Full redesign of the Sedex Platform
Decommissioning Sedex Advance and redesigning Sedex Connect in 6 months to deliver improved usability, scalability, and performance.
Role
Senior Product Design Manager
Company
Sedex
Duration
6 months
My role and responsibility
I spearheaded a team of 6 designers and researchers and mentored junior product managers through a full product re-platform.
Discovery of the solution
With this foundation, I designed and facilitated a two-week programme of cross-functional workshops. The sessions were structured to enable the team to move from insights to prioritised opportunities, whilst building shared ownership and momentum.
It also allowed us to organise work around the customers end-to-end journey and needs rather than technical functionality, ensuring teams were focused on delivering value to users instead of working in silos.
Defining a target user
Next, I partnered with the Research and Analytics Leads to analyse existing insights. To sustain the core value we offer to our customers we defined a target user and member type that allowed us to establish a baseline experience to measure progress against.
By focusing on New Users and Existing Members we could:
Focus on best practices in user experience design to shape an intuitive and streamlined experience that meets core user needs.
Lean on our internal expertise through known expectations of existing members.
Work within a context by which data already-existing as part of the platform experience.
Understanding our target user
We know that New Users and Existing Members engage with the Sedex platform in four key scenarios.
Identify opportunities
Our first step was to conduct a structured review of the customer journey, mapping the associated needs at each key stage. We then extracted pain points, grouped them into themes, and prioritised them using an impact framework. Impact was defined by two factors:
the number of customers affected and how often.
the extent of alignment with our strategic business objectives.
Facilitate ideation
With the prioritised pain points, needs and desires defined, we moved into idea generation. To spark creativity, I developed a user scenario that enabled the team to step into the customer’s shoes. Working with the Principal Product Manager and Research Lead, we then framed a set of “How might we” statements to guide and inspire ideation.
Ideas to sketches
We clustered similar ideas and translated them into consolidated sketches to help bring the concepts to life.
Assumption testing
We developed a plan to test our riskiest assumptions behind our concepts. The goal was to evaluate assumptions across different solutions, enabling direct comparison and more manageable experimentation. By breaking concepts into smaller testable components, we could pinpoint which parts succeeded or failed rather than testing the entire idea at once. Success criteria was defined upfront to guide the process.
Determine MVP
Once we had gathered enough evidence to build confidence in a solution, we assessed it across three dimensions- feasibility, usability, and viability. This mapping exercise brought stakeholders into the process and helped identify the most valuable starting point to define MVP.
New design system implementation and process
We used this as an opportunity to introduce our new design system and refresh the visual layer across some parts of the platform, with plans to roll it out more broadly after the February launch. The new design system is designed to create a more contemporary look aligned with our marketing guidelines, while also improving usability and accessibility for all our users.
To ensure a successful design system implementation, we developed a roadmap that integrated both design and engineering efforts. In parallel, we clarified the process and expectations for moving from concept to high fidelity ready for development.
Outcome and impact
The process reshaped how the teams approached problem-solving, by grounding decisions in research insights and customer needs, we:
Established a baseline experience against which progress could be measured.
Shifted teams to work around customer journeys instead of technical silos.
Ensured each team member developed a shared understanding of the end-to-end customer journey alongside their own area of focus.
Other projects
Transformation of the Farfetch marketplace experience
A cross functional project to identify, explore and prioritise new opportunities that will transform the digital luxury shopping experience – driving customer acquisition and retention.
Creation of a personalised article recommendation service
A free service that makes suggestions of the most relevant primary research papers based on the users history, chosen irrespective of the publisher.