Overview
The platform includes two core experiences:
- Leader Experience (customer-facing )
- Participant Experience (public-facing – view project)
This case study focuses on the Leader Experience, where I led a full UX transformation, similar to Participant Experience.
(Link to full case study pdf below)
Problem
The core workflow of the Leader Experience — creating an Exchange — was unnecessarily complex; it was functional — but frustrating.
Leaders had to:
- Jump between multiple screens to set up an Exchange
- Navigate an embedded-style interface that felt clunky and outdated
- Click back and forth repeatedly to complete a single workflow
- Manage too many disconnected setup pages
Creating an Exchange — the core action of the platform — felt heavier than it should have. The platform’s promise was clarity and collective insight.The creation flow delivered the opposite. Leaders weren’t feeling guided. They were feeling slowed down. And for a platform designed to empower leaders, that was a problem.
The experience created friction at the most critical moment in the product. Feedback from CSM, sales, feature requests in Aha!, and customer complaints – consistently highlighted confusion, inefficiency, and lack of confidence during setup.
Approach
1. Discovery: Listening Before Designing
Before touching wireframes, I immersed myself in customer feedback. I combed through Slack threads from the CSM team, sales call recordings, support tickets, and product requests.
Patterns were clear:
- Confusion during setup
- Frustration with navigation
- Lack of confidence when configuring Exchanges
The friction wasn’t isolated — it was systemic.
The goal: move from fragmented setup to guided confidence.
It was to redesign the experience of creating.
2. Re-Architecting the Creation Flow
Before wire-framing UI, I mapped the full “Create an Exchange” journey from a Leader’s perspective.
The biggest issue? Too much back and forth.
Instead of a guided experience, leaders were bouncing between disconnected screens. It felt procedural, not intentional.
So I shifted the model and introduced a guided configuration flow — a step-by-step pathway that reduced cognitive load and increased clarity.
Key UX decisions:
- Progressive disclosure for advanced settings
- Constraint-based logic to prevent invalid submissions
- Real-time visual feedback to reinforce decisions
- Inline validation before finalizing setup
The goal was simple: Make creating an Exchange feel confident, not chaotic.
3. Prototyped & Validation
Built interactive Figma prototypes and tested them with customers and internal teams, for usability, decision clarity, perceived effort and Leader confidence. Insights drove refinements to hierarchy, micro-interactions, and system logic — ensuring the experience felt intentional and intuitive. This wasn’t just a design exercise — it required alignment with engineering constraints and product strategy.
4. High-Fidelity System Design & Implementation
With validated flows in place, I translated the experience into a clean, scalable interface.
I developed:
- A modernized, brand-aligned UI
- Reusable components
- Consistent interaction patterns
- Foundations for a scalable design system
During implementation, I worked closely with Engineering to ensure the UX integrity survived handoff — collaborating through edge cases, states, and technical constraints.
Impact
The result: The redesign transformed the core workflow of the platform.
We:
- Reduced back-and-forth during Exchange creation
- Simplified a previously fragmented setup process
- Modernized the product’s visual presence
- Built infrastructure that scaled with the company
But more importantly — Leaders felt guided. Creating an Exchange went from a multi-screen chore to a clear, confident flow. And that shift reinforced the product’s promise: helping leaders listen better and act smarter.
