Matthew
De Goes

As AI began emerging as a meaningful technology shift, Peek launched a company-wide initiative to identify where automation and AI could create real business value. Rather than treating AI as a novelty, we focused the work on practical opportunities that could save operators time, reduce manual effort, and improve decision-making across the platform.

I helped lead the effort from research through product definition, working closely with the CEO, CPO, and other cross-functional leaders to define the opportunity space, conduct onsite observation and interviews, shape the product vision, prioritize the first capabilities, and validate the initial launch. That work led to a new AI Copilot offering inside the platform, designed to feel native to the product rather than bolted on. The strongest early use cases were summarized review insights, which helped operators identify themes across thousands of customer reviews, and daily operational summaries, which helped managers prepare for complex or unusual day-of-tour needs.

When I joined Peek, the platform was operating on a legacy foundation that needed modernization. As the company continued to scale, the lack of a unified design and engineering system made it harder to build consistently, move quickly, and maintain quality across the product.

I partnered closely with Product Design and Engineering to define and build a scalable design system that could serve as the foundation for the platform moving forward. We shipped a shared system of components and patterns that new features and pages would be built on, creating a more consistent product experience while also improving how teams designed and developed together.

As Peek Travel rapidly scaled across Product, Engineering, QA, IT, and Design, the organization had begun to feel the strain. Teams lacked a consistent development process, ownership was uneven, and features sometimes shipped without the right level of review, creating misalignment, rework, bugs, and missed expectations.

I led the creation of a company-wide Product Development Process in partnership with directors and individual contributors across the organization. The framework established four stages, from research and problem identification through design and validation, development and QA, and finally shipping and feedback. We introduced clear review gates before development and before release, supported by a weekly UX review that brought design and engineering together earlier to identify blockers and improve quality before launch.