Improving quality across an enterprise platform

Revenue had lagged for consecutive quarters following a major release, new customer growth was notably stagnant.

The biggest problem was the lack of a cohesive vision for how to solve the myriad of UX issues across the platform.

As Product Design lead, I collaborated with the Technical lead and PM to develop a strategy, ideating in tight feedback loops through execution. I consulted with Product Designers while building requirements and coached them through applying improvements in their specific platform areas.

Given that this was the first initiative of its kind, we imposed strict constraints — briefly, the improvements were focused in:

The header toolbar component — I contributed by designing the overall structure, documentation, and supporting designers implementing in their specific platform areas

The page wrapper — my contributions were designing a rough idea and ideating with engineers in code to arrive at a cost-effective solution

An on-page nav component — an outcome of early header toolbar explorations, this was a new component that I contributed an initial design for and then worked with the Design Systems team to implement

My high-level approach:

Go wide: audit the entire platform to identify opportunities

Make sense of the mess: group issues by component

Prioritize ruthlessly: index high on technical complexity and impact on support

Setting a clear vision is the first step to any successful project — I drafted a pitch deck to the rest of the platform teams as a way to inspire them to contribute to the larger goal of improving UX at the platform level.

increased usability scores (an important component of the perceived value) revenue and new business goals were exceeded in the quarters following this release.

A major contributor to success was the team’s ability to focus and prioritize.

Because we had a clear goal and clear budget constraints we could quickly determine what was feasible and viable, maximizing value produced.

Design was critical to providing a clear vision for what was possible and helping make that a reality.