A B2B logistics and innovation company identified a need within their existing customer base for a flexible, unified form builder product. The goal was to empower customers—primarily Heads of Operations and Operational Health and Safety Managers across various industries like forestry, retail, construction, and logistics—to efficiently create and manage essential forms and surveys for their departments. Previously, these users relied on paper-based systems or complex workflows to manage records and ensure compliance, highlighting an opportunity to digitize and streamline these processes.
As the Lead UX Design Consultant, I managed the end-to-end design of this custom form builder solution. My responsibilities included leading discovery research, defining core user needs, and designing high-fidelity solutions. I worked closely with engineering, the design systems team, and senior stakeholders to ensure the product’s functionality and alignment with the company’s strategic goals.
Given the competitive landscape, with many intuitive form builder products already available, my initial focus was on uncovering unique pain points and unmet needs specific to this customer base.
I facilitated a series of workshops with the client sales and customer service teams, who were well-versed in customer challenges and opportunities. Through exercises like empathy mapping, we honed in on our primary user—OHS Managers—and their specific requirements. This process was instrumental in forming our early assumptions and aligning on a product vision that catered to the diverse needs across customer industries.
To validate assumptions from stakeholder workshops, I conducted focus groups with end users, using techniques such as affinity mapping, time-boxed brainstorming, and group discussions to capture insights. These sessions deepened our understanding of each customer’s unique business needs and operational workflows, helping us prioritise features for the form builder.
Following the research phase, I began designing core product pages and experimenting with layouts and components. When remote work became necessary due to the pandemic, I adapted traditional collaborative methods to an online environment, using InVision FreeHand and Mural. These virtual design studios became a productive space for brainstorming and iterating with the team, fostering innovation despite physical distance.
Once I had developed some low fidelity wireframes of the core screens of the product, I collaborated closely with the design team for feedback and refinement. Given the complexity of the form builder and its utilitarian nature, these grayscale wireframes allowed us as a team to address usability concerns early, refine content, and gather stakeholder feedback.
The company’s design system was still evolving, and the Form Builder product became the first to fully adopt it. This alignment accelerated the design process and facilitated seamless developer collaboration. By contributing to the design system’s growth in the context of a real product, we enhanced both the product’s consistency and the design system’s maturity.
A core feature of the Form Builder was Template Maintenance, where users could manage existing form templates and create new ones. Early wireframing explored both grid and list views for displaying templates. For the MVP, we opted for a grid view, suitable for a small initial dataset, with plans to introduce a list layout as content scaled up.
Each new template began with template details, which included information like the name of the template, which department should have access to it, and whether it was a site specific form or should be available for all sites. This step allowed users, such as a Health & Safety Manager in a large supermarket network, to control access based on department needs, streamlining workflows and enhancing compliance.
Following setup, users could build templates through a WYSIWYG editor, leveraging three main field types:
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The third step in the template creation process was Workflow, where managers could set permissions and approval processes to ensure compliance. A key challenge was striking the right balance between standardisation for technical efficiency and the flexibility required to meet the unique needs of various industries.
Once a workflow was configured, the form would move through the necessary approval stages. After approval, it would be published and accessible to users in their dashboards, ready to be distributed to relevant teams and departments. This streamlined process enabled efficient form sharing and ensured that critical compliance measures were met across diverse operational contexts.
Through six workshops and multiple customer focus groups, I guided the product’s direction to ensure it delivered real value to end users. By leveraging the new design system and collaborating with the design team, we delivered a robust solution that not only met user needs but also contributed to the maturity of the company’s design ecosystem.
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