Background

Redesigning a SaaS’ Navigation

In 2021, I took the lead in redesigning the main navigation of our SaaS platform, Voltax. 

The first phase of the new navigation was implemented in Voltax in 2022, and it sparked a shift towards a new approach to the overall design and user experience of our product across the company.

Project Lead • Co-Researcher • Product Designer

Problem

The problems with an outdated design

The design team at Voltax, have long knew that our main navigation is not ideal.

Regardless, it was not until recently that the issues with the old design became more prominent-
as we’ve expanded our audience and range of products, it became clear that the navigation no longer serves our users or our business.

Main pain points

It takes up a lot of valuable ‘real estate’
It’s not scalable and doesn’t align with our business goals
It doesn’t fit with our product’s overall look & feel

Planning

Breaking the project down to 7 designers

Leading the redesign of the main navigation for our platform, Voltax, was a complex task, with multiple personas and use cases to consider.

To ensure effective collaboration and progress, the first phase of research and concept development was divided among the team, with each designer researching and designing a concept based on one persona.

This meant the whole team was very invested in the project, and it was important for me that all designers were fully confident with the final design.

I achieved that by sharing the project’s development with the team weekly, as well as initiating brainstorming sessions with each designer to discuss specific design challenges and solutions.

Pain points

Navigation & general workflow

The persona I researched is the Content Manager, responsible for overseeing the work of writers and editors.

Through interviews with several Content Managers, I identified a that a common pain point is that a significant amount of their time is spent on tracking updates from writers and editors.

As one Content Manager of 15+ writers, Scott S., told me:

“I start every day by checking for updates on articles from the past days, usually takes 15 minutes or so.”

In addition to feedback from the Content Manager persona, we also identified three key pain points of our everyday users:

Difficulty navigating & searching for different products
Time wasted on syncing & updating
Confusion around where each product is located

My Concept

Simplifying Content Manager's daily tasks

From conducting user interviews I discovered that Content Managers at Minute Media spend a lot of time tracking and chasing updates on articles. I based my concept to the navigation redesign on that insight:

Simplify the process of tracking their writers’ and editors’ submitted & published articles.

I developed a low-fidelity concept that focused on keeping users informed and in control of their teams’ content stream through the collapsible side-menu, and moved the main navigation to more accessible placement, the page header.

Combining concepts

As the project lead, I found the stage of combining all the different concepts into one the most challenging. The two main challenges for me were:

Designing a navigation that meets the needs of both external, small scale users, and internal MM employees with over 8 products
Making sure all designers’ perspectives are advocated through the final design

Through identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each concept, I was able to overcome these challenges and decided what to incorporate in the design while preserving a simple user flow.

In the end, I successfully created one cohesive final design that met the needs of all our users and aligned with Voltax’ overall look and feel.

Validating

Testing design with our users

In order to ensure the new design is ready to go, we conducted further testing on some of our users. Our main question was, is the “basic” version of the new navigation easier to use than our old one?

The way we tested that is by giving users tasks, some easier and some more complex, such as:

Navigating to a certain page under a certain product
Understanding their current location on Votlax
Logging out

and more.

The testing involved having participants complete tasks using a high-fidelity prototype I designed on Figma.
The results were positive, with participants finding the navigation easy to get used to, and more efficient than our ‘old’ navigation overall.

We also received feedback and suggestions for further improvements which were incorporated into the final design.

Design

Comfort & Consistency

When designing the new navigation, my top priority was to ensure that our users would feel comfortable.

I put a lot of thought into how I could make the design feel ‘native’ to our product’s overall look and feel.

I made sure that the design was visually appealing not only to customers who might have access to only 1-2 products, but to our internal large-scale users as well.

After finding through our testing that the side menu concept isn’t necessary, we decided to ditch it completely, moving the Recents and Updates (now Notifications) features to the header.

Next project

CurseForge App Colorblind themes

As part of an accessibility initiative at CurseForge, I created Colorblind themes for the CurseForge app that significantly improves usability without requiring complex technical support.

I led the project end-to-end as the sole Product Designer, working closely with Product and Engineering stakeholders.