Less Annoying CRM UI Refresh

Tori Kayla.

Product Designer.

I’m a Product Designer based in Bermuda designing SaaS solutions that delight users and help them work smarter, not harder.

Full UI refresh of entire product

Project type

End-to-end UI refresh of our product without major changes

Contribution

Project management
UX research
High-fidelity mockups

outcome

Shipped to all new users & existing users who opted in
Transitioning all users over in 2024

My role

Product designer

Timeline

One year
(Apr 2022 - Apr 2023)

BACKGROUND

Less Annoying CRM is a simple, yet effective CRM for small business owners. Their focus is to provide users with a low-tech way to manage their contacts without all the extra and unnecessary features major CRM companies provide.

For this project, I was asked to refresh a design that has always put function over aesthetics.

MY ROLE

I serve the Less Annoying CRM team as the primary Product Designer. For this project, I was tasked with fully redesigning the CRM from end to end. I worked closely with the CEO (Product Owner) to ensure changes would not functionally alter the CRM, customer support team (CRM Coaches) for further feedback based on their knowledge of user issues/complaints, and the dev team.

THE CHALLENGE

With customer satisfaction and information density at the forefront of the company’s focus for over a decade, the overall UI design of the CRM looked like an after thought leaving the CRM feeling dated and heavy. The product works really well for users, but the company has been hesitant to make major design changes as their user-base is not-so-tech-saavy.

THE OPPORTUNITY

There was an opportunity to complete a full UI refresh of the CRM, but with constraints. The goal was to reimagine this decade-old platform without creating any major changes to the platform that would disrupt existing user’s flow and expectations of the product.

THE PROCESS

This was the largest project I’ve completed to date. With such a large product to redesign, it was necessary to approach it with a set process. I first started auditing our product. I dove deep into questions like:

“What works well here?”

“Why doesn’t this design feel good?”

“How can we make this design feel more expensive?”

This lead to initial concepts for how we could improve the design.

*Looking back, I could have started with creating a design system that would then help with making design decisions down the line. At this point in my design career, I wasn’t aware of how helpful having a design system could be, nor did my company have a pre-existing one that displayed the product in it’s entirety.

RESEARCH

I worked with the CEO/Product Owner to fine tune our designs before presenting samples to users who volunteered to provide feedback. Once we felt that we had visual designs that were “good enough” and “close enough” to what we thought the end designs would be, we sent out previews to gain feedback.

+ Preview 1 Navigation side by side

+ Preview 2 Calendar side by side

This lead to varied feedback that neither was 100% positive nor negative. The comments rested in the middle, many saying nothing really changed except for the color difference…which was great feedback to hear. Users saying they felt that “not much had changed” confirmed to me that our visual redesign nailed the assignment to polish without disrupting the user.

FINAL MOCKUPS (BEFORE & AFTER)

Over the course of one year, these mockups were my primary focus. From the new iconography to the revamped color palette and overall refreshed UI elements, it was truly a pleasure to see the product experience a full makeover. You can read more about this update (known as 4.0) here.

NEXT STEPS

While this major overhaul has been shipped to all new users, existing users had the option to opted in via the above dialog I designed. They were not forced to update to the latest version, however, we are actively working to move all users over to the new update in 2024.

There are also still ongoing requests for small design tweaks, bugs, and visual polish that I am working on presently.

Additionally, with the new design shipped alongside the new onboarding experience, I’d love to see how this impacts user on a grand scale. Specifically, if there is an increase customer loyalty and reduction in churn rate.