ROLE:
Service Design Lead
YEAR:
2023
the challenge.
Docusign provides many solutions for agreement creation / preparation. How many? No one knew.
The more they grow, the more SaaS products customers are forced to use for their day-to-day business. Constantly having to switch tools results in less efficiency and increased risk / money lost. Agreement template preparation and management alone can save businesses $2 trillion in annual economic value globally—but it must be set up properly from the start.
In our initial state, we had a scattering of solutions for these needs. However, our overall experience was so disjointed that users were confused where to go when, and they would often switch softwares mid-way. This had led to:
❌ customer frustration around template creation + management
❌ uncertainty around how to use Docusign products together
❌ confusing sales motion
❌ development/maintenance overhead
process.
"We are here"
At the start, I put together a map of existing features to visualize what we currently had related to template creation and management. The map exposed patterns, critical gaps, and inconsistency across the experiences, and was used to share these findings with executive leadership and stakeholders in a glanceable way.
Crafting our story
The map garnered a lot of conversation around which gaps to address. While the lead designer and I fleshed out the solution in great technical detail, I created storyboards showcasing the concept and partnered with Research to test with users in parallel.
Through testing, we gained critical insight into which features resonated most with our potential customers, where they felt they needed clarity or guidance, and how they preferred to organize and / or reference insights on their templates. These findings helped the lead designer and project managers finalize our flows, and designers to begin working on deliverables.
Co-steering the ship
In the second half of the project, I took on a more directorial role. My goal was to ensure all service needs were met in our solution, and maintaining a consistent story with other IAM vision projects happening at the same time. Some of my responsibilities included:
Providing feedback and mentorship to designers during critique / jam sessions
Having regular working sessions with lead designer and product managers to refine our narrative, keep us aligned with other vision teams
Regularly syncing with IAM vision teams, addressing grey areas or moments of overlap
the solution.
[ 1 ] A plethora of separate, silo'd features—in one seamless flow
We presented a single, unified experience that takes a self-service, conversational approach that can flex to accommodate any complexity of document template, whether it's a simple offer letter or a giant service agreement that needs to pull data from multiple third-party sources like ADP, Salesforce, SAP, etc. We demonstrated how each step of the process is intuitive, but doesn't compromise in value.
Hit me up for further detail.
[ 2 ] Challenging executives to think growth, not big from the start
We told a three-prong story as part of our presentation that showed leadership how re-packaging what we have will not only benefit our existing customer base and increase satisfaction / retention, but it will also attract a new line of customers (ie. SMB) that want a flexible, grow-with-you partner for their business.
Results.
By the end of our roadshow, we had proven the value to so many leadership that it became one of the company’s top-priority initiatives for FY25. The first feature from our strategy was released in August 2024 (see article here).
Today, Agreement Preparation is a top roadmap item that's considered in company OKRs every release.