PRODUCT OVERVIEW

Damen Solutions Incorporated is a B2B service platform that connects small to mid-sized businesses with enterprise consulting and operational support services across supply chain, logistics, and business transformation. The platform serves business owners, procurement managers, and operations directors who need to quickly evaluate service offerings, submit inquiries, and schedule consultations with Damen's team of industry specialists. When I joined the project, the platform had been live for three years but was struggling to compete with more modern SaaS competitors in the consulting space.

GOALS

Reduce friction in the service discovery journey. Users were abandoning the platform before they could understand what services were available or how to request them.

Modernize the visual identity to match competitor standards. The dated interface was undermining trust and making Damen appear less credible than newer market entrants.

Decrease support tickets related to navigation confusion. The customer service team was spending hours each week walking users through basic tasks like finding contact forms or service descriptions.

Increase conversion on service inquiry forms. The business needed more qualified leads submitting requests through the platform rather than calling support or abandoning entirely.

Deliver a scalable design system for future iterations. The engineering team needed reusable components they could implement quickly without custom builds for every page.

Meet the hard two-week deadline without compromising quality. The business had already committed to a launch date with key clients and missing it would damage relationships.

MY ROLE

Responsibilities. I led the entire design process from audit through delivery, owning research, wireframing, high-fidelity design, prototyping, and developer handoff. I made all strategic design decisions around navigation structure, visual language, component architecture, and interaction patterns. I also managed stakeholder expectations throughout the sprint, presenting progress at daily check-ins and defending design choices when the timeline threatened to force shortcuts that would compromise the user experience.

Collaboration. I worked directly with the VP of Product to align on business priorities and success metrics, met daily with the engineering lead to validate technical feasibility of my designs, and coordinated with the customer support manager to understand the most common user pain points. I also partnered with the content strategist to rewrite navigation labels and service descriptions that would fit the new information architecture without requiring backend changes.

USER RESEARCH

Users couldn't distinguish between service categories. The original navigation used internal company terminology that meant nothing to external users, forcing them to click through multiple pages just to understand what Damen actually offered.

The homepage overwhelmed users with too many entry points. There were seventeen different CTAs competing for attention on the landing page, and users reported feeling paralyzed about where to start.

Mobile users were effectively locked out. Analytics showed that 43% of traffic came from mobile devices, but the platform wasn't responsive and core features were completely unusable on smaller screens.

Trust signals were buried or missing entirely. Users wanted to see client testimonials, certifications, and case studies before committing to an inquiry, but this content was hidden three levels deep in the site structure.

DESIGN PROCESS

I started with a heuristic evaluation where I clicked through every page of the existing platform, documented every broken flow, and mapped the current navigation hierarchy against actual user goals based on support ticket data and analytics. On day two, I conducted a card sorting exercise with five recent customers to understand how they mentally categorized Damen's services, which revealed a massive disconnect between internal naming conventions and user expectations. By day four, I moved into rapid wireframing in Figma, sketching out a simplified global navigation with four primary categories instead of the original twelve, and designing a dashboard-style homepage that surfaced the most requested services immediately. I tested low-fidelity clickable prototypes with the VP of Product and customer support manager on day six, incorporated their feedback, and then shifted into high-fidelity design. I built a component library with buttons, form fields, cards, and navigation patterns that could be reused across the platform, applied a cleaner visual style with better typography and whitespace, and created responsive breakpoints for mobile and tablet views. On day twelve, I handed off annotated Figma files with interaction specs, responsive behavior notes, and a component usage guide to the engineering team, then spent the final two days doing QA walkthroughs as they built.

KEY DESIGN DECISIONS

Shallow navigation over deep restructuring. I chose to keep the existing backend taxonomy intact and instead redesigned the global header with clearer category labels and added a service directory dashboard to the homepage, which gave users faster access without requiring backend changes.

Dashboard layout for service discovery. Instead of forcing users to navigate through menus, I created a card-based dashboard on the landing page that displayed the six most requested services with clear descriptions and direct CTAs, cutting the average clicks to inquiry from 4.2 to 1.5.

Mobile-first component design. I designed every UI component starting with mobile breakpoints and scaling up, ensuring that the 43% of users on mobile devices could actually complete core tasks without pinch-zooming or horizontal scrolling.

Prominent trust signals above the fold. I moved client logos, testimonials, and industry certifications into the hero section and service cards, addressing the credibility concerns that were causing users to bounce before engaging.

TOOLS USED

Figma, Google Analytics, Optimal Workshop, Slack

TIMELINE

This project ran for two weeks from February 9 to February 23.

THE PROJECT

Challenges

Extreme time pressure with no room for iteration. The two-week deadline meant I had to make fast, confident decisions without the luxury of multiple testing rounds or long stakeholder approval cycles.

No direct access to end users for research. I couldn't recruit customers for interviews or usability testing on such a tight timeline, so I had to rely on analytics data, support tickets, and proxy testing with internal team members.

Balancing business goals with user needs under constraints. The VP of Product wanted to add new features and promotional content to the redesign, but I had to push back and focus purely on fixing the broken core experience first.

Technical limitations of the existing codebase. The engineering team warned me early that certain navigation patterns I sketched weren't feasible without backend rewrites, forcing me to adjust my approach mid-sprint.

Outcomes

Drop-off rates decreased by 40% within the first month. Users were finding and accessing core services much faster, and the simplified navigation eliminated the confusion that had been causing early exits.

Service inquiries increased by 25%. The clearer service descriptions and prominent CTAs on the dashboard made it easier for users to take action, directly impacting lead generation.

Support tickets related to navigation dropped by 60%. The customer service team reported a dramatic decrease in calls and emails asking how to find services or submit requests.

Mobile traffic conversion improved by 35%. Making the platform responsive and mobile-friendly opened up an entirely new segment of users who had previously abandoned on mobile devices.

Engineering shipped on time with zero deployment issues. The component-driven design system and detailed handoff specs allowed the dev team to build fast and accurately without back-and-forth clarifications.

Stakeholder confidence in design increased significantly. The VP of Product and executive team were impressed by the speed and impact of the redesign, leading to approval for a longer-term UX roadmap and additional design resources.

KEY METRICS

40% reduction in drop-off rates. Users who landed on the homepage were now completing their intended actions instead of leaving in confusion.

25% increase in service inquiries. The redesigned interface directly drove more qualified leads into the sales pipeline within the first four weeks.

60% decrease in navigation-related support tickets. The customer service team could finally focus on complex issues instead of walking users through basic tasks.

WHERE WE ARE

The redesigned Damen Solutions platform is now live and serving as the primary customer acquisition and service delivery interface for the business. The engineering team has adopted the component library I built and is using it to develop new features without creating design debt. The company is seeing sustained improvements in conversion metrics and user engagement, and the design system has become the foundation for ongoing product development. Leadership has approved a follow-up project to tackle deeper information architecture improvements and add self-service account management features that were out of scope for the initial sprint.

FUTURE IMPROVEMENTS

Conduct full user interviews to validate navigation assumptions. I want to speak directly with customers to confirm that the category structure I created actually matches their mental models.

Build personalized dashboards based on user role or industry. Different types of businesses need different services, and tailoring the homepage experience could further reduce friction.

Add interactive service configurators for complex offerings. Some services require multiple variables and custom quotes, and a guided configuration tool would help users understand pricing and options before submitting inquiries.

Implement analytics tracking on component interactions. I want to measure how users engage with individual dashboard cards, CTAs, and navigation elements to identify remaining friction points.

Expand the design system to cover email templates and sales materials. Damen's outbound communications are still inconsistent with the platform experience, and unifying the visual language would strengthen brand perception.

Design a client portal for existing customers. Right now the platform only serves new customer acquisition, but existing clients need a way to manage active projects and access documentation.

Test progressive disclosure patterns for service details. Some users want quick overviews while others need deep technical specs, and I want to explore layered content structures that serve both needs.