

In 2024, we underwent a pivotal transformation from a team into an organization. We redefined our Vision and Mission, welcomed new talents, and refined our way of working. Through continuous learning, defining, and crafting, we’ve established a clear path toward our Vision and Mission.

With the Vision and Mission in place, we then set clear objectives for each of the teams. An objective is a clear, qualitative description of what we want to achieve. It should be ambitious yet achievable.

We said we wanted to deliver an inspiring new visual design for project [ *** ], in the meantime we want to learn what is the right way to design an Operating System.

• We delivered the inspiring visual and are on the way to make it future of Volvo Car UX design language.
• And we certainly learnt a lot what to do (and what not to) in order to design a whole Operating System.

We said we wanted to deliver cohesive Volvo design to users on core experience cross different platforms, and to win word-of-mouth from real customers.

• We were able to offer the cohesive design language across [ — ]. The first batch of [ — ] are starting to receive very positive customer feedback — as a matter of fact, it is probably the first time we see most customers are more anticipating than hesitating to an OTA update on a Volvo Car.

We said we wanted to pioneer new working models with cross functional team for Physical and Illumination UX

• We have delivered a holistic Physical and Illumination UX design on [ — ], made some strategically decision on [ — ], and are now converging the focus areas and cross-team working model.

We said we wanted to explore future growth zone like Driving Experience

• While our first trial wasn’t entirely successful, we adjusted our scope and priorities, and now we’re delivering advanced ADAS features like [ — ].

We said we wanted to design a next generation remote control experience, and show a collaboration role model.

• It hasn’t gone as smooth as expected, and we are still refining the collaboration model here

We said we wanted to supercharge commercial goals with authentic Scandinavian Design

• We’ve delivered numerous commercial features and are now embracing the [ — ] opportunity to explore new design breakthroughs.

We said we will try to switch [ — ] to a durable and sustainable maintenance mode

• We’re still working to achieve this while balancing other team priorities.

We said we wanted the research team to not only support our UX designers but also build impacts beyond UX

• We’ve built strong design confidence through early design verifications. We’ve taken lead of strategical initiatives which have influenced lots of other teams globally.

Finally, we said that we wanted to build the foundations to streamline the end-to-end design workflow, with “just enough” process.

• We now have much clearer onboarding/offboarding processes, program status pages, and resource planning sheets. Everyone can access our clear Homepage to understand who we are and how we work.

While some initiatives presented unexpected challenges and we didn’t achieve all our objectives, this is all natural. We must strike a balance between achievable and ambitious goals — if we met every target effortlessly, we probably weren’t aiming high enough.

It is always okay to fail, because “the greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. And when you do rise, make sure you’re wiser than before.”

Chapter II - Focus, Craft and Grow

Our journey was challenging. Achieving our Mission, Vision, and team Objectives required both a highly dedicated team and a unified mindset.

This is why we introduced key guiding principles to foster a shared working spirit.

Focus, with a global mind set

• is about knowing what’s happening around the team and organization, and make sure you find your proper focus area.

Craft, like a masterpiece

• is about to make something that you are really proud of, not just ticking boxes off.

Grow, into excellence

• is about learning and growing, and most importantly, enjoying the journey itself.

It was never meant to be an easy journey. You’ve also expressed that there were many struggles—from frustrations 😫 and challenges to multitasking and overtime work. But these came hand in hand with growth, passion, rewarding outcomes, and that special sense of “Arbejdsglæde.”

While we work toward more balanced workloads and processes, what matters most is whether we believe in what we’re fighting for, whether we’re learning and growing along the way, and whether we’re enjoying the journey itself.

Because ultimately, enjoying the journey is all that matters.

Chapter III - Craftsmanship & Industrialisation

Looking forward, we don’t plan to increase our team size, as we believe we’re are right at the sweet spot of the team size — intimate enough to maintain close collaboration while being ambitious enough to reach higher standards.

We’ll continue building greater impacts, which means we need to shift some parts of our work from pure craftsmanship to standardized industrialization.

We’ve designed thousands of UI pages across different systems, fine-tuned hundreds of [ — ], and created dozens of presentations and spreadsheets for program status reports.

But do we really have to do everything manually? How might we automate parts of our workflow? How might we create clear design briefs to outsource labor-intensive but less creative tasks? How might we streamline cross-functional teamwork to avoid getting caught up in minor details?

These questions will lead us to explore new ways of working smarter, not harder. By finding the right balance between craftsmanship and automation, we can focus our creative energy where it matters most while maintaining consistent quality across all deliverables.

Chapter IV - a sneak peak into 2025

An even more challenging yet exciting 2025 lies ahead of us. We have heard that you wanted more work-life-balance, more design discussion as a community, you anticipating strong market and customer responses to our new products, and wished to achieve even higher goals through sustainable processes.

These improvements won’t happen automatically, though. It’s up to every individual to foster a more collaborative culture and reach even higher standards.

We face challenging times ahead with the global industry slowdown and uncertain geopolitics. However, we’re well-positioned to weather the storm. We have numerous exciting projects landing at just the right moment. For many of us, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see how our design work will play an impactful role in our future success.

As we’ve said before, strategy isn’t an one-person effort. As a team, we need to approach our product design with a more strategic mindset:

Our system team will transition from project-based setup to product design mode.

Our Smartification team needs to explore what “Smartification” truly means, beyond our already delivered excellent in-car applications.

Our Physical and Illumination team should maintain their attention to detail while knowing when to step back and find the right balance.

Our Research team will continue building impact both within and beyond our organization, while finding the right approach to scale our influence without significantly expanding the team.

Our PM/Ops team will continue learning and growing in this new territory, where we have limited knowledge and experience to draw from.

Chapter V - Impactful Delivery and Dynamic Growth

So, here comes our key themes for 2025

Impactful Delivery

While we have created exceptional designs this year, our true measure of success lies in bringing these designs to life. It’s not enough only to craft beautiful solutions in Figma - we must guide them through to final implementation. Most importantly, we need to make sure we close existing cases before starting new ones, ensuring we deliver complete solutions rather than accumulating unfinished works.

As we progress, we need to focus equally on two aspects:

• Maintaining our high standards of design excellence
• Ensuring our designs successfully reach our customers and create real impact

This focused approach reflects our evolution from pure craftsmanship to balanced industrialization. Success isn’t just about what we design - it’s about what we ship and complete.

Dynamic Growth

2025 will undoubtedly be another dynamic year. We’ll face new challenges and exciting opportunities, including some initiatives we can’t discuss publicly yet. Changes will come rapidly as we move forward. But change isn’t a negative force—it’s proof that we’re adapting to an ever-evolving world. This adaptability is crucial for our success.

Also, we can never overemphasize how important it is to grow, both individually and as a team. By continuously learning, adapting, and pushing our boundaries, we can create an environment where everyone feels challenged and engaged. This collective growth mindset will be crucial as we tackle new challenges and opportunities in 2025. When each team member grows, the entire team becomes stronger, more resilient, and better equipped to deliver exceptional results.

With impactful delivery and dynamic growth as our key themes, let’s keep these principles in mind as we work toward another successful 2025.

Chapter VI - We.Can.Do.Anything

Early this year, I was chatting with a design leader about the complexity of our work and how we might excel in such challenging situations. I expected to hear about their experiences as well as frustrations, but to my surprise, the first response was: Early this year, I was chatting with a design leader about the complexity of our work and how we might excel in such challenging situations. I expected to hear about their experiences as well as frustrations, but to my surprise, the first response was:

“We can do anything.”

I was deeply inspired by these words and immediately wrote them down. Now, as we reach to the end of the year, I’m proud to say we’ve also embodied that spirit.

YES! We.Can.Do.Anything!

And it isn’t just a motto—it’s our proven reality. We’ve demonstrated this through every challenge we’ve overcome in 2024, and this same spirit will drive us to even greater achievements in 2025.

Finally, thank you for being patient and reading all of this. I sincerely wish you all a joyful new year break, and look forward to seeing you again in 2025 as we carry forward our “we-can-do-anything” spirit. Shall we?

Best wishes.