Actual product screens shown with permission. Full product under NDA.
I redesigned a 14-step compliance validation workflow into a 6-step guided flow for an enterprise platform used by sustainability teams at thousands of companies worldwide.
Per my employer's policy, I am unable to show the complete product. The screenshots below are partial views shared with permission. Contact me for a full walkthrough.
Sustainability managers, analysts, and regulatory leads at large enterprises came to this platform to submit climate commitments, but the platform treated a multi-session, expert task as a single rigid form. Fourteen sequential steps, no progress saving, and requirements that only surfaced as errors meant most people gave up partway and rebuilt their progress in spreadsheets on the side.
My read going in: the data was not the problem, the workflow was. The job was to consolidate the steps that legacy process had accumulated, make progress legible, and let people leave and return without losing work, without weakening anything compliance actually required.
Actual product screens shown with permission. Full product under NDA.
I ran moderated sessions with sustainability managers, analysts, and regulatory leads across energy, finance, manufacturing, and tech. There was no prior design work to build on, but the product was instrumented: the 67% abandon rate and the 4.5-hour median completion time came from product analytics and the recurring complaints in the support queue, which is what made the case for the rebuild concrete.
Users were not confused by the data itself, but by the system's inability to show where they were and what came next. Progress visibility was the #1 request.
Observed real submissions. Most common workaround: spreadsheets maintained alongside the platform to track progress manually.
Facilitated assumption-testing workshops with product, engineering, and policy. Changes validated through these sessions drove the 30% engagement lift.
Worked with policy experts: 8 of 14 steps could be consolidated without compliance risk. Legal requirements vs. legacy artifacts.
The 30 sessions clustered into three working roles, each with a different relationship to the submission. I designed for all three rather than a single primary user.
"I spend more time fighting the tool than doing actual analysis."
"I know what data is needed but the system makes it hard to provide."
"I review dozens of submissions a quarter. I need status at a glance."
Persistent 6-step bar showing completion, current position, and estimated time. Users can jump between completed steps without losing data.
Submissions auto-save every 30 seconds and resume exactly where the user left off. Eliminated the #1 complaint.
Recommendation features surfacing guidance from unstructured documents. Users can trust, audit, and override AI outputs.
Replaced post-submission errors with inline guidance. Users see what is needed as they work, not after they submit.
When submissions affect billion-euro climate commitments, every interaction is a trust decision. Progress, auto-save, and confirmations are not nice-to-haves. They are the product.
The AI recommendation worked best as a suggestion, not a directive. Expert users want control. The pattern: recommend, explain why, let the user decide.