Launch Control
Overview
Challenge
Problem: When I joined the team, the platform was already a success story with a large user base. This happened in just a few years, development was rapid, and the team was growing fast. This led to significant design debt. There was no clear design direction, and many screens had completely different styles. UX was suffering, which was visible in retention rates and the number of support tickets.
Constraints: While the work of improving visual clarity was being done, rapid development of the platform had to continue, so the design team was usually stretched across multiple parallel projects. Another major constraint was complying with government regulations related to the real estate market while expanding functionality beyond that market. It was clear that something had to be done with the design, but the founder wanted to preserve the key aesthetics of the existing platform.
Approach
Research: the company already had well-developed Customer Support and Customer Success departments that collected data regarding user retention, churn, pain points, and difficult onboarding steps. Some long-term users even created detailed videos describing frustrating parts of the platform.
Key insights: all issues reported by users and confirmed by the data pointed to the same conclusion: the platform was not following basic usability and heuristic principles. Most user needs were already covered by the platform, but features were often not intuitive enough or were difficult to find.
Design decisions: we conducted a full platform audit and collected all versions and variations of components (buttons, input fields, modals, tables, etc.) so that we could evaluate them and get a clear picture of the scale of the design debt.
Solution
Final designs: here you can see the redesigned platform and key screens:
Design system: Although there was little consistency across the platform, after the full audit we identified a number of elements that could serve as a foundation for a new design system. As a result, the new design system felt like a cleaner, more polished evolution of the product rather than a complete redesign.
UX flows: Here you can see one of many important UX flows.
Impact
Results For Users:
Improved visual consistency made the platform easier to learn and navigate which made on boarding new customers easier.
Key actions became easier to discover, reducing frustration caused by hidden or difficult-to-find functionality.
More consistent interaction patterns reduced the cognitive load required to move between different parts of the platform, churn went down and user retention got better.
Existing users were able to benefit from UX improvements without having to relearn the product due to a drastic redesign, new design system was wellcomed.
Results for the team:
Improved visual consistency made the platform easier to learn and navigate which made on boarding new customers easier.
Key actions became easier to discover, reducing frustration caused by hidden or difficult-to-find functionality.
More consistent interaction patterns reduced the cognitive load required to move between different parts of the platform, churn went down and user retention got better.
Existing users were able to benefit from UX improvements without having to relearn the product due to a drastic redesign, new design system was wellcomed.
Lessons learned:
Customer support and customer success teams can be one of the most valuable sources of UX research in established products.
Preserving familiarity can be just as important as introducing improvements, especially for products with a large existing user base.
Design systems are not only a visual tool but also a way to manage complexity across fast-growing teams.