{Info}
Role
Dual-role Junior UX Designer and Product Owner
Team
Director of Product, Product Managers, Product Owner, Integration Analyst, Software Engineers (Vietnam, the UK), Director of Software Engineering, Manager of Software Engineering, Project Managers
Key Skills & Tools
Figma (UI, Prototyping)
LucidChart (Flow Diagrams, Personas, User Research)
Jira (Agile SAFe, User Story Ticket Writing, Engineer Collaboration)
{Impact}
Increased Employee's Productivity by
~3x
Reduced workflow processing time by
~66%
One of the
1st
Products to achieve data governance in the Enterprise
Expanded the metadata management support for different business requirements from
5 inventories, 16 Services, 177+ Global Platforms, 52 Lanaguages
(Content)
The Challenge
Constraints
Design Limitations:
B2B Product has a strict design system to follow, and the user interface elements are restricted by what the engineering team can support.
Users have been using the legacy systems for 5+ years and the new ecosystem has been built, so the new product design has to resemble other new products, keeping the design consistent.
New Process & Tight Timeline:
This is one of the first strategy projects for the department and we only had a year of budget to get it done. There are a lot of business changes during the project so the progress has been like a rollercoaster, with the original Product Owner departing in May, I need to carry both design and owner hats immediately to get this project going. This left us only 8 months for design finalisation and MVP build of the product.
We selected each core user group who is using the existing legacy system from EMEA, LATAM and DreamWorks. We interviewed them and documented their workflows to understand their goals and pain points. We find that users are frustrated with
Solution Design
The aspect ratio of the is not compatible for 13” inch laptop screens
Limitations: The engineer team does not provide support on responsiveness on 13”inch laptop screens, only for big monitors. I can only use the existing design elements provided by the company.
Solution: Utilise the expand and collapsable features of Navigation Bar to make more space for the metadata as much as possible. Hide less important columns by default
30seconds - collapsing the panels, unhidding fields
Redundant User Interface and Complex Workflow leads to User Frustration
Solution: Clean up the user interface, to only display what is necessary. Reduce the number of user actions required to achieve their goal.
Show how to get to episodes. Then show mine. Side by Side
Key Metadata are managed separately and the workflow is not streamlined
Solution: Put them together. All metadata in one place. Use can manage the same metadata type for each title - saving them time to flicker over different hierarchies to find the field to fill.
Show the editing of metadata in old system vs Now
There are too many manual and redundant fields that the user has to enter
Solution: Utilise automatically population features to populate fields that usually have the same data according to the users.
Original creating titles vs now: automatic populates the default number of the next field.
Bringing down metadata once Series data has been populated. The users mention that they usually put the same data for all series, season and episodes.
Impact: Automation reduces manual input by 66%, with further AI implementation, we aim to reduce human input by 90%.
Technical Ownership
Halfway through the project, my role evolved. I moved from being the lead designer to also acting as the Product Owner. This gave me a unique vantage point: I wasn't just making the product look good; I was deciding what we built and why.
What I did:
UX/UI Design: Built the end-to-end experience in Figma, focusing on making complex data entry feel intuitive.
Strategy & Roadmapping: Translated messy business requirements into clear "Epics" and "Stories" for our engineering teams in the UK and Vietnam.
Stakeholder Management: Presented proof-of-concepts to VPs and Directors to secure continued funding and alignment.
Challenge 1: Bridging the Gap between Design and Engineering
After presenting the design concepts to senior stakeholders and get the green light of development, I started creating detailed prototypes for each specific features and writing user story tickets to build the product from 0-1.
The Unhappy Paths:
I only have 2 weeks to finalise the key design concepts for the whole product so when it comes down to writing acceptance criterias, I need to consider unhappy paths in the UI and had to work fast to to get all the detailed prototypes and tickets ready for refinement, which usually takes time as we discuss how to implement the feature with the software engineers.
I wrote over 37+ tickets in total (more to come for bugs)
Learnings: Working with the engineers opened my mind to think about every behaviour in the product, not just the happy paths, but the unhappy paths.
Screenshot of how to think about product features when designing user experiences
Error message implementation video
Warning pop up to ensure the cancellation of data is not an accident
Saving pop up to ensure users saved their important data before leaving the screen.
Challenge 3:Tailoring Script for different Stakeholders
As a product owner, I have to give updates and present the progress of our product in project updates meetings with all the project managers, the key stakeholders and weekly project catch ups.
I have learnt that it’t crucial to understand what each key stakeholder group is concerned about, and mention it before they even ask the question:
For example:
A stakeholder group is concerned about how to add a new season into a series after creating.
Next Presentation: Demo that workflow during the process
Presentation documents are confidential, please reach out for more details on how I present.
Impact
Increased Employee's Productivity by
~3x
Reduced workflow processing time by
~66%
One of the
1st
Products to achieve data governance in the Enterprise
Expanded the metadata management support for different business requirements from
5 inventories, 16 Services, 177+ Global Platforms, 52 Lanaguages
Learnings
Understood that we cannot solve all user problems at once in Reality: In B2B products, I learnt that we cannot solve all user pain points at once. There are still a lot of pain points that can be solved, but with limited time and budget, we need to put our eyes on the MVPs first and build a backlog for the advanced features.
Learnt how to work with engineers on a daily basis. Unclear acceptance criteria leads to confusion and prolongs the process, same goes for unclear user interfaces prototypes. Answering their questions everyday helped me to gain a whole new perspective on how a product is built and developed, not just the front-end design.
Developing Product in an Agile SAFe Environment: From designing the experiences and interfaces based on the information architecture, refining my designs in design review sections, breaking down the project into initiatives, epics, and stories, raising user story tickets, collaborating with engineers and lastly testing the product, I learnt that designers are the ones that are sketching a dream product, and the actual magic comes from engineers. Engineers have all my respect!
What's Next?
This is a product that will be continuously improved when more users are using it as part of their workflow. We are only in the early stages of the product, and I layouted out the foundation of this global data governance product.
Next steps will be
onboarding international, latam users
Designing the title and metadata approval workflow between the new product and governance team
Implementing AI to generate translations for different regions, and capture casts and credits information to further reduce users’ manual input.
Currently I am designing another user interface and experience for a scheduling product within the same in-house product ecosystem as well. If you want to find out more, I would love to discuss my concepts during interviews.
