PROJECT TITLE Customer Discovery & Customer Insight Research PROJECT DESCRIPTION I developed this...

PROJECT TITLE Customer Discovery & Customer Insight Research PROJECT DESCRIPTION I developed this...PROJECT TITLE Customer Discovery & Customer Insight Research PROJECT DESCRIPTION I developed this...

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Annah Babarinde

• Sep 16

PROJECT TITLE

Customer Discovery & Customer Insight Research

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

I developed this customer discovery project to demonstrate a structured approach to understanding potential customers before developing or improving a product or service.

The goal of customer discovery is to listen to real and potential customers, understand their experiences and challenges, explore their current solutions, and identify unmet needs and opportunities.

The approach focuses on asking open-ended, neutral questions and allowing customers to describe their experiences in their own words.

CUSTOMER DISCOVERY OBJECTIVES

• Identify and understand target customers. • Explore customers’ real problems and challenges. • Understand how customers currently solve those problems. • Discover products or services they already use. • Understand purchasing motivations and decision-making factors. • Identify frustrations with existing solutions. • Discover unmet needs and expectations. • Identify recurring themes and customer patterns. • Generate insights that can support product development and marketing.

CUSTOMER DISCOVERY PROCESS

Define the Research Goal

Establish what the business needs to learn about its potential customers.

Identify the Target Customer

Develop a clear participant profile based on the research objectives.

Develop Interview Questions

Create open-ended and neutral questions designed to encourage honest customer feedback.

Conduct Customer Interviews

Explore customers’ experiences, behaviors, challenges, current solutions, and purchasing decisions.

Organize Customer Feedback

Group responses into meaningful themes and recurring patterns.

Analyze Customer Insights

Identify common problems, motivations, frustrations, preferences, and unmet needs.

Develop Actionable Insights

Translate customer feedback into practical insights that can help inform product development, positioning, and marketing.

KEY AREAS OF DISCOVERY

CUSTOMER PROBLEMS

What problems are customers experiencing and how significant are those problems?

CURRENT SOLUTIONS

What are customers currently doing to solve the problem?

PURCHASING BEHAVIOR

What influences customers when deciding whether to purchase a product or service?

CUSTOMER FRUSTRATIONS

What do customers dislike about the solutions they currently use?

UNMET NEEDS

What do customers wish existing products or services could do better?

CUSTOMER MOTIVATIONS

What matters most to customers when choosing a solution?

EXPECTED DELIVERABLES

• Customer research objectives • Target customer profile • Interview guide • Customer screening questions • Interview framework • Qualitative findings • Customer pain-point analysis • Purchasing behavior insights • Unmet-needs analysis • Recurring themes and patterns • Customer insight summary • Actionable recommendations

MY APPROACH

My approach to customer discovery is simple:

Listen first. Understand the problem. Explore the customer’s experience. Identify patterns. Then turn those insights into practical recommendations.

The objective is not to tell customers what they need, but to understand what they actually experience and discover opportunities that can inform better products, services, and customer experiences.

SKILLS

Customer Discovery Consumer Research Market Research Qualitative Research Customer Interviews Customer Insights User Research Research Analysis Product Research Research Writing

Maaz Mashhood

• Sep 17

Northstar CRM: Full-Stack Customer Relationship and Sales Management Platform

I designed and developed Northstar CRM to transform customer relationship management into a focused, visually intuitive, and connected workspace. Instead of overwhelming sales teams with dense tables and fragmented tools, I structured the platform around clear customer insights, actionable sales data, and streamlined daily workflows.

The visual identity combines a soft atmospheric background with glass-inspired surfaces, dimensional cards, and vibrant blue, teal, yellow, and charcoal accents. Carefully layered shadows, subtle gradients, and elevated components create a refined 3D appearance while maintaining clarity and professional usability. The entire interface follows a consistent 4:3 presentation ratio, making every screen suitable for portfolio displays and high-quality screenshots.

The overview dashboard gives users an immediate picture of business performance. Key metrics—including total revenue, pipeline value, completed tasks, priority deals, recent activities, and upcoming meetings—are presented through scannable cards, progress indicators, compact charts, and contextual status colours. This allows teams to identify important changes and required actions without navigating through multiple reports.

The customer management screen provides a searchable directory with company information, recent interactions, account value, relationship status, and assigned ownership. Selecting a customer dynamically updates the detailed profile panel, where users can review contact information, relationship health, next actions, and communication options such as messaging, calling, or scheduling a meeting.

The deal pipeline organizes opportunities into clear stages, including Discovery, Proposal, Negotiation, and Closing. Each opportunity card displays its customer, estimated value, expected closing date, owner, and current stage. The Kanban-style structure gives sales teams a visual understanding of pipeline movement while supporting faster prioritization and opportunity management.

The calendar and reporting screens connect operational planning with performance analysis. The calendar provides monthly scheduling, customer meetings, deadlines, focus time, and team commitments. The reporting workspace combines revenue trends, conversion rates, customer retention, pipeline sources, account health, and period-based performance comparisons through interactive charts and summary cards.

On the backend, I implemented a modular Node.js and Express REST API connected to a PostgreSQL database. The data model supports users, customers, companies, contacts, deals, pipeline stages, activities, tasks, meetings, notes, and reporting records. Structured relationships and indexed queries ensure that customer histories, pipeline summaries, and dashboard analytics remain fast and consistent as the dataset grows.

Authentication is handled through secure token-based sessions, password hashing, protected API routes, and role-based access control. Different permissions can be assigned to administrators, sales managers, and sales representatives, ensuring users only access or modify information relevant to their responsibilities. Input validation, centralized error handling, audit logging, and rate limiting strengthen reliability and application security.

Real-time updates allow changes to deals, tasks, customer activity, and meeting schedules to appear across connected screens without requiring a manual refresh. Background processes handle reminders, notifications, scheduled follow-ups, and reporting calculations, while caching improves the performance of frequently requested dashboard metrics.

Across the complete full-stack platform, I prioritized reusable frontend components, responsive layouts, secure API design, reliable data relationships, and consistent interaction patterns. The result is a modern CRM experience that feels premium and approachable while providing the technical foundation required for scalable customer management, sales execution, and business intelligence.

Backend Development Full Stack Development UI Design Next.js Node.js Replit

Andrei Stalbe

• 2d

The backend model is the interesting part here. Once customer history, pipeline stages, tasks, and meetings share relationships, it’s easy for dashboard numbers to drift from the underlying records. Did you calculate those summaries on demand, or keep derived reporting data updated through the background jobs you mentioned?