Interact
My current employer is a B2B software firm - providing an intranet platform designed to enhance collaboration and workflows across organisations.
challenges
With a mature and evolving platform, Interact have faced several challenges during my years at the company:
Inconsistencies Across the Platform: Years of incremental development have resulted in design inconsistencies across the UI.
Scattered Feedback Channels: Feedback from clients, internal stakeholders, and support tickets were often unorganised and unprioritised, making it difficult to identify actionable insights.
Customisability vs. Usability Tensions: Clients require extensive customisation options without sacrificing user-friendliness or functionality.
Process Gaps in Collaboration: The design and development teams need clear workflows and communication to streamline delivery.
Evolving Client Needs: Clients require strategic guidance for launching and optimising their intranet platforms.
solutions
Process Shaping and Team Enablement:The first change I was tasked with as a Senior Designer was to increase consistency and parity across the design teams' deliverables and methods of working.
Design System Creation: I addressed platform inconsistencies by creating a comprehensive design system for Interact’s Engineering and Product Design teams.
Product Feature Rollouts: I have led and/or contributed to the UX design process for several key feature rollouts, ensuring a user focused end result was released.
User Testing: As part of the above, I've conducted Testing; results directly informing design decisions, ensuring features met user needs and minimised friction.
Client Guidance and Strategic Planning: Creation of our strategy guides/design training materials and launch considerisations for our customers.
A breakdown of my contributions:
During my years at Interact, I’ve worn different hats and worked across multiple departments. My main contributions have been within the Product Team, Professional Services (B2B client-side), and Technical Support.
1. Process Shaping and Team Enablement
Process Playbook Creation: I created a UX Process Playbook to guide the team through consistent workflows. This document outlined essential stages, recommended tools, and best practices - helping different teams to align.
Support Team Collaboration: I established workflows for logging customised hotfixes and coordinating them with the JIRA system, creating a transparent and consistent process for addressing client-specific issues.
Feedback Categorisation: I created categories for sorting and analyzing support tickets into UX feedback categories. This initiative highlighted recurring trends and enabled data-driven prioritisation of product improvements.
Internal Adoption: Secured buy-in from leadership for these changes, demonstrating how they could directly support product evolution and client satisfaction.
2. Design System Creation
To address platform inconsistencies, I co-created a comprehensive design system for Interact’s Engineering and Product Design teams.
Research and Feedback Gathering: Conducted user interviews with key clients, analysed support themes, and distributed internal surveys to identify recurring UI pain points and prioritise issues.
Flexible and Scalable Foundation: Designed a brand-agnostic system that balanced clean, user-friendly defaults with flexibility for client customisation. Each element was developed with dual considerations: its default form and its acceptable level of custom styling.
Collaboration and Documentation: Worked closely with developers to ensure smooth implementation, creating guidelines for designers and developers on how to apply the system across projects.
Outcome: The design system significantly improved platform consistency, reduced development time for new features, and provided a scalable framework for client-specific customisation.
3. Product Feature Rollouts
As I moved further into the Product Unit, I led the UX design process for several key feature rollouts, ensuring they were intuitive and aligned with user needs.
Major Projects:
Designed and implemented a Timeline UI for improved content visibility and user engagement.
Redesigned various flows within the content authoring experience, making it more streamlined and accessible for non-technical users.
Developed a new tabular administration layout for power users, enabling easier management of data and settings.
Outcomes: These features received positive feedback from users and stakeholders, enhancing usability and overall satisfaction with the platform. Many customer sites saw a significant increase in user engagement.
4. User Testing
Methods Used: Conducted moderated and unmoderated usability tests on prototypes, collecting a mix of qualitative and quantitative feedback.
Affinity Mapping: Organised user pain points into thematic categories, using Notion to document the insights for feature improvements.
Outcome: Testing results directly informed design decisions, ensuring features met user needs and minimised friction.
5. Client Guidance and Strategic Planning
Guidance Development: Co-created strategy guides for clients to assist with content prioritisation, audience identification, and team readiness for intranet launches.
Launch Support: Provided actionable advice on hierarchy planning and best practices for content gathering, helping clients maximise the value of their intranet.
01
Professional Services Work: After meeting various clients (enterprise, mid or startups) - I have created design solutions and provided UX/Technical support.
01
As the team grew, I put together a Process Playbook for our UX Processes to ensure a consistent approach.
02
I designed the first iteration of our design system in Adobe XD in 2022. Since then, we have migrated to Figma, Style Dictionary and Storybook.
03
Before and occasionally after the implementation of the Design System, I provided technical specifications to the Engineering team to ensure consistency in Product UX.
04
Feature Rollout: Our new content-authoring experience was a vast improvement on the predescessor. And went through multiple iterations.
05
Feature Rollout: I designed a new Product Timeline Widget, that saught to increase collaboration and buy-in amongst internal teams.
06
Testing excerpt: I conducted user testing against prototypes in development via both moderated and unmoderated tests.
07
I provided guidance internally and to our clients, drawing on my experience across multiple departments and strategic learnings.
wrap up
Increased Platform Consistency: The design system’s implementation standardised visual and functional elements, helping the platform to be more intuitive and cohesive.
Improved Client Customisation: This empowered clients to tailor their intranets in a much more standardised manner - without compromising our product's foundations.
Streamlined Processes: Internal teams adopted more consistent workflows, reducing inefficiencies and fostering collaboration across departments.
Enhanced Client Success: Strategic planning and guidance equipped clients with the tools and knowledge to launch and sustain successful intranet platforms.
My time at Interact has allowed me to grow as a UX designer, tackling complex, multi-layered challenges across a large-scale platform. From creating scalable systems to delivering impactful features, I developed a deeper understanding of balancing user needs, business goals, and technical constraints. These experiences continue to inform my approach to solving design challenges with empathy and strategy.
