From “Why?” to a UX Guild: DevStory with Perihan Rashed (Senior Product Experience Designer at Dynatrace)

A story that starts with chairs—and lands on human experience

In “DevStory: Perihan Rashed, Senior Product Experience Designer bei Dynatrace,” Perihan Rashed opens with a disarmingly simple memory: as a kid, she asked endless “why” questions. One in particular stuck—“Why are chairs the way they are?” Researching that question led her to the early history of chairs, with roots in ancient Egypt, a link that resonated personally because she is Egyptian. Over time, chairs evolved—from royal seating to everyday comfort with padding—anchored by a core idea: designing for human experience.

That throughline carries directly into her work. At Dynatrace GmbH, Perihan is a Senior Product Experience Designer and also a UX Guild Lead. And in this DevStory session, the way she connects curiosity, method, and organizational enablement is precisely what makes her perspective valuable for engineers and product leaders.

Embedded in the dev team: end-to-end ownership of the experience

Perihan describes a setup that many teams strive for but don’t always achieve: designers embedded directly in development. Typically, one to three Product Experience Designers work within a team, and she collaborates end to end with developers—from framing the problem to validating the solution.

This is not “handoff” design. It’s a shared process where UX, engineering, and product management co-own the journey from uncertainty to evidence. Decisions don’t just originate in design files; they’re forged in tight feedback loops with the people who build and the people who prioritise.

Design Thinking as the working mode

Perihan explicitly frames the team’s approach as Design-Thinking-oriented. Not as a slide deck, but as an operational discipline: explore, converge, prototype, test, and iterate. From her outline, the loop looks like this:

• Understand and define: What problem are we solving and why does it matter?
• Build empathy: Who is the user; what do they struggle with; what outcomes do they seek?
• Craft a clear problem statement: One that focuses everyone on the same target.
• Research broadly: Study competitors, and look outside for fresh inspiration.
• Prototype: From rough sketches to clickable flows—fast, collaborative, disposable.
• Brainstorm with dev and PM: Align on the destination; choose a feasible path.
• Test with users: Validate assumptions; confirm or reject hypotheses.
• Iterate: Jump back to where the learning points you.

What stands out is the explicit permission to move backward. In effective product teams, looping is not failure—it’s how learning compounds into better outcomes. Perihan’s description makes that the default.

Collaboration that reduces rework and increases clarity

The practical benefit of an embedded model is not abstract. When developers are present in problem framing and ideation, prototypes become shared artifacts—not just design deliverables. When product managers participate in testing, evidence travels faster into strategy. In Perihan’s account:

• Brainstorming is purpose-driven: “Where do we want to go at the end?”
• Prototypes are decision aids, not just polished visuals.
• Testing is part of the path to done, not an afterthought.

For teams still organized around late-stage handoffs, the shift begins by inviting designers into backlog conversations early, clarifying problem statements up front, and allocating time to discover before committing to delivery.

The UX Guild: enabling designers, developers, and PMs at scale

As a UX Guild Lead, Perihan highlights a common reality: in IT, UX designers are often the minority within large engineering organizations. That makes “what design is” harder to communicate—and harder to practice consistently—unless you build mechanisms that scale knowledge and capability.

The guild focuses on practical enablement across three areas:

• Design system: How to use components and patterns effectively.
• Developer-driven testing of designs: How engineers can test their own designs.
• PM-led testing: How product managers can run testing themselves.

The effect is two-fold. First, design is no longer a bottleneck because core practices and assets are shared. Second, decision quality improves because consistency (via the design system) and evidence (via testing) are in the hands of more people. The guild model lets design lead by enabling others, not by gatekeeping.

The “chair mindset”: curiosity that questions defaults

The chair anecdote is a metaphor for product work. Asking “Why are chairs the way they are?” maps directly to “Why is our flow the way it is?” or “Why do users struggle here?” That questioning pairs naturally with the process Perihan outlines:

• Begin with understanding and empathy.
• Capture the problem crisply.
• Prototype and test to learn, not to prove you were right.
• Be willing to loop back whenever evidence demands it.

Curiosity here isn’t ornamental—it’s a core competency.

Career guidance for designers: start backward

Perihan closes with plain, actionable advice for anyone entering or navigating the UX field. The field is big, she says—so don’t start with scattershot activity. Start backward.

The centerpiece is the portfolio. Every designer needs one—but not every portfolio fits every context. Perihan calls out three orientations:

• agency-focused
• marketing-focused
• technology-focused

Choose based on where you want to be, and build your portfolio accordingly. Courses and degrees exist in abundance; use them in service of your destination, not as a substitute for it. In other words: decide your direction, then curate evidence of your ability to operate in that environment.

A practical way to operationalize “start backward”

• Define the destination: Agency, marketing, or technology—what ecosystem do you prefer?
• Select the right cases: Showcase methods and outcomes that context demands (e.g., problem statements, research, iteration for tech-focused roles).
• Expose your process: Make the path visible from problem to prototype to test and iteration.
• Tie decisions to evidence: What did you learn, and how did it change the solution?
• Optimize for readability: Clear narratives beat galleries of final screens.

What engineers and PMs can apply from this DevStory

From “DevStory: Perihan Rashed, Senior Product Experience Designer bei Dynatrace,” several practical takeaways emerge for product and engineering teams:

1) Treat UX as a team sport

• Involve designers early; align on a crisp problem statement.
• Use brainstorming to decide direction, not just to collect ideas.

2) Scale quality with design systems and testing

• A shared design system accelerates delivery and enforces consistency.
• Encourage engineers to test early design assumptions.

3) Normalize iteration

• Testing is not the finish line; it’s the engine of learning.
• Jumping back in the process is progress, not rework.

4) Hiring lens for tech organizations

• Look for “backward planning” in portfolios.
• Technology-oriented portfolios typically show clear problem statements, hypotheses, test results—and evidence of close collaboration with engineering and PM.

Quotes worth remembering

A compact recipe for teams

Translating Perihan’s account into a reusable flow for product teams:

• Sharpen the problem: Align on a clear problem statement.
• Secure the user perspective: Empathy through research, not intuition alone.
• Curate inspiration: Competitors and adjacent domains as idea catalysts.
• Prototype iteratively: From rough to refined—always testable.
• Embed collaboration: Developers and PMs involved at every step; goal-oriented brainstorms.
• Test, learn, loop: Prioritize insights; feed them back into the work.
• Lean on the design system: Use components consistently to maintain quality.
• Build a guild or community: Share knowledge; explain standards; enable self-service.

Closing: curiosity, method, and enablement

Perihan Rashed’s DevStory at Dynatrace GmbH distills three ingredients of resilient product practice: a habit of asking why, a design-thinking loop that welcomes iteration, and an organizational model that spreads design competence across roles. From ancient chairs to today’s prototypes, the arc is coherent: better experiences emerge when we question defaults and then work systematically—with our teammates—to improve them.

For those building products—engineers, designers, PMs—the call to action is simple. Ask why. Define problems clearly. Prototype, test, and learn. Share what you know, and enable others to do the same. That’s how design becomes not just a deliverable, but the way a team thinks and operates.

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